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.