from April 12, 2014

Creating Imaginary Worlds in Childhood (“Paracosm”): One of Two Cognitive Talents from Childhood used by Adult Novelists and in Multiple Personality

The two cognitive talents from childhood that are used by adult novelists and in multiple personality are imaginary companions and paracosm (imaginary worlds). The latter is the subject of The Development of Imagination: The Private Worlds of Childhood by David Cohen and Stephen A. MacKeith (Routledge, 1991). Most of the book is a description of the paracosms of normal children who create imaginary worlds because they enjoy it.

“One of the earliest instances recorded of children making up such a world is that of the four Bronte children. Charlotte and Branwell, Emily and Anne Bronte lived with their widowed father…In June 1826 their father gave them a set of toy soldiers and this gift sparked into being Verdopolis, the great Glass Town, which later blossomed into the country of Angria. Charlotte and Branwell became completely absorbed in the elaboration of Angria…Branwell tended to develop the political and military side of Angria while Charlotte concentrated on the personalities and relationships of the chief characters. In time, Anne and Emily created a world of their own, Gondal, leaving Angria to the elder two…Unlike the imaginary worlds of most children, that of the Brontes survived into their adulthood.”

According to Cohen and MacKeith, paracosms can start as young as age 3. Most start between 7 and 12. Few start after age 13.

“Friedrich Nietzsche, the philosopher, had a childhood paracosm, as did W. H. Auden, the poet…and various authors, such as Thomas de Quincey, Anthony Trollope, Robert Louis Stevenson, and C. S. Lewis.”

It is part of Multiple Identity Literary Theory that novelists and others with multiple personality make use of these two cognitive talents—imaginary companions and paracosm—from childhood. It is also part of my theory that this type of thinking is present in perhaps 30% of the general public, which is perhaps why video games in which people create imaginary worlds are popular. Did the people who create and enjoy such games have paracosms as children?

from April 11, 2014

Ernest Hemingway: Misunderstood by Psychoanalytic Literary Theory, whose "Splitting of the Ego" ignores Multiple Personality

Judging by Prof. Carl P. Eby’s Hemingway’s Fetishism: Psychoanalysis and the Mirror of Manhood (State University of New York Press, 1999), it has been much discussed by biographers that Hemingway had a sister about one and half years older, that his mother wished that he and his sister had been identical twin girls, and that, for his first seven years, Hemingway’s mother had him wear dresses and hair styles that were identical to his sister’s.

As a result, Eby argues, Hemingway had a hair fetish and a splitting of the ego into male and female halves. “Hemingway’s split-off feminine half was apparently confined to the night…,” since “this half of his ego only surfaced in the day at the risk of ‘spooking him shitless.’”

Prof. Eby’s book is a very good discussion of the way the above issues pervade Hemingway’s novels. Unfortunately, Eby’s Freudian psychoanalytic theoretical framework misses the forest for the trees. As I have discussed previously: In the early 20^th century, Freud was a rival of Pierre Janet to see who would be considered the father of psychoanalysis. Freud had the better campaign organization and won the popularity contest. But since Janet’s theory of dissociation could account for multiple personality, while Freud’s theory of the mind could not explain it (and therefore ignored it), anyone using Freudian psychoanalytic theory, like Prof. Eby, tends to ignore the issue of multiple personality.

from April 2, 2014

Lewis Carroll and Charles Lutwidge Dodgson as Alternate Personalities

Charles Dodgson (1832-1898) and Lewis Carroll were distinctly different personalities. But conventional wisdom is that Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland, was simply the pen name of Charles Dodgson, mathematician.

The only biography that dissents from conventional wisdom is The Life of Lewis Carroll by Langford Reed (London, W. & G. Foyle, 1932), which says that Dodgson had a split personality. Reed reports that Carroll’s illustrators and child friends could tell when he switched from one personality to the other.

According to illustrator Harry Furniss, illustrator Sir John Tenniel “refused to illustrate any more of Lewis Carroll’s works after Through the Looking Glass, and held very unfavorable views on what he called the ‘pretentiousness’ and ‘obstinacy’ of the Dodgson part of him. When he heard that Furniss was proposing to illustrate Sylvie and Bruno, he warned him in the following words: ‘I’ll give you a week, old chap; you will never be able to put up with the fellow any longer. He is impossible!”

But Furniss was able to work with him: “We worked together for seven years, and a kindlier man than Lewis Carroll never existed. Dodgson, the mathematician, was less acceptable. He subjected every illustration, when finished, to a minute examination under the magnifying glass. He would take a square inch of the drawing, count the lines I had made in that space and compare their number with those in a square inch of illustration for ‘Alice’ made by Tenniel! And, in due course, I would receive a long essay on the subject from Dodgson the mathematician…”

A woman who had known Carroll when she was a child actress, a Miss Bowman, recalled one occasion when: “Uncle Charles was so impressed by the realistic model of a little dog…that, in a moment the academic Dodgson, intent on geographical instruction [they were at a Panorama of Niagara Falls which was being exhibited in London], became effaced by the whimsical Carroll, who began relating to me a wonderful story about the dog which, he said, was really alive but trained to stand motionless for hours…Suddenly he began to stammer and looking round in some alarm I saw that a dozen grown-ups and children had gathered around and were listening with every appearance of amused interest. And it was not Mr. Carroll, but a very confused Mr. Dodgson who took me by the hand and led me quickly from the scene…”

Thus, some people were quite aware of his switches from one personality to the other. Did either of these personalities have amnesia, a memory gap, for the period of time that the other personality had been “out”? Evidently, since Carroll had a reputation for “absent-mindedness” [also see posts on Mark Twain’s absent-mindedness]:

“The absent-mindedness mentioned by Miss Beringer is further illustrated by the rather well-known story which relates how the subject of this biography once went to London to dine with a gentleman to whom he had only recently been introduced. Next morning he was stopped by this individual, while walking in the street. ‘I beg  your pardon,’ said Lewis Carroll, ‘but you have the advantage of me. I do not remember ever having seen you before.” “That is very strange,’ was the reply, ‘for I was your host last night!’”

So some people actually saw and recognized that Carroll would switch personalities, and he even had memory gaps as a consequence—Lewis Carroll had multiple personality—but that is not what you will read elsewhere.

from March 8, 2014

Post #2 on Dostoevsky’s The Double: It is NOT the story of Golyadkin and his nervous breakdown.

The conventional view is that Mr. Golyadkin is the main character and that the story is primarily about his nervous breakdown—either caused by, or featuring the delusion of, having a double—and how he was finally carted off to a mental hospital.

There are several reasons to reject that interpretation:

First, the title. Why doesn't the title highlight or even mention Mr. Golyadkin? Why isn’t the title Golyadkin and His Double or Golyadkin’s Double Trouble or, simply, Golyadkin? It is called The Double, because it is the double’s story.

Second, the narrator. At first, the reader is led to believe that the narrator is sincerely interested in, and sympathetic to, Mr. Golyadkin. At the beginning of the narrative, the only important character appears to be Golyadkin, and the narrator refers to him as “our hero.” But as the story progresses, the narrator’s attitude toward Golyadkin is gradually revealed to be mocking and contemptuous.

Third, how long has the double existed? Readers who are uninformed about multiple personality will take it at face value that the double was not present at the beginning of the story, and only arrives in the course of the story, as a cause or symptom of Golyadkin’s mental illness. But anyone who is informed about multiple personality knows that it has a childhood onset.

So Golyadkin’s double had probably been present for many years. The most likely scenario is that the double had been a protector/helper personality who was responsible for much of the success Golyadkin had had in his life up to that point. Either the double had helped Golyadkin from behind the scenes, so to speak, never coming out. Or the double had come out and personally handled things that Golyadkin couldn’t, but had always done so incognito, never taking credit.

However, as often happens in cases of multiple personality disorder, the better functioning alternate personality eventually got tired of doing most of the work and not getting any of the credit. The personality probably came to feel that he could achieve much greater success in life if he got rid of Golyadkin and was completely free to do things, and live his life, his own way. His plan was to drive Golyadkin crazy, to get him medicated and put away.

In short, The Double is not the story of Golyadkin’s failure. It is the story of the alternate personality’s success.

from March 1, 2014

Dictionaries of Literary Terms (“the Double”; “Ghost Story”) show Blind Spot for Multiple Personality in Literary Theory

I tried to look up “the Double” in three dictionaries of literary terms, two from England (1,2) and one from the USA (3). The two dictionaries from England had no entry at all for the Double.

The American dictionary defines “Double, the” as “a device whereby a character is self-duplicated (the Doppelganger, ‘mirror image,’ or ‘alter ego’), as in the case of…Conrad’s The Secret Sharer, or divided into two distinct, usually antithetical, personalities, as in Stevenson’s The Strange Case of  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde…” Other works cited include Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dostoevsky’s The Double, and Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway. It says that this literary device represents an interest in the “divided self.” But it makes no mention of, or reference to, multiple personality, per se; none whatsoever.

The two UK dictionaries don’t have an entry for the Double, but they do have for “ghost story” (the American dictionary doesn’t). Indeed, the Penguin entry is encyclopedic: eight pages. It defines a ghost story as “a fictional narrative…in which the spirit of a person…, no longer bound by natural laws…‘haunts’…as a kind of ‘presence’.” Two stories by Robert Louis Stevenson are cited, but not the one about Jekyll and Hyde.

Now, having a “divided self” or experiencing a “presence,” does, at the very least, suggest the possibility, and raise the issue, of multiple personality. But professors of literature, as reflected in dictionaries of literary terms, don’t think of this, because it is not encompassed by any of the literary theories with which they are familiar.

1. Baldick, Chris: The Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2008.

2. Cuddon JA (revised by Preston CE): The Penguin Dictionary of Literary Terms and Literary Theory. London, Penguin Books, 1999.

3. Beckson K, Ganz A: Literary Terms: A Dictionary. New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 1989.

from January 4, 2014

Freud Always Said He Was Proving “The Unconscious,” But He Was Really Proving Dual Consciousness (the Simplest Form of Multiple Personality)

In my post earlier today, I quoted Freud as acknowledging that “the unconscious” was discovered by others before his time. The illustration he gave was post-hypnotic suggestion. That is, if you give someone who is hypnotized a suggestion to do something after they come out of hypnosis, and they come out of hypnosis and do it without knowing why they do it, or perhaps without even noticing that they are doing it, then they are, Freud would have us believe, demonstrating their “unconscious.” But that, I will explain, is ridiculous.

Let’s say you hypnotize someone and suggest to them that, after they come out of hypnosis, every time you say the word “blue” they will raise their right thumb and cross their left leg over their right leg, and every time you say the word “red” they will raise their left index finger and cross their right leg over their left leg. And after they come out of hypnosis, while you engage them in casual conversation about current events, you use the cue words and they behave as suggested. After this goes on for some time, you ask them about the odd behavior, and they either hadn’t noticed it, or they noticed it and didn't care, or they come up with some ingenious explanation for the behavior having nothing to do with hypnosis. It was this type of scenario that Freud was talking about as being a demonstration of “the unconscious.”

However, people can carry out such behavior only if they 1. remember what you told them to do while they were in hypnosis, then 2. listen very carefully for the cue words, and then 3. purposely carry out the behavior. This complex scenario requires conscious attention from start to finish. The fact that the part of the mind which was “asleep” during the hypnosis is unaware of it, means only that the person’s mind has two segregated and independent states of consciousness, with one of them unaware of the other; in other words, dual consciousness.