“The Mesmerist’s Victim” (post 2) by Alexandre Dumas (post 13): In Chapter XIX, narrator and mesmerist give mesmerist different names

The narrator refers to the hypnotist as “Balsamo” numerous times; also once as “the Italian” and once as “the mesmerist.”

The mesmerist refers to himself as follows: “I am a physician” (1, p. 108) and “my name is Count Fenix” (1, p. 110). Never as “Balsamo.”

Chapter XIX involves hypnosis and surgery. The mesmerist, observing a leg amputation—at a hospital, as the guest of a friend who is a surgeon— successfully gives the patient hypnotic anesthesia (they had no chemical anesthesia back then).

And since it was mentioned earlier in the novel that the character has been known to use two different names—Baron Balsamo and Count Fenix—casual readers might gloss over the chapter’s naming discrepancy.

But why does this character have more than one name, like a person with multiple personality? It does not appear that the author intended to portray multiple personality, per se. And why was the author not bothered by this chapter’s naming discrepancy?

Assuming I will find no other reason in the second half of the novel, my answer is that the character’s multiple names reflected the author’s own psychology, that Alexandre Dumas was another great fiction writer with multiple personality trait.

1. Alexandre Dumas. The Mesmerist’s Victim [1848]. Translated by Henry Llewellyn Williams. The Echo Library, 2015.

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Added next day: After reading further, I realize that the multiplicity of the protagonist’s names is not inadvertent, but quite intentional. As another character says of the protagonist, “Proteus had not more shapes, Jupiter more names: Acharat in Egypt, Balsamo in Italy…and lastly, Count Fe[nix]” (1, p. 150).

And I now recall that the mesmerist had previously claimed various incarnations throughout the ages. His projection of this fantastic image, if not simply delusional, may be of practical use to enhance his reputation as a magician; his image as a masterful hypnotist, against whose suggestions resistance is futile; and his image as the powerful leader of a secret political conspiracy (one meeting of which has been described).

But whatever its practical use in the plot, and whether the author thought of it this way or not, a multi-named protagonist is a metaphor for multiple personality. And its appearance in two novels now, both this one and Monte Cristo, reinforces the idea that it reflected the author’s psychology.

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Added Dec. 6: The rest of the novel did not add anything relevant here, except to reinforce the general idea that Dumas was very interested in trance states, possibly because he experienced them, which is common in persons with multiple personality.