“The Twin” by Gerbrand Bakker (post 1): Do authors and readers know that an identical twin character raises the issue of multiple personality?

A person’s alternate personalities may or may not look different to each other, but since, objectively, they share the same body, then, to other people, they all look identical, like identical twins.

The relation between twins and multiple personality is almost appreciated in mythology, since “Twins in mythology are often cast as two halves of the same whole…They can represent another aspect of the self, a doppelgänger…” (Wikipedia).

And literary tropes like the evil twin and the double come close to appreciating multiple personality, but usually don’t do so explicitly.

I have just started Gerbrand Bakker’s The Twin (1), an award-winning novel in which the protagonist is an identical twin.

But my preliminary search finds that neither the author’s video (2) nor Wikipedia (3) nor reviews (4) see any connection between making this protagonist an identical twin and multiple personality.

1. Gerbrand Bakker. The Twin [2006]. Translated from the Dutch by David 

Colmer. Brooklyn NY, Archipelago Books, 2009.

2. Gerbrand Bakker video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZkSaUBlWCw

3. Wikipedia. The Twin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twin_(novel)

4. Complete-review. The Twin. https://www.complete-review.com/reviews/niederld/bakkerg.htm#ours 

“Therapy” by Sebastian Fitzek: Psychological thriller may be wrong on schizophrenia, but right on writers

The protagonist, Dr. Larenz, is a psychiatrist, and the most mentioned mental illness is schizophrenia. But the novel’s concept of schizophrenia may be mistaken. For example, it says “Victor’s schizophrenia made him suggestible” (1, p. 287). But if a patient diagnosed with schizophrenia were particularly suggestible or hypnotizable, I would question the diagnosis, and consider a dissociative disorder instead.

Anna Glass says, “But I’m a writer, Dr. Larenz. It’s my curse. My characters come alive. I only have to imagine a person, and I see them, hear them, and sometimes even speak to them. I create them, and they walk into my life” (1, pp. 33-34). “On the one hand, I knew Charlotte wasn’t real…On the other, she was standing right beside me” (1, p. 56).

1. Sebastian Fitzek. Therapy [2006]. Translated from German by Sally-Ann Spencer. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2009. 

The American Psychiatric Association knew better, but its diagnostic manual misleads on multiple personality’s typical appearance

https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/ajp.2006.163.9.1645a

“Tell Me Your Dreams” by Sidney Sheldon (post 4): Novel ends with a false cure and a cheap twist

Ashley has been hospitalized for several years in a psychiatric hospital, and has been treated by psychiatrists who are alleged to be experts in multiple personality.

Yet they fail to integrate Ashley with her two alternate personalities, which should be the goal of treatment, because the true person is all the personalities combined.

Ashley says she feels like she has gotten rid of her alternate personalities, which means they are not gone, but incognito, and the psychiatrists have been fooled.

Ashley is discharged, and the novel ends with her softly singing a song that has always been Toni’s favorite (1, p. 363), meaning she is Toni, the murderous alternate personality, on her way to commit another murder.

1. Sidney Sheldon. Tell Me Your Dreams [1998]. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2005.

“Tell Me Your Dreams” by Sidney Sheldon (post 3): Ashley/Toni/Alette has multiple personality disorder, but why does her lawyer have a symptom?

This novel is the story of a woman with multiple personality disorder. The author researched multiple personality to give her realistic symptoms. The novel has an appendix with textbooks about multiple personality and places to get treatment. So I have nothing to say about this character’s symptoms of multiple personality. She is supposed to have them.

However, at a point in Ashley’s trial when it looks like she will lose—she is accused of murder, and her lawyer has argued that the murder was committed by an alternate personality, which is true—her lawyer has the following subjective experience:

“And a small, nagging voice in his mind said, Who says it’s over? I don’t hear the fat lady singing.

“There is nothing more I can do.

“Your client is innocent. Are you going to let her die?

“Leave me alone” (1, p. 272).

Why does the lawyer converse with his own alternate personality? Probably because the author had this kind of experience, and thought of it as ordinary psychology. But it is ordinary psychology only for persons with multiple personality, and the author probably had multiple personality trait (a normal version of multiple personality disorder).

1. Sidney Sheldon. Tell Me Your Dreams [1998]. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2005.

Sidney Sheldon (post 2): In eleven-minute video interview, bestselling author describes his literary, character-driven writing process

Sidney Sheldon Video Interview

https://charlierose.com/videos/4421

“The Naked Face” by Sidney Sheldon: Villain’s Jekyll-Hyde switches between “normal, charming” and “psychopathic murderer” alternate personalities

Sidney Sheldon has over 300 million books in print, but only one of his novels is known to involve multiple personality: Tell Me Your Dreams (1998). The Naked Face—his first novel, published in 1970—is not supposed to contain multiple personality, but it does, inadvertently.

The Naked Face is a murder mystery, in which Dr. Judd Stevens, a psychoanalyst, is accused by the police of several murders, and is, himself, threatened by someone who is trying to kill him. It is eventually discovered that the murders, and the attempts to kill Dr. Stevens, are the work of the Mafia, who thought that one of Judd’s patients—Anne, married to Mafia boss, Anthony DeMarco—might have revealed Mafia secrets in her therapy sessions.

Two Faces of DeMarco

“Anyone would have sworn that DeMarco was a perfectly normal, charming man…

“DeMarco’s mask was slipping…Anne had only seen him behind his facade. Judd was looking into the naked face of a homicidal paranoiac…

“She was confronted by an angry stranger…

“It was as though the incredible energy that flowed through DeMarco could be converted at will, switched from a dark evil to an overpowering, attractive warmth. No wonder Anne had been taken in by him. Even Judd found it hard to believe at this instant that this gracious, friendly Adonis was a cold-blooded, psychopathic murderer…

“He watched the switch turn in DeMarco, and it was almost physical. The charm vanished, and hate began to fill the room…(1, pp. 279-296).

Comment

Another character, Police Detective Angeli, who, through most of the novel, is thought to be an honest cop, and on Dr. Steven’s side, turns out to be working with DeMarco. So Angeli is just as “two-faced” as DeMarco. But Angeli is never described in anything even remotely like the Jekyll-Hyde way that DeMarco is described in the above quotations.

The personality switches of DeMarco are so startling that his wife, Anne, felt “confronted by an angry stranger.” And Judd, the psychoanalyst, found DeMarco’s instantaneous changes in demeanor and attitude “hard to believe.” Anne’s and Judd’s reactions are typical of the way people react to overt personality switching in someone with undiagnosed multiple personality, when the person almost seems like two different people.

(The diagnosis of multiple personality in DeMarco is not confirmed by memory gaps, which would have had to be found in a psychiatric (not psychoanalytic) evaluation, and are not likely to be included in a novel by an author who was not intending to write a story about multiple personality. Moreover, as I have explained in past posts, some alternate personalities are co-conscious, and there are rarely only two.)

Sidney Sheldon’s gratuitous Jekyll-Hyde description of DeMarco implies that the author may have had personal familiarity with overt personality switching in undiagnosed multiple personality.

1. Sidney Sheldon. The Naked Face [1970]. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2005. 

“The World According to Garp” by John Irving (post 2): The climax of the novel revolves around a symptom of multiple personality, self-mutilation

Garp, 33, a married father, having successfully published his third novel, is assassinated, shot to death at close range (1, pp. 495-497), by a woman who is a member of a fringe feminist organization that Garp had criticized for their practice of self-mutilation.

These women literally cut out their own tongues in sympathy for a young woman whose tongue had been cut out by a man who raped her, even though the young woman, herself, has published a statement condemning self-mutilation.

I previously discussed self-mutilation as a symptom of multiple personality in posts on novels by Gillian Flynn. Please search “Gillian Flynn” to read about this issue.

There is no indication as to why John Irving made his climax for The World According to Garp revolve around this symptom of multiple personality. Multiple personality is not necessary to the plot or character development, and the gratuitous presence of one of its symptoms may be an inadvertent reflection of the author’s psychology.

1. John Irving. The World According to Garp [1978]. 40th Anniversary Edition. New York, Dutton, 2018. 

“The World According to Garp” by John Irving (post 1): In first third, Garp writes a short story, while Jenny, his mother, writes her autobiography

Nineteen-year-old Garp and Jenny are aspiring writers.

“And then what? Garp wondered [after beginning to write his short story]. What can happen next? He wasn’t altogether sure what had happened, or why. Garp was a natural storyteller; he could make things up, one right after the other, and they seemed to fit. But what did they mean?…Garp knew he did not know enough; not yet…now he had to trust the instinct that told him not to go any further until he knew much more…He put ‘The Pension Grillparzer’ aside. It will come, Garp thought” (1, p. 132). [The title of his short story, written when he and his mother are on vacation in Vienna, is the name of a boarding-house.]

Meanwhile, “Jenny had kicked her writing habit into yet a higher gear; she had found the sentence that had been boiling in her…it was an old sentence, actually, from her life long ago, and it was the sentence with which she truly began the book that would make her famous.

“ ‘In this dirty-minded world,’ Jenny wrote, ‘you are either somebody’s wife or somebody’s whore—or fast on your way to becoming one or the other’…

“ ‘I wanted a job and I wanted to live alone,’ she wrote. ‘That made me a sexual suspect.’ And that gave her a title, too. A Sexual Suspect, the autobiography of Jenny Fields. It would go through eight hard-cover printings and be translated into six languages even before the paperback sale…

“ ‘Then I wanted a baby, but I didn’t want to have to share my body or my life to have one,’ Jenny wrote. ‘That made me a sexual suspect, too’ ” (1, 133-134)…

 

When Garp felt ready to resume writing his short story, “What Garp was savoring was the beginning of a writer’s long-sought trance…” (1, p. 140).

Comment

As quoted above, “He wasn’t altogether sure what had happened, or why. Garp was a natural storyteller; he could make things up…But what did they mean?…It will come, Garp thought.” He doesn’t understand his own story, because it comes to him from storyteller alternate personalities.

And the rest of the story will come to him when he goes into a “trance”: “What Garp was savoring was the beginning of a writer’s long-sought trance…” Trance facilitates a transfer of the story from one personality to another.

Things also come to Jenny: “She had found the sentence that had been boiling in her.” Who had kept that sentence boiling in her, and who now provided it to her in a timely fashion? She didn’t think of the sentence. She “found” it. 

Similarly, as quoted in past posts, Stephen King describes his stories as “found objects,” which he finds by going into a “trance.”

See links (2, 3, 4) for a general orientation to this novel and its author.

1. John Irving. The World According to Garp [1978]. 40th Anniversary Edition. New York, Dutton, 2018.

2. Wikipedia.The World According to Garp. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_World_According_to_Garp

3. New York Times. https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/97/06/15/lifetimes/irving-garp.html

4. Wikipedia. John Irving. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Irving

“The Double Life of Bob Dylan” by Clinton Heylin (2021): Title of new biography suggests similar perspective to three 2016 posts here

David Kirby’s review in Washington Post. https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/bob-dylan-clinton-heylin-review/2021/05/18/cb42fb8e-b7f9-11eb-a5fe-bb49dc89a248_story.html

Search “Dylan” here. As you can see from the sources I quoted back in 2016, Dylan’s doubling is not a new idea to either me or Heylin. No doubt Heylin adds additional facts and perspective. I don’t know if he includes multiple personality trait.

“Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment” by Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein: Is Multiple Personality Noisy?

Judging from the book’s index (1) and reviews (2, 3, 4), the authors have not considered multiple personality as one possible cause for seemingly random or idiosyncratic judgment.

1. Daniel Kahneman, Olivier Sibony, Cass R. Sunstein. Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment. New York, Little, Brown Spark, 2021.

2. New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/18/books/review/noise-daniel-kahneman-olivier-sibony-cass-sunstein.html

3. Kirkus Reviews. https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/daniel-kahneman/noise-flaw/

4. Publishers Weekly. https://www.publishersweekly.com/9780316451406 

“Everything I Don’t Remember” by Jonas Hassen Khemiri (post 2): Award-winning Swedish bestseller with unacknowledged multiple personality

This novel is “Winner of the August Prize, Sweden’s Most Prestigious Literary Honor” (front cover). The prize (1) is named after August Strindberg, discussed in past posts (search “Strindberg”).

The novel builds a case—memory gaps and alternate personalities—that the protagonist has had multiple personality since childhood:

“When he [Samuel, the protagonist] was seven he would come home from a birthday party and be absolutely amazed that he couldn’t recall what flavor of ice cream he had eaten that afternoon” (2, p. 25).

“…there were many times I told him stuff that he didn’t seem to remember three weeks later” (2, p. 34).

“He looked surprised, as if the words [he had just spoken] had come from a place [an alternate personality?] he didn’t have total control over” (2, p. 100).

“Mostly we talked about memory…He told me he [Samuel] had a friend with a photographic memory…[In contrast,] I [Samuel] make lists. Samuel…pulled out a notebook…Everything I need to remember” (2, p. 118-119).

“I started wondering who Samuel really was…Did I even know his true self?…Because I noticed how quickly he switched from one personality to the next, and the more I noticed it the more obvious it became that the version I knew was just one of many” (2, pp. 201-202).

Comment

Combining Samuel’s memory gaps with his “friend’s” photographic memory, you have the subtitle of this blog. Perhaps the author has an excellent memory with meaningful memory gaps.

The above quotations make a case for multiple personality, whose two main diagnostic criteria are alternate personalities and memory gaps.

Typical of most novels, it is not labeled as such and is unacknowledged.

In conclusion, as the novel’s front flap says: “Everything I Don’t Remember is a…tale about…memory. But it is also a story about a writer [investigator of Samuel’s death] who, by filling out the contours of Samuel’s story, is actually trying to grasp a truth about himself” (2, front flap).

1. Wikipedia. “August Prize.”

2. Jonas Hassen Khemiri. Everything I Don’t Remember [2015 in Swedish]. Translated from Swedish by Rachel Willson-Broyles. New York, ATRIA Books, 2016. 

“Everything I Don’t Remember” by Jonas Hassen Khemiri (post 1): What is the meaning of novel’s title?

Sixty percent through this novel (1, 2), I still don’t know the meaning of its title. What is not remembered by whom?

It may not turn out to be relevant, but the title reminds me of an anecdote in my first post on Dickens about Sir Walter Scott’s strange amnesia for the plot of a novel he had just completed (everything he did not remember):

Amnesia Scenario: Another novelist became ill with gallstones, jaundice, and bouts of severe abdominal pain. The pain was treated with medication that could impair memory. In multiple personality, pain and drugs may affect one identity much more than they affect another identity. In this case, the pain and drugs may have had little effect on the identities who produced the stories, but may have, temporarily, incapacited and put to sleep the writer identity, since, for the first time, the novelist dictated his novel to secretaries instead of doing the writing himself. After the novel had been completed and the illness had remitted, one of the secretaries got into a conversation with the novelist, and was astounded to find that the novelist (writer identity) could not remember the story of the novel he had just completed. But why should the writer identity remember it? He had slept through it. This novelist’s remarkable amnesia for The Bride of Lammermoor (1819) is reported in Lockhart’s Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott (1837/1902).

1. Kirkus Review. “Everything I Don’t Remember.” https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/jonas-hassen-khemiri/everything-i-dont-remember/

2. Wikipedia. “Jonas Hassen Khemiri.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Hassen_Khemiri 

“Multiple Identities”: Without discontinuity of memory, it is multiple roles, not multiple identities

Some psychologists say that everyone has “multiple identities”: https://www.apa.org/science/about/psa/2019/07/multiple-identities. But they are really talking about multiple roles. And although everyone does have multiple roles, everyone does not have multiple identities.

“Multiple identities” is best used as a synonym for “multiple personalities.” The former avoids a semantic problem: Strictly speaking, a person can have only one personality, if “personality” is defined as the characteristic, overall pattern of a person’s behavior.

The nontrivial sense in which a person may be said to have multiple identities or multiple personalities relates to discontinuity of memory. In a person with multiple identities or personalities, each identity or personality has its own memory bank.

Consider, for example, a white lesbian. Are race and sexuality two roles or two identities? If, when involved in racial issues, but when not involved in sexual matters, she remembers everything about, and completely identifies with, her sexual thoughts and activity, then race and sex are two roles.

But if memories are compartmentalized and dissociated, then there are two identities or personalities. People who do not have this discontinuity of memory may not realize that some people do have it.

Movie Omits Blatant Multiple Personality in Book

This Saturday evening, my local PBS TV station will show a classic movie, “The Third Man,” which is based on the Graham Greene novella by the same name.

This is a good example of how even the most obvious multiple personality in a book may simply be omitted from the movie version.

Search “third man novella” to see the passage with obvious multiple personality, quoted from the book.

“The Good Earth” (post 3) by Pearl S. Buck (post 4): Novel's conclusion highlights idea that being born female may entail childhood trauma

In this novel of 1920s China, newborn children are casually referred to, not as boys or girls, but as sons or slaves. And if families ever feel desperate, they may literally sell a daughter.

At the end of the novel, protagonist Wang Lung is an elderly widower, who most enjoys the quiet company of his mentally retarded daughter, “poor fool,” and his attractive young slave, Pear Blossom:

“Then Wang Lung withdrew more and more into his age and lived much alone except for these two…his poor fool and Pear Blossom…

     “It is too quiet a life for you [Pear Blossom]…

     “It is quiet and safe…[she replies]

     “I am too old for you…

     “You are kind to me and more I do not desire of any man…

     “What was it in your tender years that made you thus fearful of men.” “And looking at her for answer he saw a great terror in her eyes…

     “Every man I hate except you—I have hated every man, even my father who sold me…I am filled with loathing and I hate them all. I hate all young men…

     “But he sighed and gave over his questions, because above everything now he would have peace, and he wished only to sit…near these two” (1, pp. 350-351).

As discussed in the two previous posts, the only character I have noted to have symptoms of multiple personality is Wang Lung, the male protagonist, probably because he is the only character with much of any description of his mind. However, his childhood is not sufficiently described.

I mention the above about Pear Blossom, because it is highlighted at the end of the novel, and may suggest the author’s view that female childhood is traumatic, which may reflect her view of her own childhood.

And childhood trauma is a precondition for multiple personality.

1. Pearl S. Buck. The Good Earth [1931]. New York, Washington Square Press/ATRIA, 2020. 

“The Good Earth” (post 2) by Pearl S. Buck (post 3): Sane protagonist hears voices and argues with himself, typical of multiple personality

Wang Lung, a farmer, had become rich enough to turn his attention to luxuries, especially to Lotus, his mistress. But his connection to the land reasserts itself. How is this expressed? He hears a voice:

“Then a voice cried out in him, a voice deeper than love cried out in him for his land. And he heard it above every other voice in his life and he tore off the long robe he wore and stripped off his velvet shoes and his white stockings and rolled his trousers to his knees and he stood forth robust and eager and he shouted,

     “Where is the hoe and where is the plow? And where is the seed for the wheat planting? Come, Ching my [fellow farmer] friend—come—call the men—I go out to the land!” (1, p. 211).

And subsequently, when Wang Lung comes to realize his neglect of O-lan, his wife, how does he experience his thought process? He “argued with himself” (1, p. 250).

What kind of sane person hears voices and argues with himself?

Persons with undiagnosed multiple personality may hear an alternate personality as an inner voice, often as one of the voices they have heard for years (2, p. 94). A common experience from the perspective of the regular, host personality—in persons who don’t realize they have multiple personality—is that they get into arguments with themselves (2, p. 82).

1. Pearl S. Buck. The Good Earth [1931]. New York, Washington Square Press/ATRIA, 2020.

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

Jhumpa Lahiri (post 4): “Characters live inside me,” “I become the characters,” denies it’s “multiple personalities,” but “something strange happens”

“Something strange happens in that the characters live inside me for that time [while I’m writing],” Lahiri said. “Not like multiple personalities or anything, but I become the characters a little bit when I’m working with them, perhaps in the way an actor does.” https://chicagomaroon.com/2010/05/11/lahiri-speaks-on-life-literature-and-libraries/ 

“The Good Earth” (post 1) by Pearl S. Buck (post 2): Protagonist Wang Lung hears voice of an alternate personality, which comes out and briefly takes over

In China of the 1920s, the main characters are Wang Lung, a hard-working farmer, and O-lan, his hard-working wife.

In the first third of the novel, just as Wang Lung’s farm had begun to prosper, there is a severe drought. Wang Lung, O-lan, and their young children are faced with starvation. In desperation, they migrate to a distant, rich city (in China), where they are reduced to menial labor and begging.

But one day, the rich city is about to be invaded by an army. The war is a mystery to illiterate Wang Lung, since all he knows is farming. As the rich people flee the city ahead of the invading army, throngs of poor people, including Wang Lung, enter the abandoned homes of the rich to take what they can. Wang Lung comes upon a frightened, confused, rich man, who has been left behind.

In the following passage, Wang Lung hears a voice in his head (an alternate personality). The alternate personality then comes out and temporarily takes over. It speaks in a tone of voice, and says things, that Wang Lung’s regular personality never would.

“ ‘Save a life—save a life—do not kill me. I have money for you—much money—’ [the frightened, rich man, pleads].

“It was this word ‘money’ which suddenly brought to Wang Lung’s mind a piercing clarity. Money!…And it came to him clearly, as a voice speaking, ‘Money—the child saved [he would not have to sell his daughter]—the land!’

“He cried out suddenly in a harsh voice such as he did not himself know was in his breast, ‘Give me the money then!’…

“And again he cried out in that strange voice that was like another man’s, ‘Give me more!…[After getting the money, Wang Lung continues,] ‘Out of my sight, lest I kill you for a fat worm!’

“This Wang Lung cried, although he was a man so soft-hearted that he could not kill an ox” (1, pp. 136-137).

Comment

Their are two basic criteria for the diagnosis of multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity): 1. two or more distinct personalities, 2. memory gaps. The above appears to fulfill the first criterion.

(A formal, clinical diagnosis would not be made until both criteria had been met, and until an alternate personality, engaged in conversation, had provided verifiable information.)

But why does this novel have symptoms of multiple personality that are not labeled as such, are probably not intended as such, and are probably not necessary to either the plot or character development?

Search “gratuitous multiple personality” for discussions of the same thing found in the works of many other fiction writers. It reflects the author’s own psychology.

1. Pearl S. Buck. The Good Earth [1931]. New York, Washington Square Press/ATRIA, 2020.