“A Tree Grows in Brooklyn” by Betty Smith (post 3): Dialogue between M. Frances K. Nolan and Francie, alternate personalities with tricky names

A person with multiple personality has two or more “I’s.” Note the two “I’s”—“I, M. Frances K. Nolan” and “I [Francie] feel sick”—in the following passage:

“Francie started to feel sick…It couldn’t have been anything she ate because she had forgotten to eat lunch. Then a thunderous thought came to her.

“My grandparents never knew how to read or write. Those who came before them couldn’t read or write. My mother’s sister can’t read or write. My parents never even graduated from grade school. I never went to high school. But I, M. Frances K. Nolan, am now in college. Do you hear that, Francie? You’re in college!

“Oh, gosh, I feel sick” (1, pp. 429-430).

Comment

In multiple personality, names of alternate personalities may be seemingly trivial variations of the person’s legal name:

“Most personalities will have a name. Often they will have first and last and even middle names; in many cases, the names are some derivative of the legal name. So…Elizabeth Jane Doe might well have alter personalities with the first names of Elizabeth, Lizzy, Liz, Betsie, Beth, Bets, Jane, Janie, Lizzy-Jane, and so on…” (2, p. 116).

Tricky naming is one way that multiple personality evades diagnosis.

1. Betty Smith. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn [1943]. New York, Harper Perennial Modern Classics, 2006.

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