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.