“One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” by Ken Kesey (post 5): Multiple personality treatment technique is used to change narrator’s self-image

As discussed in posts 3 and 4, the narrator’s, Bromden’s, alternate personality has a self-image of being much smaller than he actually is.

But since McMurphy has a practical need for Bromden to be as big and strong as he actually is, he gradually gives Bromden suggestions of getting bigger and bigger. And it has worked:

“I caught a look at myself in the mirror. He’d done what he said; my arms were big again, big as they were back in high school, back at the village, and my chest and shoulders were broad and hard” (1, p. 232).

Anyone who has treated a person for multiple personality would recognize what has happened. When you are working toward merger of the personalities, you first want to get them as similar as possible. So you “age progress” child-aged personalities up to the person’s actual age. It is done by simply suggesting that the “child” is gradually getting older and older. In effect, this is what McMurphy has done to get the alternate personality’s child-sized self-image up to Bromden’s actual size.

I don’t know how this multiple personality treatment scenario got into this novel. There is no explicit mention of multiple personality, per se. I don’t know where Ken Kesey could have read about it. I can’t call it gratuitous, because it is integral to the plot. So I will call it one more example of unacknowledged multiple personality.

1. Ken Kesey. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest [1962]. New York, Penguin Books, 2007.