New York Times Book Review cover article about how psychedelics alter the mind: Describes multiple personality, without realizing or mentioning it

The essence of multiple personality is to have more than one “I.”

“Multiplying my authorial persona — or was I dividing it? — in this way allowed me to capture at least some of the paradoxicality and sheer weirdness of the psychedelic experience as no single, stable narrator could hope to do. By this point in my story there were three distinct I’s telling it: the voyager reporting from inside the experience; the I who observes that first-person poof into Post-its (who is also “inside” the experience but at a remove); and, finally, the ‘outside’ narrator…” (1).

This cover story in yesterday’s New York Times Book Review is one more example of how people have multiple personality types of experiences without realizing or mentioning it.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/books/review/psychedelics-how-to-change-your-mind.html

“Your Duck Is My Duck” by Deborah Eisenberg: Protagonist has memory gap for email sent by alternate personality when host personality was sedated

Since two New York Times book reviews (1,2) and a full-length article in The New York Times Magazine (3) have praised the author and her latest book of short stories, I have read the title story.

And since the Times had not said anything about multiple personality, I was surprised to find clear evidence that the protagonist has it, though it is not labelled as such, and the author may not have thought of it in those terms.

The first-person narrator—an unnamed woman whose painting had been bought by a rich couple who has invited her to vacation with them—sends an email to Graham, from whom she is separated, and who is far away.

She realizes that she has emailed Graham only when she receives his email reply. She has a memory gap for having emailed him. Her email had been sent to him at night when she thought she had been asleep.

Most readers and reviewers think that her nocturnal email is a side effect of the sleeping pill she had taken. But the author provides two kinds of evidence to the contrary. First, the protagonist notes that her nocturnal email says things and uses vocabulary that she wouldn’t have. Second, both earlier and later in the story, during the daytime when no drugs had been taken, the protagonist has “apparitions.”

Earlier: “And as I stood there, a lanky apparition ballooned up into the void at my side, frowning, mulling the situation over. Graham! But the apparition tossed back its fair, silky hair, kissed me lightly, and dissipated, leaving me so much more alone than I’d been an instant before.”

Later: “…I thought about Graham quite a bit, and I longed not for him but for the apparition he fell so far short of, which I called up over and over…” (4).

A person with multiple personality may visualize alternate personalities—and one of her alternate personalities is evidently an idealized version of Graham—which is similar to when children see and converse with imaginary companions and when novelists see and converse with characters.

The main fact to know is this: People with multiple personality may have the experience “of waking up in the morning and finding evidence that they were busy during the night, although they do not remember anything. They may find drawings, notes, poems, relocated furniture, discarded clothing, or other evidence that they have been up and busy” (5, p. 81).

So did the sleeping pill have anything at all to do with the unrecalled nocturnal behavior? Yes, it probably did play a part in a struggle for control between the woman’s host personality and one of her alternate personalities.

The alternate personality had probably wanted to take over and express itself, but the host personality wouldn’t give it a chance. The alternate personality knew that the host was weakest at night when it went to sleep. And the host personality intuitively sensed that something might happen if she fell asleep, and that was why she was having insomnia.

In multiple personality, drugs that will sedate one personality might not sedate another personality. In this case, the sleeping pill sedated the host personality, but did not sedate that alternate personality. So when the woman took the sleeping pill, it kept the host personality asleep, while the alternate personality took over and sent the email.

Now that you know these things, you can understand this story.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/09/books/review/deborah-eisenberg-your-duck-is-my-duck.html

2. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/25/books/review-your-duck-is-my-duck-deborah-eisenberg.html

3. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/27/magazine/deborah-eisenberg-chronicler-of-american-insanity.html

4. Deborah Eisenberg. Your Duck Is My Duck (Stories). New York, ecco/HarperCollins, 2018.

5. Frank Putnam MD. Diagnosis & Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, Guilford Press, 1989.

“The Murders in the Rue Morgue” by Edgar Allan Poe (post 3): Nameless narrator, Doubling, “Bi-Part Soul,” “double Dupin,” and first famous detective

The protagonist of this short story, C. Auguste Dupin, is literature’s first famous detective, from before they were even called detectives. Sherlock Holmes mentions him, dismissively, but Holmes was jealous.

The nameless narrator makes introductory remarks—e.g., “what is only complex is mistaken…for what is profound” and “the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis”—and then describes how he first met Dupin:

“Our first meeting was at an obscure library in the Rue Montmartre, where the accident of our both being in search of the same very rare and very remarkable volume brought us into closer communion…It was at length arranged that we should live together during my stay in the city…renting, and furnishing in a style which suited the rather fantastic gloom of our common temper…Our seclusion was perfect…We existed within ourselves alone…

“I could not help remarking and admiring…a peculiar analytic ability in Dupin. He seemed, too, to take an eager delight in its exercise…He boasted to me, with a low chuckling laugh, that most men, in respect to himself, wore windows in their bosoms, and was wont to follow up such assertions by direct and very startling proofs…His manner at these moments was frigid and abstract…while his voice, usually a rich tenor, rose into a treble…Observing him in these moods, I often dwelt meditatively upon the old philosophy of the Bi-Part Soul, and amused myself with the fancy of a double Dupin—the creative and the resolvent” (1).

Comment

The unnamed narrator and Dupin are doubles. And Dupin, himself, is double. Which make three personalities.

It is significant that the narrator is unnamed. Namelessness, a recurrent topic in this blog, is common among alternate personalities.

Additionally, in a past post, I discussed Poe’s real-life published debate with a letter writer, who was named “Outis,” the Greek word for nobody, and how it was probably Poe, himself, who took both sides of that debate.

And in another post, I discussed Poe’s best-known multiple personality story, “William Wilson.”

So “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” makes a third example of Poe’s probable multiple personality: here with a nameless narrator, doubling, a “Bi-Part Soul,” and “double Dupin.”

1. Edgar Allan Poe. “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” [1841], in The Annotated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe, Edited by Stephen Peithman. New York, Avenel Books, 1981.

Laziness, Literary Technique, and Loyalty: the Third Reason for Confusion in Novels

In my recent post on why some novels are confusing to readers (even though the writer has previously proved that he knows how to write clearly), I implied laziness (in editing and revision) and cited literary technique (an intentional use of confusion to induce trance in the reader).

A third reason for confusion is that the novel’s “voice” (co-writer alternate personalities, which the writer hears in his head) may have had a story that would be confusing to outsiders (readers), but they wanted the story to be told truthfully (according to the way they saw it).

And the writing personality felt that he ought to publish the voice’s version, out of loyalty to the creative people in his organization (especially since they hadn’t failed him in the past, and he didn’t know what he would do without them).

In short, the reasons for a confusing novel are one or more of the following: laziness, literary technique, and loyalty.

Confusion as Hypnosis-induction and Literary Technique: Novels may be hard to read when not written clearly, but sometimes confusion is intentional

When novels are hard to read, it is not always because authors did not bother to write clearly. Another possible reason is that confusion is being used as a literary technique.

To fully enjoy a novel, many readers go into a virtual trance state to immerse themselves in the world that the author has created. In that sense, novelists are trying to hypnotize readers, and it is a good thing.

One of the oldest hypnosis induction techniques is The Confusion Technique, associated with Milton H. Erickson, M.D. (1).

Here is a link to an online discussion of the basic idea: https://www.uncommon-knowledge.co.uk/articles/uncommon-hypnosis/art-of-confusion.html

Before a novelist can use confusion to entrance readers, he must first establish himself as a good writer, and one who certainly does know how to write clearly. But once writers have established themselves as bona fide and legitimate, then readers will naturally assume that if they don’t understand what they are reading, it must be profound.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_H._Erickson

“A Visit from the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan (post 2): Does giving up on a novel that won the Pulitzer Prize mean I am not a good reader?

As I noted in a postscript to the previous post, I had trouble following the second half of this novel, so I stopped reading. And since the novel had gotten rave reviews and a major award, I had to fight off a feeling of being stupid.

But novels are not difficult to read due to profundity. They are difficult to read when they are not written clearly.

From what authors have said about their creative process, I have learned that literary novels rarely originate to express profound insight. They usually originate from a feeling or a situation or a voice or an image, or, as some authors say, from their unconscious (meaning they don’t know where it all comes from).

Novelists may attach a meaning to a literary novel after they write it.

I am not saying that authors of literary novels are unintelligent. Many, including Jennifer Egan, have a high IQ. And they know what I’m saying is true.

“A Visit from the Goon Squad” by Jennifer Egan: Pulitzer Prize novel begins with joke and metaphor inadvertently suggestive of multiple personality

What does the title mean? Since a character says “Time’s a goon” (1, p. 96), it seems to mean that “the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, nor bread to the wise, nor riches to the intelligent, nor favor to the men of skill; but time and chance happen to them all” (Ecclesiastes 9:11).

How can this novel be relevant here? Based on its title and the reviews I’ve seen, I do not expect it to be intentionally connected to multiple personality.

However, it may have inadvertent connections, such as multiple personality jokes and multiple personality-related metaphors.

In Chapter 1, there is this joke: “…here in N.Y.C.: you have no fucking idea what people are really like. They’re not even two-faced — they’re, like, multiple personalities” (1, p. 10).

Chekhov said: "Remove everything that has no relevance to the story. If you say in the first chapter that there is a rifle hanging on the wall, in the second or third chapter it absolutely must go off. If it's not going to be fired, it shouldn't be hanging there.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chekhov%27s_gun

Something must have made the author think of multiple personality, but no review I’ve seen suggests there will be anything about it in the novel. (I am now less than halfway through.)

However, there has been a character who is nonpsychotic and hears a voice in her head. If a character says this without elaboration, it may be only a conventional metaphor. But if the character describes and personifies the voice, and especially if the voice is quoted, it is probably the voice of an alternate personality:

“…Dolly’s relief was so immense that it almost obliterated the tiny anxious muttering voice inside her: Your client is a genocidal dictator. Dolly had worked with shitheads before, God knew; if she didn’t take this job someone else would snap it up; being a publicist is about not judging your clients—these excuses were lined up in formation, ready for deployment should that small dissident voice pluck up its courage to speak with any volume…” (1, p. 105).

Assuming that this character will not be revealed to have multiple personality, then her hearing a personified, quotable voice is simply something the author had thought of as ordinary psychology.

Why would the author think that? Most people don’t hear voices. But most novelists—and other normal people with multiple personality trait—do.

1. Jennifer Egan. A Visit from the Goon Squad. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2010.

Added 8:22 p.m.: I had difficulty following what was going on in the rest of the novel and stopped trying.

James Wood (post 4) on “Anna Karenina”: Award-winning critic at The New Yorker, and professor of literary criticism at Harvard, writes on characterization

Wood’s essay “Anna Karenina and Characterization” concludes as follows:

“Nothing is finer in the book than its last hundred pages…Again and again, Anna struggles with her essence, which is freedom, irrepressibility…As she falls under the wheels of the train, she has, in a way, finally merged with her essence. For we are told that this woman with a light step ‘fell on her hands under the carriage, and with a light movement, as if preparing to get up again at once, sank to her knees.’ Light in step when we met her, she is now light unto death” (1, p. 108).

The key phrase is “…as if preparing to get up again at once…,” but Wood seems to have no idea what this means and little idea of Tolstoy’s characterization.

Please search “Anna Karenina” in this blog for relevant past posts.

1. James Wood. “Anna Karenina and Characterization,” pp. 96-108, in The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel. New York, Picador/Farrar Straus Giroux, 2005.

James Wood (post 3) on “Don Quixote” (1): The eminent critic names neither the protagonist (Alonso Quixano) nor his mental illness (multiple personality)

You wouldn’t know from reading Wood’s essay that this novel is the story of a man named Alonso Quixano, who adopts an alternate personality named “Don Quixote,” but finally switches back to his regular personality, Alonso Quixano.

1. James Wood. “Don Quixote’s Old and New Testaments,” pp. 20-30, in The Irresponisible Self: On Laughter and the Novel. New York, Picador/Farrar Straus Giroux, 2005.

Here is my view in three past posts:

June 10, 2017

“Don Quixote” by Cervantes: What kind of “madness” sees windmills as giants; maintains relationship with Sancho Panza; adopts named, alternate personality?

Seeing Windmills as Giants

People with a psychosis like schizophrenia would NOT mistake a windmill for a giant. But there are two kinds of nonpsychotic people who might: 1. highly hypnotizable people who are given the suggestion that they will see windmills as giants, and 2. a child who thinks he is a superhero who fights giants, and substitutes windmills for giants.

As a general rule, persons with schizophrenia are relatively low in hypnotizability, while persons with multiple personality are relatively high in hypnotizability. Children are more hypnotizable than adults. Multiple personality starts in childhood. And adults with multiple personality have certain thought processes rooted in childhood.

Presumably, Don Quixote (who may have had preexisting multiple personality since childhood) has been virtually hypnotized by books on knights-errant and chivalry.

Relationships

Sancho Panza often thinks that Don Quixote has crazy ideas. So why are the two men able to maintain their relationship? Not only because Quixote has promised to reward Sancho by giving him an island, since a promise from a person with true psychosis would have been seen as worthless. The reasons are 1. Quixote often does make sense, 2. Quixote’s fantasies about knights-errant and chivalry are common in their culture, and 3. Quixote is often attentive and responsive to Sancho’s feelings and needs.

People with untreated schizophrenia (or any true psychosis) are relatively impaired in interpersonal relationships, while people with a dissociative disorder like multiple personality may be engaging, sometimes entangling.

Alternate Names and Personalities

Typically, people with schizophrenia do not adopt new names and personalities; whereas, people with multiple personality do.

June 10, 2017

“Don Quixote” by Cervantes (post 2): Madman in mountains, purposely wounding himself, raises question of who was Bible madman Legion’s Dulcinea.

“As [Don Quixote and Sancho Panza] were conversing, they arrived at the foot of a lofty mountain…This was the place the Knight of the Rueful Figure chose for his penance [in honor of Lady Dulcinea]…‘I have yet to tear my garments…and bang my head against these rocks, and other things of the kind which will amaze you.’

“ ‘For the love of God,’ said Sancho, ‘take care how you go knocking your head against rocks…’

“ ‘I thank you, friend Sancho, for your good intentions…but I want you to realize that all these actions of mine are not for mockery…for…otherwise, I should be breaking the rules of chivalry, which forbid me to tell a lie…And so the knocks on the head must be real hard knocks without anything imaginary about them…(1, pp. 129-130).

New Testament

“And when [Jesus] had come…there met him…a man with an unclean spirit…Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always…bruising himself with stones…And Jesus asked him, ‘What is your name?’ He replied, ‘My name is Legion; for we are many’ ” (Mark 5:2-9).

Jesus exorcises Legion of his many unclean spirits (demon possession), which are today interpreted as alternate personalities (search “Legion” for past posts).

Comment

In his description of Don Quixote in the mountains, intending to bruise himself with rocks, Cervantes may have been making the above biblical allusion. If so, was Cervantes ahead of his time in interpreting Legion as having multiple personality? I don’t know.

In any case, Cervantes makes me wonder who was Legion’s Dulcinea.

1. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Don Quixote. Translated, Abridged, and with an Introduction by Walter Starkie, and a New Afterword by Roberto González Echevarría. New York, Signet Classics, 2013.

June 12, 2017

“Don Quixote” by Cervantes (post 3): Don Quixote switches back to his regular personality, Alonso Quixano, confirming the diagnosis of multiple personality.

In post 2, I interpreted the episode in which Don Quixote was in a mountain, planning to purposely injure himself on rocks, as alluding to the biblical story in which Jesus meets the madman Legion, who has been in a mountain, bruising himself with stones. Legion got his name, because he was possessed by a legion of demons.

My interpretation is supported by subsequent use of the phrase “legion of demons” (1, p. 219) and by the episode at the end of the novel—while Don Quixote is in the process of reverting to his true identity of Alonso Quixano—in which he is trampled by “a herd of over six hundred swine” (1, p. 508). In the New Testament, when Jesus exorcises Legion’s legion of demons, Jesus sends the exorcised demons into a herd of swine.

At the end of the novel, the protagonist says, “…though in my life I was reputed a madman, yet in my death this opinion is not confirmed…I am no longer Don Quixote of La Mancha, but Alonso Quixano…I now abhor all profane stories of knight-errantry…” (1, p. 523).

Thus, Alonso Quixano’s “madness” had consisted of switching to an alternate personality, Don Quixote, and his “cure” consists of switching back to his regular personality. The only psychiatric condition with personality switches is multiple personality.

1. Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra. Don Quixote. Translated, Abridged, and with an Introduction by Walter Starkie, and a New Afterword by Roberto González Echevarría. New York, Signet Classics, 2013.

James Wood (post 2) on Sartre’s “Nausea”: Neither critic nor author recognizes protagonist’s dissociative fugues as symptom of multiple personality

After commenting on eminent critic James Wood’s tenth anniversary edition of How Fiction Works (2018), I looked to see which works we both have discussed. One such work is Nausea, the esteemed existentialist novel by Jean-Paul Sartre.

In his Introduction to the novel (1), Wood fails to discuss the protagonist’s “sudden transformations,” in which a change would suddenly come over him, he would travel somewhere, and later have a memory gap for that whole period of time.

Evidently, neither Wood nor Sartre realized that the protagonist’s “sudden transformations” were dissociative fugues, a classic symptom of multiple personality, in which one personality has amnesia for another personality’s travels.

1. Jean-Paul Sartre. Nausea [1938]. Translated from the French by Lloyd Alexander. Foreword by Richard Howard. Introduction by James Wood. New York, New Directions Paperbook, 2007.

July 14, 2015

Nobel Prize novelist Jean-Paul Sartre’s Nausea:  The novel’s opening—saying the protagonist's “sudden transformations” must be explained—is totally forgotten

“Sudden Transformations”

The novel begins with the protagonist’s worry about his “sudden transformations.” For example, due to some kind of change that suddenly came over him, he left France and went to Indo-China, and then, after six years, he suddenly reverted to his regular self and returned to France.

He is trying to understand what is wrong with him, and is worried that he will have another “sudden transformation”:

“I have to admit that I am subject to these sudden transformations…That is what has given my life this halting, incoherent aspect. When I left France, for example, there were a lot of people who said I had gone off on a sudden impulse…

“And then, all of a sudden, I awoke from a sleep which had lasted six years…I couldn’t understand why I was in Indo-China. What was I doing there?…[And so he returned to France]…

“If I am not mistaken, and if all the signs which are piling up are indications of a fresh upheaval in my life, well then, I am frightened…I’m afraid of what is going to be born and take hold of me and carry me off—I wonder where? Shall I have to go away again…Shall I awake in a few months, a few years, exhausted, disappointed…I should like to understand myself properly before it is too late” (1, pp. 14-15).

Author Forgets Sudden Transformations

Amazingly, the rest of the novel makes no mention of sudden transformations. Instead, the protagonist’s problem becomes “nausea,” which eventually leads to his epiphany about existence (1, p. 182), “absurdity” (1, p. 185), and “contingency” (1, p. 188), and his discovery that he might prevent Nausea by becoming a novelist (1, pp. 245-246).

Multiple Personality

The protagonist is described at the beginning of the novel as having the two cardinal symptoms of multiple personality: personality switches and amnesia. And he did not have just the one six-year fugue. He says that he is prone to these sudden transformations, which are what has given his life its “halting, incoherent aspect.”

Author, Editor, Scholars, Reviewers

What can account for a novel that states the protagonist’s main problem at the beginning, then just forgets that problem, and talks about something else? Well, the author may have had multiple personality. But there is no good excuse for the editor, scholars, and reviewers.

1. Jean-Paul Sartre. Nausea [1938]. London, Penguin Books, 2000.

“Asymmetry” by Lisa Halliday (post 2): Part 2 confused one New York Times reviewer, and Part 3 is a parting shot

The New York Times says this is one of the 10 best books of 2018, and reviewed it more than once, but found Part 2 confusing:

“Trapped at the airport, Amar lets his consciousness wander. He tries to reconstruct periods of his life of which he has no memory — ‘Contemplating the blackouts in their aggregate makes my breath come short’ — and pursues epistemological puzzles with the casual and discursive intelligence of the truly bored” (1).

That is part of what I quoted in my last post, but it was not Amar speaking. It was his brother, Sami. I sympathize with the reviewer, because I, too, was not sure who was speaking, until I saw that it was followed by Amar’s remark, “You would have thought there was no one less erasable than my brother” (2, p. 138).

Part 3 is a return to Part 1’s elderly Ezra Blazer (Philip Roth). In the novel’s last line, and the author’s parting shot, he makes an on-air pass at his young radio interviewer, right after confirming that she is a married mother.

In conclusion, the only thing I noted in this novel that is relevant here is those memory gaps, which, if not necessary to the plot or character development, would reflect the psychology of the author.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/books/review/lisa-halliday-asymmetry.html

2. Lisa Halliday. Asymmetry. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2018.

“Asymmetry” by Lisa Halliday: Parts 1 and 2 differ, not only in people and culture, but in punctuation and memory; one character has memory gaps

Part I of this novel begins: “…what is the point of a book…that does not have any quotation marks?” (1, first paragraph), meaning not just that dialogue is interesting, but that punctuation clarifies.

One hundred and twenty-five pages later, Part 2 of this novel, with a new cast of characters, has plenty of dialogue. But there are no quotation marks. It intentionally obfuscates.

And whereas people in Part 1 seem to know what they’re doing, at least one character in Part 2 does not. In spite of keeping a journal, and with no drugs or alcohol involved, he says that time and events go missing (which I notice, because memory gaps may be a symptom of multiple personality):

“It’s as if I blacked out for entire weeks at a time…What don’t I remember? Lots. Contemplating the blackouts in their aggregate makes my breath come short…writing things down does not work” (1, pp. 137-138).

In an interview, the author has said that, in some ways, Part 2 is autobiographical (2). Are memory gaps an example?

Only halfway, I will keep reading.

1. Lisa Halliday. Asymmetry. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2018.

2. https://slate.com/culture/2018/11/lisa-halliday-discusses-her-novel-asymmetry.html

“Fiction’s Fake New Drugs” by Jonathan Lethem (post 7): He does not say so, but fiction writers’ imaginary drugs mimic aspects of multiple personality

Symptoms of multiple personality include switching to be like a different person; doing things you don’t remember doing; segregating memories of trauma in alternate personalities and behind walls of amnesia so they won’t trouble the regular personality. Do fiction’s fake new drugs mimic aspects of multiple personality, because fiction writers have experienced it?

“Sense-derangementwise, it was unlike acid in that it was not a question of the ‘Essential-I’ having new insights, but of becoming a different person entirely” (1).

“Cut to the next morning: ‘I wrote someone an email in my sleep!’ Now Ray looked at Christa. ‘Did you give her one of my Vernixes? You gave her one of my Vernixes, didn’t you!’ … I was just standing there agape. ‘You gave me some pills that make you email in your sleep?’” (1)

“to encourage them to ‘enfold’ their trauma by tucking it into cognitive corners where it won’t trouble them anymore” (1).

“Perhaps the most committed of the new drug novels, Ottessa Moshfegh’s ‘My Year of Rest and Relaxation' raises the stakes beyond mere amnesiac nocturnal emailing or the deletion of a few wartime traumas: Infermiterol, prescribed as a sleep aid — by surely one of the very worst psychiatrists in the history of fiction — turns out to offer possibilities for living one’s entire life behind a veil of forgetting (something Moshfegh’s book reminded me I’d once toyed with myself, in a substance called Forgettol from my first novel, 'Gun, With Occasional Music’; I’d nearly forgotten it)” (1).

1. Jonathan Lethem. “Fiction’s Fake New Drugs.” New York Times, Dec. 24, 2018. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/24/books/review/fiction-fake-drugs.html

“Mrs Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf (post 12): To understand how this author wrote “stream of consciousness,” you have to remember who she was

The characters of this novel have “stream of consciousness.” But what is the process by which an author writes that way?

Does the author continually ask herself what this kind of person would think, feel, and say under these circumstances? Well, that’s what I would do, but I’m not a real novelist, and that’s not how real novelists do it.

Virginia Woolf would write stream of consciousness by switching personalities. She would switch to the personality of a particular character, and as that person, say what came into her mind.

I infer that Virginia Woolf would do it that way from who she was: She was the author of Orlando and The Waves, two intensely multiple personality revelations.

“Mrs Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf (post 11): Author later said Clarissa and Septimus are “doubles,” but “doubles” is not in the text. What is the lesson?

The text does describe Clarissa’s reaction to Septimus’s suicide in a way that is consistent with their being doubles:

“She had escaped. But that young man had killed himself. Somehow it was her disaster—her disgrace…She felt somehow very like him—the young man who had killed himself. She felt glad that he had done it…” (1, pp. 157-158).

But the text does not tell the reader that they are doubles, per se. If the author had not later said so, it would not be known.

“Doubles” is a literary metaphor in which what are depicted as two persons are actually the alternate personalities of one person.

And the text does not tell the reader that that is what Virginia Woolf had in mind (although readers might read that into the text once they knew what the author had said).

The lesson is that novels which look like they have nothing to do with multiple personality might be revealed to involve multiple personality if the author were to disclose what was in her mind.

1. Virginia Woolf. Mrs Dalloway [1925]. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2009.

“Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf (post 10): Since the story is about a traumatized person who commits suicide, is the novel a suicide note?

The author’s introduction to the novel, quoted in the previous post, says an earlier version had Mrs. Dalloway as the one who commits suicide, but that, eventually, Mrs. Dalloway’s “double,” Septimus, assumed that role.

In other words, this novel was conceived as the story of a traumatized person, who, years later, commits suicide.

And since Virginia Woolf was a traumatized person (sexual abuse in childhood), who, years later, committed suicide, is this novel a suicide note?

“An Introduction to Mrs. Dalloway” by Virginia Woolf (post 9): Author says novel written “without conscious direction” and that two characters are “doubles”

To correct literary criticism of her novel, Virginia Woolf wrote this brief introduction to Mrs Dalloway three years after the novel’s publication.

Not Experimental

“This book, it was said, was the deliberate offspring of a method. The author, it was said, dissatisfied with the form of fiction then in vogue, was determined to beg, borrow, steal or even create another of her own. But, as far as it is possible to be honest about the mysterious process of the mind, the facts are otherwise…the idea started as the oyster starts…And this it did without any conscious direction. The little note-book in which an attempt was made to forecast a plan was soon abandoned, and the book grew day by day, week by week, without any plan at all, except that which was dictated each morning in the act of writing…in the present case it was necessary to write the book first and to invent a theory afterwards” (1).

Theme of The Double

“…in the first version Septimus, who later is intended to be her [Mrs. Dalloway’s] double, had no existence…Mrs. Dalloway was originally to kill herself…” (1).

Comment

Virginia Woolf did eventually kill herself. That Mrs. Dalloway was originally intended to kill herself suggests that this character had originally represented the author in this regard. But then Septimus, as Mrs. Dalloway’s “double,” was substituted for Mrs. Dalloway to represent Virginia Woolf’s suicidality.

Does the switch from suicidal Mrs. Dalloway to suicidal Septimus imply that Virginia Woolf’s suicidal (or internally homicidal) personality was male?

1. Virginia Woolf. “An Introduction to Mrs. Dalloway [1928],” pages 10-12, in The Mrs. Dalloway Reader, Edited by Francine Prose. Orlando, Harcourt Inc., 2003.

“William Wilson” by Edgar Allan Poe (post 2): In this double (multiple personality) story, the bad personality stabs the good personality to death

The first-person narrator, William Wilson, is upset to find he has an identical double; that is, identical in name and appearance. They differ in personality. The narrator is bad (gambling, cheating, drinking). His double, who is conventional, interferes with the bad behavior. Eventually, the narrator is fed up with the interference and stabs his double to death.

Double stories are multiple personality stories. In multiple personality, the regular personality is usually conventional. The alternate personalities are exceptional in one way or another. They may be exceptionally good or bad, or have special interests or talents. In fiction writers, it is usually the alternate personalities who do the writing, while the host personality lives the everyday, conventional life.

Thus, of the two William Wilsons, it is the narrator who is the alternate personality.

This is confirmed at the end of the story, where the conventional, nonwriting personality is quoted. He says to the narrator: “In me didst thou exist—and in my death, see…how utterly thou has murdered thyself” (1, p. 95).

1. Edgar Allan Poe. “William Wilson [1839],” pages 78-95, in The Annotated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe. Edited by Stephen Peithman. New York, Avenel Books, 1986.

“Motherless Brooklyn” by Jonathan Lethem (post 6): Protagonist does not see Bailey, but the latter has the virtual reality of an alternate personality

At the beginning of this novel, the protagonist and first-person narrator, Lionel Essrog, hopes to see his “invisible companion named Billy or Bailey” (1, p. 46).

Two hundred pages later, he still wants to know, “Who was Bailey anyway?” (1, p. 246).

And on the last page, “Bailey” remains someone “I never happened to meet” (1, p. 311).

Note: On that last page, Lionel compares Bailey to Ullman, a real person in the story whom Lionel had also never seen. By comparing Bailey to Ullman, Lionel is making the point that Bailey is real, too.

Nevertheless, Lionel never expects anyone else to ever meet Bailey, because Lionel knows that Bailey is not real to other people. Lionel is in touch with objective reality. Multiple personality is not a psychosis.

In Motherless Brooklyn, as in most novels, the issue of multiple personality, per se, is unacknowledged, probably because it is one mystery that the novelist has not yet solved.

1. Jonathan Lethem. Motherless Brooklyn. New York, Doubleday, 1999.

“Motherless Brooklyn” by Jonathan Lethem (post 5): Parallel plots—detective story and Tourette’s (cover story for multiple personality)—continue

As previous discussed, this novel has two parallel plots: 1. the protagonist is a detective trying to solve a murder, and 2. he has Tourette’s, a neurological syndrome of behavioral and vocal tics, which, in this novel, is given psychological symptoms of multiple personality that are not part of real-life Tourette’s.

The protagonist’s Tourette’s is a cover story, camouflage, for the author’s discussion of multiple personality, which is referred to by euphemisms, such as “Multi-Mind”:

“…my Multi-Mind, that tangle of responses and mimicking, of interruptions of interruptions” (1, p. 195).

When the protagonist has a sexual encounter with a young woman, it is “as though she were negotiating a new understanding between my two disgruntled brains” (1, p. 220):

As the sexual encounter progresses, his nonsexual, alternate personality, “Bailey, he left town,” and the protagonist temporarily feels like he has only “One Mind” (1, p. 222).

1. Jonathan Lethem. Motherless Brooklyn. New York, Doubleday, 1999.

“Motherless Brooklyn” by Jonathan Lethem (post 4): Protagonist does not recognize himself in mirror and has “no control in my personal experiment of self”

In this chapter’s first paragraph, before the protagonist gets down to the day’s practical matters, he reflects on not recognizing himself in the mirror (a symptom of multiple personality; search “mirror” and “mirrors” in this blog) and the two-way communication between personalities in his head:

“There are days when I get up in the morning and…I don’t even recognize my own toothbrush in the mirror…and I don’t know whether this is a symptom of Tourette’s or not. I’ve never seen it described in the literature. Here’s the strangeness…then: no control in my personal experiment of self…Personalityness. There’s a lot of traffic in my head, and it’s two-way” (1, p. 131).

He implies that this novel is an “experiment of self” in which he is trying to understand his “personalityness” and its two-way traffic in his head. Since he does not call it multiple personality, he apparently has not thought of it in those terms.

1. Jonathan Lethem. Motherless Brooklyn. New York, Doubleday, 1999.