“Enduring Love” by Ian McEwan (post 7): Why does explicitly psychiatric novel ignore symptoms of multiple personality in two characters?

As previously noted, this novel concludes with a fictitious article from a fictitious journal of psychiatry that discusses this novel from a psychiatric point of view, as if the characters were real people. It is the author’s own psychiatric analysis of this novel.

The author’s psychiatric analysis ignores symptoms suggestive of multiple personality in two major characters: the protagonist saw himself from a distance, and the villain addressed an “invisible presence” (see prior posts).

Evidently, the author did not see these as psychiatric symptoms. Why?

Because these may be the kinds of things that he, himself (and other people who may have multiple personality trait) might experience, and he (and those others) are not crazy.

“Enduring Love” by Ian McEwan (post 6): Character addresses “invisible presence,” an alternate personality, unless otherwise explained

Three times—once each, in the novel’s first, middle, and last third—when the narrating protagonist and the man who has a fixation on him are in conversation, the latter seems to address an “invisible presence”:

“I was beginning to see the pattern of a tic he suffered when he spoke. He caught your eye, then turned his head to speak as though addressing a presence at his side, or an invisible creature perched on his shoulder. ‘Don’t deny us,’ he said to it now. ‘Don’t deny what we have. And please don’t play this game with me. I know you find it a difficult idea, and you’ll resist it, but we’ve come together for a purpose’ ” (1, pp. 69-70).

“There was something he wanted to tell me. First he glanced at the presence over his shoulder” (1, p. 138).

“He glanced away to his right, to the invisible presence on his shoulder, before meeting my eye” (1, p. 227).

Amazingly, the invisible presence is never explained in the novel. Certainly, calling it a “tic” is no explanation. And the invisible presence is not even mentioned in the novel’s appendix, which is a fictitious psychiatric journal article that purportedly discusses the case of this novel in psychiatric detail.

Either McEwan didn’t understand that addressing an invisible presence is likely addressing an alternate personality (unless otherwise explained, e.g., by a drug withdrawal delirium), or he did understand it, but didn’t want to go there.

In conclusion, both the protagonist (see previous posts) and his antagonist have symptoms suggestive of multiple personality, but no female characters do. Perhaps McEwan thinks that men are more complex.

1. Ian McEwan. Enduring Love. New York, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1997.

“Enduring Love” by Ian McEwan (post 5): Three additions to the theme of the protagonist’s self-dividedness

After the first twelve chapters, I have three additions to the theme of the protagonist’s self-dividedness. One is Clarissa’s criticism that Joe is emotionally cut off, because “You’re making calculations that I’ll never know about. Some inner double-entry bookkeeping…” (1, p. 111).

The second is the issue of bisexuality, whose possible relation to multiple personality I discussed recently. So far, nobody has raised the issue of homosexuality as it relates to Jed Parry’s psychotic delusion of mutual love between him and Joe (the protagonist).

Why hasn’t Joe asked Jed if he is homosexual? Why hasn’t Joe told Jed Parry to leave him alone because he, Joe, is not homosexual? Why hasn’t Clarissa raised the issue of why this man is harassing Joe, the man she lives with? Why hasn’t Joe asked Jed Parry if homosexuality is consistent with Jed’s avowed religious beliefs? In short, why hasn’t the issue been raised by any of them, unless they all tacitly assume that everyone is bisexual?

The third possible addition to the theme of the protagonist’s self-dividedness is the question he raises about his own memory. He says he has “a quarter memory” (1, p. 95) having to do with the “the key word…curtain” (1, pp. 95-96). He doesn’t know what it means. And when Jed Parry makes the psychotic allegation that Joe is sending “signals” to him, Joe thinks that maybe there is a connection to curtains, “a curtain used as a signal” (1, p. 98). I don’t know what will be made of this later in novel, but a puzzling inaccessibility of memories, as if a person had multiple memory banks, is a basic issue in multiple personality.

Added June 28, 2019: In chapter 14, Joe (protagonist) suddenly recalls that the curtain as a signal was part of a case report by French psychiatrist De Clerambault, regarding a French woman who had never met, but loved, King George the Fifth. She had the delusion that the king loved her in return, and thought that he used the curtains in the windows of Buckingham Palace to signal to her. Thus, the prototypical case of de Clerambault’s syndrome was heterosexual, and the object of the delusion was a king (1, p. 133), not a freelance writer.

1. Ian McEwan. Enduring Love. New York, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1997.

“Enduring Love” by Ian McEwan (post 4): Protagonist, who continues to have a split consciousness, is “the world’s most complicated simpleton”

In the rest of chapter one and chapter two, the protagonist makes two more mentions of his divided consciousness. Recall that he had previously seemed to see himself from two hundred feet up (1, p. 1). Next, he reports that when he had met Clarissa earlier that day (prior to the day’s traumatic event), he had imagined that “I was another man, my own sexual competitor, come to steal her from me. When I told her, she laughed and said I was the world’s most complicated simpleton…” (1, p. 5). Later, in the aftermath of the man’s fall to his death from the balloon, he says, “Like a self in a dream, I was both first and third persons, I acted, and saw myself act” (1, p. 21).

The first and the third instances might be explained away as his response to a traumatic situation. But there was no such situation when he had met Clarissa earlier that day. And her laughing comment that he was “the world’s most complicated simpleton” may mean that this was the kind of thing that she had come to expect of him.

1. Ian McEwan. Enduring Love. New York, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1997.

“Transformation” vs. “Switching”: How fiction writers and psychiatrists think of changing from one personality to another personality in multiple personality

Fiction writers tend to think of the different personalities in multiple personality as being like different people. And conceptually, to go from being one person to being another person would be a transformation.

In contrast, psychiatrists think of the different personalities in multiple personality as parts of the same person. So they think of going from one personality to another personality as switching from one part to another part of the same person.

Thus, when a character in a work of fiction is spoken of, or depicted, as having undergone “transformation,” the implication, intentionally or unintentionally, may be multiple personality.

“Enduring Love” by Ian McEwan (post 3): Novel opens with “multiplicity” of “selves”; false clue; transformation, memory gap, and depersonalization

The first three pages of the novel, separated by a space from the rest of chapter one, have three things that caught my attention. The third thing was the “enormous balloon filled with helium, that elemental gas…first step along in the generation of multiplicity and variety of matter in the universe, including our selves…” (1, p. 3). “Multiplicity” and “selves” in the same sentence may not be a meaningless coincidence.

The second thing was that, as five people rushed toward the balloon and its call of distress, the narrating protagonist, Joe Rose, and a stranger, Jed Parry, who are coming from opposite sides of the field, are described as “rushing toward each other like lovers” (1, p. 2). This may be an intentionally false clue, designed to make the reader mistakenly suspect that it is Joe Rose and not Jed Parry who has a sudden psychotic fixation.

The first thing that caught my attention was this: “…we heard a man’s shout. We turned to look across the field and saw the danger. Next thing, I was running toward it. The transformation was absolute: I don’t recall…getting to my feet, or making a decision, or hearing the caution Clarissa called after me…And there, suddenly, from different points around the field, four other men were converging on the scene, running like me. I see us from two hundred feet up…(1, p. 1).

The word “transformation,” especially in combination with a memory gap (“I don’t recall…”), indicates a switch to an alternate personality. This is confirmed by the depersonalization (“I see us from two hundred feet up”), which means that one personality was observing the other personality run toward the balloon.

Two relevant works previously discussed here are Jean-Paul Sartre’s novel Nausea, which featured the protagonist’s “sudden transformations,” and Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which was about the protagonist’s transformation. Search “Sartre,” “Kafka,” and “transformation.” Transformation is a literary metaphor for switching from one personality to another.

1. Ian McEwan. Enduring Love. New York, Nan A. Talese/Doubleday, 1997.

Ian McEwan (post 2): Unreliability of “Enduring Love”

In yesterday’s post, I quoted McEwan as saying that in his novel, Enduring Love, he intended to mislead readers into doubting the protagonist’s claim that a man he hardly knew had a fixation on him, a rare delusional disorder called de Clérambault’s syndrome.

McEwan said he would have been happy for readers to think that the protagonist might be crazy, and that it was even possible that the other man was imaginary (an alternate personality?).

But in the end, the protagonist would be proved right, and the other man would be psychiatrically hospitalized.

McEwan said that he did not think of the beginning of the story, a key to much of what will happen, until he had written about half of the novel.

He also said that the greatest pleasure he has found in fiction-writing is that he is surprised by what happens. See yesterday’s post for the quote.

Without explanation, he said that his enjoyment in writing entails “Making something that seems to come from a mind that is better than your own.” What mind it that? His alternate personality?

If McEwan had been inspired by reading an article about de Clérambault’s syndrome, why did he write a novel in which a man has a fixation on a man? In most reported cases of de Clérambault’s syndrome, the delusion is heterosexual.

And it would have been a nice trick to fool the reader if the protagonist’s credibility problem had been unfair. But the protagonist’s actual unreliability appears to have been pervasive (1).

I plan to read Enduring Love.

1. Sean Matthews. “Seven types of unreliability.” Pages 91-106, in “Ian McEwan’s Enduring Love” [1997], Edited by Peter Childs. London, Routledge, 2007.

Ian McEwan: Comments on his novel, “Enduring Love,” and on Writing

Enduring Love

McEwan: “Well, its narrator is…a successful science journalist, with a particular cast of mind—a highly organised mind—and I wanted immediately to suggest this kind of mind…to suggest someone who has got a fairly confident grip on the world…So the characterisation of Joe was central to that.

“Secondly, I’d read that de Clérambault’s syndrome—this strange psychotic delusional state—is often triggered by an intense moment. When I started Enduring Love I didn’t have that intense moment; this opening chapter that people have liked was not written until—I don’t know—halfway through the novel, when I found the sort of thing I wanted…from the point of view of Jed Parry—a lonely man, very much an outsider with his own deep intrapsychic world…a way of triggering his particular delusion that Joe loves him…

Interviewer: “And then the third point of view, which you play off the other two, is Clarissa’s as a university teacher who specializes in a Romantic poet, John Keats. Why did you choose that as the third counterpoint?

McEwan: “She just sort of grew. I mean, one doesn’t map these things out…I wanted someone both sympathetic and wrong…So in Clarissa I wanted someone who was very sympathetic, who had her own enduring love, not only for Keats…And I wanted the reader to side with Clarissa. There are all kinds of false trails in Enduring Love. I wanted the reader to toy with the idea that Joe might be going completely crazy, or maybe even that Joe was Jed. These are games one plays, and withholding information is crucial to this kind of novel writing. But I wanted Clarissa to be wrong. I wanted the police to be wrong. I rather like those plots…” (1, pp. 83-84).

Erotomania

de Clérambault’s syndrome, more commonly known as Erotomania (2), is a subtype of Delusional Disorder (3). The person has a psychotic delusion that someone loves them, but there are not enough other psychotic symptoms to make a diagnosis of schizophrenia.

More on Writing

“Well, like many writers, I suppose I have a sponge-like quality…I absorb things from other people without being fully aware of it. This has obvious advantages for a writer, but if I’m not careful, people can invade my space all too easily. I’ve had to put up barriers…if you open yourself up too much you can be taken over. There are always people who want to take you over” (1, p. 74).

“I have to say that over the last twenty-five years my pleasure in writing has steadily increased, to the point of delight. It used to be a source of pleasure-pain, a kind of compulsive self-torture. But now I know that the crucial ingredient of writing-pleasure is surprise. Surprising oneself with a thought, or a formulation. Making something that seems to come from a mind that is better than your own” (1, p. 78).

1. Ryan Roberts (Editor). Conversations with Ian McEwan. Jackson, University Press of Mississippi, 2010.

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erotomania

3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delusional_disorder

“Stoner” by John Williams: Protagonist’s symptom of depersonalization is probably indicative of multiple personality

This novel is the story of William Stoner, an English professor, who is mostly unappreciated (1, 2).

Depersonalization

Since Stoner does not have symptoms of any of the other conditions in which depersonalization might be seen, his depersonalization is probably indicative of multiple personality.

What is depersonalization? “In many cases, it is the host personality who is observing another personality perform some action” (3, p. 77).

“He listened to his words fall as if from the mouth of another…” (4, p. 23).

“Sometimes, as he spoke to his students, it was as if he stood outside himself and observed a stranger speaking…” (4, p. 27).

“After a while it seemed to Stoner that he had gone outside himself, and it was as if he heard a voice [coming from his own mouth] going on and on, impersonal and deadly” (4, p. 160).

“…at will, he seemed able to remove his consciousness from the body that contained it, and he observed himself as if he were an oddly familiar stranger doing the oddly familiar things that he had to do. It was a dissociation [depersonalization and multiple personality are classified as Dissociative Disorders] that he had never felt before; he knew that he ought to be troubled by it, but he was numb, and he could not convince himself that it mattered. He was forty-two years old, and he could see nothing before him that he wished to enjoy and little behind him that he cared to remember” (4, p. 181).

However, as evident from the previous quotes, it was not something new, but something he had occasionally experienced for many years. All that was new, was that he had learned to do it “at will.”

While Dying

At the end of the novel, when Stoner is dying of bowel cancer, he has other subjective experiences suggestive of multiple personality. These experiences might have been otherwise explained, as drug-related or as spiritual experiences, if he had not had the depersonalization symptoms described above, for most of his life.

“…he sometimes found himself speaking words whose source he did not understand” (4, p. 270), which were probably words of other personalities.

“Dim presences gathered at the edge of his consciousness; he could not see them, but he knew they were there…” (4, p. 277). This might have been meant by the author as a near-death, spiritual experience, but in the context of Stoner’s lifelong experiences quoted above, he was probably becoming aware of the presence of alternate personalities.

Comment

There is also a case to be made that Stoner’s wife, Edith, has multiple personality, but I can’t make that case concisely enough to hold the interest of readers who have not read the novel.

And since Stoner’s probable multiple personality, per se, is not necessary to either the plot or character development, and does not appear to have been intended by the author, it is what I call “gratuitous multiple personality,” and is in the novel only as a reflection of the writer’s own psychology.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stoner_(novel)

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Edward_Williams

3. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

4. John Williams. Stoner [1965]. New York, New York Review Books, 2003.

“The Fifth Season” by N. K. Jemisin (post 5): Childhood trauma, multiple names, bisexuality, metamorphosis as “gratuitous multiple personality”

Why does this novel have so much abuse and death of children? Essun’s son is murdered by his father. Her daughter has been kidnapped. Her other son on the island dies a violent death. Damaya’s training includes child abuse. Childhood trauma is often found in the history of people with multiple personality.

It is eventually revealed that Damaya, Syenite, and Essun are the same woman at different ages. What was the psychological reason for this scenario? Three different names for one person is a metaphor for multiple personality.

Since I had discussed, in a recent post, the coincidence of multiple personality and bisexuality, I noticed the bisexuality in this novel, regarding the captain on the island, and possibly also the protagonist’s mentor. What was the reason for including bisexuality in this novel? Because bisexuality exists in real life, and this novel is so realistic that bisexuality was included for realism? Or is the bisexuality gratuitous, another aspect of gratuitous multiple personality.

Metamorphosis or transformation of characters is a metaphor for the switching of personalities in multiple personality. The protagonist and other “orogenes” may usually look and behave like ordinary people, but then they reveal very different and destructive behavior, like they have switched from Jekyll to Hyde. And the stone-eater characters undergo even more dramatic metamorphoses, switching between their humanoid and stone personalities.

The above, together with what I discussed in the prior posts, are examples of “gratuitous multiple personality”: things in a work of fiction that are associated with, or suggestive of, multiple personality, but which were not intended by the author to suggest multiple personality, and are in the work only as a reflection of the fiction-writer’s own psychology.

Race

As I mentioned in a prior post, regarding the racial implications of the words “orogene” and “rogga,” a major theme of this novel is race. The main characters are people of color. This novel seems like a nightmare, shared with the reader by a woman of color.

In real life, one psychological effect of the persecution of people of color is “double consciousness,” a term borrowed by W. E. B. Du Bois from the study of multiple personality.

1. N. K. Jemisin. The Fifth Season. New York, Orbit Hachette, 2015.

“The Fifth Season” by N. K. Jemisin (post 4): Protagonist, Essun, can create alternate personalities; she’s done it before and it’s easy

Narrator, addressing “You”—meaning Essun and readers, since readers, at the beginning of the novel, had been told to think of themselves as Essun—says the following:

“You think, maybe, you need to be someone else.

“You’re not sure who. Previous yous have been stronger and colder, or warmer and weaker…

“You could become someone new, maybe. You’ve done that before; it’s surprisingly easy. A new name, a new focus, then try on the sleeves and slacks of a new personality to find the perfect fit. A few days and you’ll feel like you’ve never been anyone else.

“But. Only one you is Nassun’s mother…if she still lives, Nassun will need the mother she’s known all her life.

“So you must stay Essun…You have no choice. Not as long as one of your children could be alive” (1, pp. 172-173).

1. N. K. Jemisin. The Fifth Season. New York, Orbit Hachette, 2015.

Comment added June 19, 2019: It is unclear as to whether a narrator is addressing Essun, an alternate personality is addressing her, or these are Essun’s thoughts. It would appear clear, however, that the issue is changing personalities, per se, not just adopting a new identity. The word “personality” is used. And if it were just a new identity being considered, then that would not prevent her from still being Nassun’s mother. Only a different personality, per se, would not be Nassun’s mother.

Added later in the day: The passage quoted says, "A few days and you'll feel like you've never been anyone else." That would be true only if you had a new, different memory bank, and did not have your previous memories. If you just adopted a new name, because you got married or achieved a new job status, you would still have your old memories and feel, basically, like you were the same person. So what is being described is the creation of a new personality. Whether the author understood this, I don't know, but she did say "a new personality."

“The Fifth Season” by N. K. Jemisin (post 3): Orogene/Rogga (Negro/Nigga), Essun’s memory gap, Syenite’s gibbering alternate personality

A third of the way through this novel, there are three more things of note.

One interesting sidelight is that this African-American author’s term for the main characters, “orogenes”—people who, according to the novel’s glossary, have “the ability to manipulate thermal, kinetic and related forms of energy to address seismic events”—appears to be “negro” backwards.

I didn’t realize this until “orogene” appeared on the same page with the novel’s derogatory term for orogenes, “rogga” (1, pp. 120, 144), which sounds similar to “nigga.” And when I then googled this issue, I found that other readers had made the same interpretation.

As to further suggestions of multiple personality in the first third of the novel, I would note two possibilities. The first is from a chapter involving the protagonist, Essun (with whom the reader is supposed to be identified). She is traveling south to find her husband (who had killed their son) and her daughter (alive). Essun is thinking that traveling south, away from an earthquake up north, is the only sane direction for her husband to have fled.

“Of course, a man who would beat his own child to death might not still fit the label of sane. And a woman who found that child and stopped thinking for three days…hmm, not you, either. Nothing to do but follow your crazy, though” (1, p. 79). This seems to mean that her having “stopped thinking for three days” means that she may be crazy, too. But it might describe a three-day multiple personality memory gap.

Another chapter features the orogene, Syenite, who witnesses something very disturbing, and is trying to distract herself by focusing on concrete details, so as not to feel too disturbed: “She focuses on all this, these little details, because it helps. Because there’s a part of her that’s gibbering, and the only way she can keep that part internal and silent is to concentrate on everything she is seeing” (1, p. 139).

This appears to mean that “a part of her” (an alternate personality) inside is so upset that it is “gibbering.” And if Syenite doesn’t distract herself, she fears that her alternate personality might get so upset that it will no longer remain inside, but might come out and speak out, which could be embarrassing.

1. N. K. Jemisin. The Fifth Season. New York, Obit Hachette, 2015.

Publishers Usually Fail to Fact-check Their Nonfiction Books: So how can you know what to believe? Is published more credible than self-published?

A recent book review in The New York Times vehemently denounced a well-known nonfiction author for making factual errors in book after book. But the review had no criticism at all for the publisher. Why?

Two reasons. First, publishers advertise, and newspapers may not want to bite the hand that feeds them. Second, supposedly, everyone knows that publishers usually don’t fact-check.

But many readers probably do assume that published nonfiction books are more credible than self-published nonfiction books, because only the published books would have been fact-checked. After all, if they had not been fact-checked, why would they deserve a premium price?

Do the authors of published nonfiction books have better professional credentials than self-published authors? Not necessarily. Published nonfiction books may misrepresent the author’s credentials or misrepresent their sufficiency to understand the matter at hand.

So knowing what to believe may be difficult, especially if what you are asked to believe may not be in your financial interest.

Machado de Assis (post 3): Revealing true color of Brazil’s celebrated novelist, and multiple personality in his Dom Casmurro

True color: Color version of old black and white photograph reveals that he was black, not white. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/14/books/brazil-machado-de-assis.html

Multiple personality in his masterpiece, Dom Casmurro, was discussed in two posts last year:

July 1, 2018

“Dom Casmurro” by Machado de Assis: First-person narrator says he entered his room behind himself, talked to himself, and persecuted himself

“Bento Santiago, the wildly unreliable narrator of Dom Casmurro, believes …that his wife has cheated on him with his best friend and that her child is not his. Has Capitú, his love since childhood, really been unfaithful to him?…First published in 1900…a classic of Brazilian literature…a sad and darkly comic novel about love and the corrosive power of jealousy.” —quoted from the back cover. The novel is praised in blurbs by Harold Bloom, Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, and The New York Times Book Review.

Halfway through the novel, in a chapter titled “Despair,” is the following:

“I ran to my room and entered behind myself. I talked to myself, persecuted myself, threw myself on the bed, and rolled over and over with myself” (1, p. 148).

As I continue reading, I will see if there is any other description of multiple personality.

1. Machado de Assis. Dom Casmurro. Translated from the Portuguese by Helen Caldwell (1953). New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2009.

July 4, 2018

Unreliable Narrator(s) of “Dom Casmurro” by Machado de Assis (post 2): Dom Casmurro and Bento Santiago are alternate narrative personalities

The beginning of this novel is controlled by an alternate narrative personality called “Dom Casmurro.” He explains that people call him by that nickname because they see him as pretentious, morose, and withdrawn. But it is not until the end of the novel that the reader learns his main attribute: an unshakable belief that his son was the product of adultery between his wife and best friend.

Most of the novel, the 99% between the beginning and the end, is narrated by Bento Santiago, the regularly-named narrative personality, who has always loved and trusted his wife and best friend.

Evidently, when inspiration for this novel came to Machado de Assis, he was confronted with two distinct narrative voices, as described above, and a compromise was reached: the trusting and loving Bento Santiago would have control of most of the novel, but in return, the cynical Dom Casmurro would control the beginning, end, and title.

The conventional interpretation, that there is a single unreliable narrator, is implausible. For if there were only one narrator, and he truly believed in the adultery, he never would have devoted 99% of the novel to a seemingly sincere portrayal of his wife and friend as beloved and trustworthy.

(Other evidence for multiple personality is the passage quoted in the previous post on this novel.)

Machado de Assis. Dom Casmurro [1900]. Translated from the Portuguese by Helen Caldwell (1953). New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2009.

Added June 16, 2019: Others have noted the feature of doubling and split personality in the writings of Machado de Assis:

— https://docs.lib.purdue.edu/dissertations/AAI9132441/

— https://books.google.com/books?id=OfTzCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA18&lpg=PA18&dq=machado+de+assis+split+personality&source=bl&ots=J4Pb3pZmsO&sig=ACfU3U1mka5DTH-uuNgWYL58Et7JHoFbUw&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjhgLOP-e3iAhWotlkKHfdRAFwQ6AEwDHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=machado%20de%20assis%20split%20personality&f=false

“The Fifth Season” by N. K. Jemisin (post 2): Readers must continue to think of themselves as the protagonist, and there is a Mirror scenario

As previously noted, readers are supposed to be the female protagonist, Essun, and are supposed to see, think, do, feel, and say everything that she is directed to see, think, do, feel, and say, as in the following scene:

“You [the reader and Essun, the female protagonist] shake your head…

“…you rise and go into…bathroom, where you wash your face…

“ ‘Nassun,’ you whisper to your reflection. In the mirror are the eyes your daughter has inherited from you, gray as slate and a little wistful. ‘He [Jija] left Uche [their son] in the den. Where did he put you?’

“No answer. You shut off the tap. Then you whisper to no one in particular, ‘I have to go now.’ ” (1, p. 24).

Multiple Personality, Mirror Scenario

As discussed in various past posts (search “mirror” and “mirrors”), people with multiple personality may sometimes see an alternate personality when they look in the mirror.

In the above scene, at first the reader may think that Essun is looking at her own reflection in the mirror, as she thinks about where her daughter may be. Objectively, she is looking at her own reflection. But if, subjectively, she had been looking at her own reflection, she would not have expected an answer. “No answer” implies that she had expected an answer, but that she was disappointed.

So it seems more likely, in her subjective experience, Essun sees and addresses her daughter’s face in the mirror (an alternate personality representing her daughter), and, at the end of the scene, whispers “I have to go now” to other, unnamed, alternate personalities.

Thus, when the author (or, at least, the authorial personality) asked readers to be Essun (see previous post), it was assumed that readers could and would think like a person with multiple personality. Some readers are able and willing to do this, but others are not.

Of those readers who are not able to do this, some will give up on the book, while others, who enjoy other aspects of the story, will rationalize or ignore what does not make sense to them.

1. N. K. Jemisin. The Fifth Season. New York, Orbit Hachette, 2015.

“The Ultimate Guide to Global Reading Habits” says the people of India read more hours per week than the people of any other nation in the world

On many days, the largest number of visitors here comes from India, and I have been curious to know why. The Indian-American psychiatrists I have known were not unusually interested in multiple personality. And I am not aware of any great interest in multiple personality in India.

But I just came upon the fact that the people of India spend more hours per week reading than the people of any other nation in the world (1). That fact, together with India’s large population, must be part of the reason for the large number of visits from India. I hope the reason is not just statistical.

On another note, as I’ve commented previously, I have always been puzzled by the very few visits here from the UK, considering that so many of the writers I have discussed have been from there. But recently, I have been pleased to see some regular visits from the UK. Indeed, in the last 24 hours, the most visited post—perhaps visited from the UK, but I have no way of knowing for sure—has been a 2017 post from my series on The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien.

“The Ultimate Guide to Global Reading Habits” (1) is from the website of a commercial firm with which I am not familiar, but the information they compiled on reading habits might interest some readers here.

1. Global English Editing. “The Ultimate Guide to Global Reading Habits.” https://geediting.com/world-reading-habits/

Childhood and Alternate Personalities in Paracosm, Mythopoeia, Subcreation, Worldbuilding, Fictional Universe, and Fantasy World

The above terms are roughly synonymous, but may be used by different people and groups, who may or may not be familiar with their possible connection to childhood and alternate personalities.

The two types of fiction writing previously discussed here are Paracosm and Mythopoeia.

Paracosm is the only one that I know to have been studied as a feature of childhood.

I have discussed Mythopoeia as a function of alternate personalities, in that some alternate personalities like to make up stories, an attribute referred to as the mythopoetic function of alternate personalities.

Are writers who use any of the above (or similar) terms for their writing aware of the possible connection to childhood and alternate personalities?

“The Fifth Season” by N. K. Jemisin: As paracosm begins, reader is told to be the protagonist, Essun, a female “orogene” with a split personality

Paracosm

This award-winning novel is a detailed imaginary world: a paracosm (1). Creating paracosms, like acquiring new languages, is easier, and comes more naturally, in childhood. Some writers, like the Brontë siblings, wrote paracosms in childhood, but regular novels as adults. Other writers, like N. K. Jemisin, publish paracosms as adults.

Questions about the writing process: Has an adult personality elaborated a paracosm that originated in the author’s childhood? Or has the childhood personality who originated the paracosm grown up, and is telling the story as an adult? Or is the narrative voice of this adult novel a precocious, child-aged, alternate personality? Most novelists probably have more than one personality involved in their writing process.

I note the narrator’s use of an adolescent word like “leaderish”: “The Black Star is where the leaders of the empire meet to do their leaderish things” (2, p. 3). Of course, there are other possible reasons to use a word like that, but the context here is the paracosm, which is rooted in childhood.

Split Personality

On page one, the protagonist is described as having two personalities: “her bitter, weary self” and “her bewildered, shocked self” (2, p. 1). The former is talking to the latter, and since what she says is printed in italics, it appears that the latter is hearing the former as a voice in her head (search “italics” for related past posts).

Reader as Protagonist

The protagonist’s name is Essun. She is an “orogene.” She is Jija’s wife. But the most surprising thing about her is: “You are she. She is you. You are Essun. Remember? The woman whose son is dead. You’re an orogene who’s been living in the little nothing town of Tirimo for ten years” (2, p. 15).

An adult reader might ordinarily sympathize with a protagonist and see things from her point of view, but here the reader is supposed to be Essun, the protagonist. Why might this narrator consider that a reasonable expectation?

Imaginative children can be another person, like a superhero. So is this narrator a child personality, who, as a child, assumes that the reader, too, can be another person?

I’m only up to page 18 in this 465-page novel (including glossary), so these speculations are based only on first impressions and are tentative.

1. Wikipedia. “Paracosm.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracosm

2. N. K. Jemisin. The Fifth Season (The Broken Earth: Book One). New York, Orbit Hachette, 2015.

“Praise Other Me” by Ray Bradbury: Acknowledges and Gives Credit to His Alternate Personality

I do not write—

The other me

Demands emergence constantly.

But if I turn to face him much too swiftly

Then

He sidles back to where and when

He was before

I unknowingly cracked the door

And let him out.

Sometimes a fire-shout beckons him,

He reckons that I need him,

So I do. His task

To tell me who I am behind this mask.

He Phantom is, and I facade

That hides the opera he writes with God,

While I, all blind,

Wait raptureless until his mind

Steals down my arm to wrist, to hand, to

fingertips

And, stealing, find

Such truths as fall from tongues

And burn with sound,

And all of it from secret blood and secret soul on

secret ground

With glee

He sidles forth to write, then run and hide

All week until another try at hide-and-seek

In which I do pretend

That teasing him is not my end.

Yet tease I do and feign to look away,

Or else that secret self will hide all day.

I run and play some simple game,

A mindless leap

Which from sleep summons forth

The bright beast, lurking, whose preserves

And gaming ground? My breath,

My blood, my nerves.

But where in all that stuff does he abide?

In all my rampant seekings, where’s he hide?

Behind this ear like gum,

That ear like fat?

Where does this mischief boy

Hatrack his hat?

No use. A hermit he was born

And lives, recluse.

There’s nothing for it but I join his ruse, his game,

And let him run at will and make my fame.

On which I put my name and steal his stuff,

And all because I sneezed him forth

With sweet creation’s snuff.

Did R.B. write that poem, that line, that speech?

No, inner-ape, invisible, did teach.

His reach, clothed in my flesh, stays mystery;

Say not my name.

Praise other me.

https://arsene.quora.com/Praise-Other-Me

Ray Bradbury. “The Other Me.” In Zen in the Art of Writing. Santa Barbara, Joshua Odell Editions, 1994, pp. 162-164.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Bradbury

“Let Me Not Be Mad: My Story of Unraveling Minds” by A. K. Benjamin: Publisher virtually identifies author, so why the use of a pseudonym?

The review I have just read in the New York Times (1) raises, but does not answer, the following questions: Why does the author use a pseudonym? What is the author’s obtrusive mental problem?

Pseudonym

The review says that the author is a “British clinical neuropsychologist” (1). And since patients will be discussed, you might think that the author is using a pseudonym to protect patient confidentiality. But the unique biography provided by the publisher (2) would make the author easily identifiable.

Author’s Mental Illness

The review, following the example of the book’s title, which uses the almost meaningless, nonspecific term “mad,” considers the author to be mad, but makes no attempt to understand his specific problem.

Comment

The book review doesn’t provide enough information about the author for me to make a diagnosis. All I can do is discuss two interesting symptoms: He uses a pseudonym. And “His signature suddenly changes” (1).

Both of these symptoms suggest alternate identities. In multiple personality, the names of alternate personalities are pseudonyms. And in some cases, different personalities have different handwritings.

Multiple personality is more common in fiction writers. So, I wondered, other than writing this memoir, does the author have any history of fiction writing?

The review notes that when a patient stops coming to appointments, the author imagines what is happening in the patient’s life and fills a whole journal (1).

And the publisher’s biography says that before the author became a neuropsychologist, he was a screenwriter (2).

1.  https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/books/review-let-me-not-be-mad-a-k-benjamin.html

2.  https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/authors/2195934/a-k-benjamin/