“Love and Exile” (memoirs) by Isaac Bashevis Singer (post 3): As young man in Poland, notes puzzling inconsistency, makes self-diagnosis

“In some book or magazine, I had stumbled upon a phrase, ‘split personality,’ and I applied this diagnosis to myself. This is precisely what I was—cloven, torn, perhaps a single body with many souls each pulling in a different direction…Some kind of enemy roosted within me or a dybbuk who spited me in every way and played cat-and-mouse with me…Some maniac uttered crazy words inside my brain and I could not silence him. At the same time I held myself in such check that not even Gina [his lover] knew what I was going through. Older writers at the Writers’ Club often told me that they envied my youth and I said: ‘Believe me, there is nothing to envy.’ ” (1, p. 94).

Search “puzzling inconsistency,” a clue to multiple personality, for discussions related to other writers.

1. Isaac Bashevis Singer. Love and Exile [memoirs published 1975-1981]. Garden City N.Y., Doubleday & Company, 1984.