“In Pieces” by Sally Field (post 5): Memoir’s title raises issue of multiple personality, and a psychiatrist is consulted, but his evaluation is incomplete

This 400-page memoir, whose title highlights the possibility that Sally Field has multiple personality, devotes less than two pages to her sessions with a psychiatrist (1, pp. 374-375).

After she tells him of, and gives her names for, her “pieces” (see previous posts): “Dan urged me to talk to each of them, to visualize them in my brain like they were separate people…to finally call each one over, to allow them to join the group” (1, p. 375). But skeptics would say that Dan’s advice was premature, since he had not yet established the diagnosis, which requires, at a minimum, a history of memory gaps, about which he is not reported to have inquired. (Search “memory gaps,” “mental status,” and “diagnostic criteria” for relevant past posts.)

If Sally Field did have multiple personality, then an inquiry about memory gaps might have found that what happened during some gaps could not be accounted for by any of the known “pieces,” implying that there were others. And there usually are.

Moreover, a psychiatrist never really knows what is going on with a person who has multiple personality until he speaks with the alternate personalities themselves, and Dan is not reported to have interviewed any of them.

This is not to say that delving into a person’s multiple personality is always appropriate. Often it isn’t. But if there were reasons that it never became appropriate with Sally Field, then those reasons should have been mentioned.

In conclusion, this memoir does not adequately address the issue raised by its title. Otherwise, it is very good.

1. Sally Field. In Pieces: a memoir. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2018.