“A Thousand Acres” by Jane Smiley (post 2): Difficult concluding paragraph, and Reason this novel is not about “repressed memory”

The final paragraph is narrated by Ginny as follows:

“And when I remember that world, I remember my dead young self, who left me something, too, which is her canning jar of poisoned sausage and the ability it confers, of remembering what you can’t imagine. I can’t say that I forgive my father [for committing incest with her and her sister, Rose], but now I can imagine what he probably chose never to remember—the goad of an unthinkable urge, pricking him, pressing him, wrapping him in an impenetrable fog of self that must have seemed, when he wandered around the house late at night after working and drinking, like the very darkness. This is the gleaming obsidian shard I safeguard above all the others” (1, pp. 370-371).

Previously, Ginny had put poison in sausage, which she hoped would kill her sister Rose, who had stolen Jess from her, and may have come to be seen by Ginny as being evil like their father. But it is strange that Ginny attributes the poisoned sausage to “my dead young self.” Who is that?

Her dead young self confers the ability “of remembering what you can’t imagine” (the incest). This could make sense if the the “dead young self” was the alternate personality who took over for Ginny each time that her father had had sexual intercourse with her in childhood.

It was the Dead Young Self personality who had the incest memory, which was why Ginny (her regular personality) had not remembered the incest until Rose told her that she had also been molested by their father. Evidently, Rose’s memory of incest helped to resurrect (bring out) Ginny’s Dead Young Self personality, who had Ginny’s memory of incest. And I suppose that that personality, because her name included “death,” now thought it was her job to do any killing (the poisoned sausage).

Did Jane Smiley understand her last paragraph? I’m not sure I do. But I can’t forget that the passages I quoted in my previous post indicate that Ginny probably did have multiple personality.

“Repressed Memory,” An Obsolete Concept

Because Ginny appears to have had amnesia for her childhood incest until she remembered it as an adult, this novel may be mistakenly reviewed as involving “repressed memory.” But there is no “repressed memory” in the American Psychiatric Association’s 947-page Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5, 2013). Why is that? Two reasons.

First, all Freudian concepts, including repression, were eliminated from the diagnostic manual nearly forty years ago (DSM-III, 1980). Second, the part of the DSM relevant to Ginny’s memory problem is the chapter on Dissociative Disorders. (There are no repression disorders in DSM-5.)

Ginny’s kind of memory problem has NOT been viewed as repressed into the unconscious for nearly forty years. Rather, it is viewed as dissociated into a segregated, alternate consciousness; for example, into an alternate personality, as seen in dissociative identity disorder (aka multiple personality disorder).

Even psychiatric experts sometimes forget that persons with multiple personality disorder may be said to have amnesia for their history of child abuse only from the point of view of their regular, host personality: one of their alternate personalities has always remembered it (2).

1. Jane Smiley. A Thousand Acres [1991]. New York, Anchor Books, 2003.

2. Kenneth A. Nakdimen, M.D. “Multiples: No Amnesia for Child Abuse.” American Journal of Psychiatry, June 1999. https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/ajp.156.6.976a