Vladimir Putin (previously a spy), John le Carré (author of spy novels), and the connection between spying and multiple personality

Search “spy” for several relevant past posts.

Lisa Gardner: New York Times’ new interview and my past post on her multiple personality novel, “Catch Me”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/books/review/lisa-gardner-by-the-book-interview.html 

2016

The Bestselling D. D. Warren thriller “Catch Me” by Lisa Gardner: Three characters have multiple personality, but D. D. is not particularly interested.

Charlene is a young woman who, as a child, had suffered horrendous physical and emotional abuse by her mother. Since then, she has had the memory gaps—search “memory gap” and “memory gaps”—typical of multiple personality: She says, “Time escapes me, days, weeks. Entire conversations with my best friends…” (pp. 100-101).

Christine, Charlene’s mother, now deceased, but often referred to in flashbacks and retrospect, is described as “powered by madness” (p. 7), “crazy” (p. 101), “Munchausen’s by proxy” (p. 171), “psychopath” (p. 270), and having “psychosis” (p. 349). “She’d been insane in the truest sense of the word. Unpredictable, unstable, unreliable. Driven by wild ambitions and deeper, darker bouts of despair. She loved, she hated” (p. 354). The Munchausen’s diagnosis is not a psychosis and is applied incorrectly to the behavior described. Psychopath is different from both psychosis and Munchausen’s. In short, there is no consistent, serious attempt to understand the nature of the mother’s disturbed behavior.

Detective O, who has joined D. D.’s detective squad in this novel, is eventually discovered to be Charlene’s long lost younger sister, Abigail, and  also a serial murderer. (Charlene had been the primary suspect.)

Detective O is the one who suggests that Charlene has “multiple personalities.” And as noted above, Charlene does have multiple personality. But that is mostly forgotten about when it is discovered that she is not the serial killer.

The real serial killer has left written notes with the victims that have two messages, one in regular ink and the other in disappearing ink. The two messages are contradictory and written in different handwritings, which suggests that the murderer has multiple personality.

In short, both sisters, Charlene and Detective O/Abigail, are found to have multiple personality. But this is mostly forgotten about once the murders are solved.

Moreover, there are indications that the mother had multiple personality, too. In the novel’s Prologue, six-year-old Abigail is described as trying to cope with one of her mother’s episodes of violent, delusional behavior. Abigail's pleas with “mommy” to stop are to no avail, so she changes the way she addresses her mother as follows:

“Christine!” [said the little girl] changing tactics…”Christine! Stop it! This is no time to play with matches!”…Her mother blinked…She stared at her daughter, right arm falling lax to her side…Her mother stared at her. Seemed confused, which was better than crazy” (pp. 5-6).

What appears to be happening is that the mother’s craziness is the behavior of an alternate personality who had some name other than Christine. Since, in multiple personality, the most effective way to prompt a switch in personalities is to address the person by the name of a different personality, when the girl addresses her mother as “Christine,” that causes a switch to the mother’s regular personality, Christine, who was confused to find herself in a situation that she didn’t remember getting into. Unfortunately, this tactic worked only temporarily, and the mother switched back to the disturbed personality.

In short, there is good reason to believe that three characters in this novel have multiple personality: both sisters and their mother. This is two more than is necessary for a multiple personality plot gimmick. So even if D. D. Warren is not that interested in multiple personality, Lisa Gardner may be.

1. Lisa Gardner. Catch Me. New York, Dutton/Penguin, 2012.

“Saturday” (post 2) by Ian McEwan (post 8): Protagonist’s wife’s late mother is named like a writer’s alternate personality

“Marianne Grammaticus was not so much grieved for as continually addressed…The death was too senseless to be believed — a late-night drunk jumping traffic lights… — and three years on…Rosalind didn’t accept it.  She remained in silent contact with an imaginary intimate” (1, p. 48).

1. Ian McEwan. Saturday. USA, Doubleday/Random House, 2005.

Added same day: I found nothing further of relevance.

Ian McEwan (post 7): “Saturday” begins with protagonist’s auditory hallucinations and small memory gaps, suggestive of multiple personality

The first six posts on this writer (search “Ian McEwan”) were mostly on his novel Enduring Love.  In Saturday, the neurosurgeon protagonist has this:

“Patients would be less happy to know that he’s not always listening to them.  He’s a dreamer sometimes.  Like a car-radio traffic alert, a shadowy mental narrative can break in, urgent and unbidden, even during a consultation.  He’s adept at covering his tracks, continuing to nod or frown or firmly close his mouth around a half-smile.  When he comes to, seconds later, he never seems to have missed much” (1, pp. 19-20).

Unless you ask people about such experiences, they will not report them, because it has been routine and has not caused them problems.  Since the author is probably not intending to portray the protagonist as having multiple personality, the above probably reflects the author’s own psychology.

1. Ian McEwan. Saturday. USA, Doubleday/Random House, 2005.

“Whose Body?” by Dorothy L. Sayers (conclusion): Lord Peter Wimsey proves to be no Sherlock Holmes

At the beginning of the novel, the author thinks Wimsey has two selves, one of which is a deductive detective like Sherlock Holmes (1, p. 4).  But he proves to be more intuitive than deductive (1, p. 91).  For the details of the case, the author and the reader must rely on the confession by the murderer (1, pp. 129-140).

1. Dorothy L. Sayers. Whose Body? Mineola, New York, Dover Publications, 1923/2009.

“Whose Body?” by Dorothy L. Sayers: Lord Peter Wimsey introduces himself as a man of two selves, who wear different attire

One self is “the amateur of first editions.” His “other self” is “Sherlock Holmes, disguised as a walking gentleman” (1, p. 4).

The author could have said he was one man with two interests.  Instead, she said he was one man with two selves, each of which had its own interest and attire, like alternate personalities.  Assuming she did not intend to portray him as having multiple personality, why did she describe him this way?  It is what I call “gratuitous multiple personality” and is probably reflective of the author’s own psychology.

1. Dorothy L. Sayers. Whose Body? Mineola, New York, Dover Publications, 1923/2009.

The Mapping Memoir: Fiction Writers Analyze Their Own Works

Therapy of a person who has multiple personalities can be complicated.  To keep track, the therapist may need to “map” the system of personalities (names, attributes, etc.).

I predict that there will eventually be a genre in which fiction writers analyze their own works in regard to the contributions of their various personalities.  To do this, the writers will probably have to map their system of personalities.

“Your Symphony of Selves” by James Fadiman, Ph.D., and Jordan Gruber, J.D., says everyone, including the authors, has multiple personality

However, the book’s index (1, pp. 422-434), aside from ordinary “absentmindedness,” makes no reference to issues of memory, amnesia, or memory gaps, a cardinal feature of multiple personality.  Nor does it refer to childhood trauma, which is reported by most persons with multiple personality.  Indeed, by saying that everyone has multiple personality, the book inadvertently derides it.  The authors, who say they have it, are not neutral observers.  And they don’t say how they discovered it in themselves.  By using psychedelics?  James Fadiman is also author of The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide.

One of the main reasons for my interest in multiple personality is that it is so foreign to my own subjective experience.  If I hadn’t unexpectedly seen it in some of my patients, after I asked about memory gaps, I might never have believed it.  My experience of speaking with patients’ alternate personalities and then seeing the person switch back to their regular, host personality, who had amnesia for the conversation I just had with their alternate personality, was unforgettable, especially since the patient had no legal problems, or any other reason to fake it, and did not like the diagnosis, except that it explained certain things in their life that had puzzled them.

1. James Fadiman, PhD and Jordan Gruber, JD. Your Symphony of Selves: Discover and Understand More of Who We Are. Rochester, Vermont, Park Street Press, 2020.

Mentally Well: Fiction Writers with Multiple Personality Trait are mentally well, since it is a mentally well, creative version of multiple personality.

Writer’s “Madness”: Many great fiction writers, not yet having accepted the idea of their Multiple Personality Trait, think they are mad

Many great fiction writers don’t boast, not only because, as Charles Dickens said, “I don’t invent it,” or as Mark Twain said, “Writers don’t create characters,” or as Stephen King said, his stories are “found objects,” but because they fear their creative process means, or at least looks like, they are mad: in the words of Henry James, “the madness of art.”

New York Times review of Apple TV+’s “Severance” fails to recognize obvious multiple personality scenario including memory gap

“The employees of the macrodata refinement department of Lumon Industries have all agreed to undergo surgery to partition the work and personal sectors of their brains.

“When each of them enters the office, a work self becomes conscious and clocks in.  Come quitting time, the out-of-office self takes over and goes home, retaining no memory of life on the job.” (1).

Search “memory gap” for posts on this cardinal symptom of multiple personality.

Of course, multiple personality does not involve surgery. 

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/17/arts/television/severance-review.html

Opinion Poll

Suppose your favorite novelists said they have always had MULTIPLE PERSONALITY TRAIT and are proud of it.

How would that affect your reading of their novels?

1. increase

2. decrease

3. no effect

Are some visitors here the alternate personalities of novelists who don't want to be identified?

Unfortunately, if anyone claimed that now, I’d have to consider it a hoax.  And besides, alternate personalities usually don’t consider themselves alternate personalities, but people in their own right.

Gratuitous Multiple Personality

I don’t always find unlabeled, unintentional symptoms of multiple personality in novels, but anyone who never does is unlikely to be correct.

Such symptoms include memory gaps (in a character with generally excellent memory), a voice in the head of a sane character that argues with the character, namelessness (common among alternate personalities), and multiple names.

Search "gratuitous" for further discussion.

In a recent post on a book review, I criticized The New York Times for its blind spot for multiple personality, but I should have also praised it and the reviewer for admitting their “bafflement”

“The book brought about a feeling of intense, queasy bafflement. By my own criteria, however, it is a failure, because bafflement is not enough” (1).  Many reviewers would have declared the book profound and not just baffling.

Here is my recent post, which highlights issues that The New York Times and its review should have seen as flags for gratuitous multiple personality, probably indicative of the author’s multiple personality trait:

Monday, January 31, 2022

This Book Review Highlights The New York Times Blind Spot for Multiple Personality issues by never mentioning multiple personality

“An unnamed narrator for unknown reasons finds himself preparing to steal the identity of a man… Alas, before he can, a stranger appears at the door, dragging the narrator off to a psychiatric hospital and the reader into a narrative whose central subject seems to be the instability of the self and the mutable nature of human consciousness. Traumatic (childhood) experiences manifest later in unpredictable ways…” (1).

Also search “namelessness,” “nameless narrator,” and “childhood trauma” for relevant past posts.

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/29/books/review/fuminori-nakamura-my-annihilation.html

“Authors play a secondary role in literature and are generally less interesting than their books,” says Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk (1).

Yes, if by “author” she means the host personality, who does interviews, but is a secondary personality in the actual writing of a book.

1. Olga Tokarczuk. “By the Book” interview in New York Times, February 13, 2022.

Qualified to make a Psychiatric Diagnosis?

According to DSM-5, dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality disorder) is more common than schizophrenia, a diagnosis commonly made by psychiatrists. But multiple personality disorder will usually be missed if you don't routinely ask new patients if they have memory gaps. And since most psychiatrists and psychologists do not routinely ask about memory gaps, they are not qualified to make a correct psychiatric diagnosis.

Qualified to Interpret Literature?

If most fiction writers have multiple personality trait, and most literature contains gratuitous multiple personality, is a degree in literature, as it has been taught, an adequate qualification for the interpretation of literature? 

New York Times Op-Ed “D.C. and [James] Joyce—Both Incomprehensible” (1) and relevant past posts (2)

“Did I have a concussion, or was it just that I was reading Ulysses?”

“Is Ulysses hard because it’s great, or do people assume it’s great because it’s hard?”

“You’d think I would be accustomed to deciphering the incomprehensible after the last five years in D.C.” (1).

1. Maureen Dowd. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/12/opinion/ulysses-joyce-trump.html
2. Search “Ulysses” for many past posts.

COMMENTS: If you read my posts without submitting constructive, informative comments, you are taking unfair advantage.

Shameful: The New York Times touts women’s makeup that mimics or hides a black eye

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/09/style/makeup-smoky-eye-smudgy.html?searchResultPosition=1 

Makeup that implies women have alternate personalities who WANT to get punched

You are one of the quarter-million visitors who never submit a comment on any of the posts you read.  

If you never have anything constructive to say, you are welcome.

My Brief Email Exchange With a Famous Novelist

You usually cannot get a famous novelist’s personal email address, but this novelist was a college professor and the college published the email addresses of its faculty members.  Most colleges no longer do this for their famous faculty members.

The famous novelist called my first blog post (on Charles Dickens) “engaging” and started to sign her emails in a different way.

Unfortunately, it was only after that email exchange was over that I realized what had happened.  Her switch in names had been a switch in personalities.  But I was never able to contact her again.

Lee Child, as an adult writer, did not create his character, Jack Reacher

If an adult writer had wanted to create a character who bought his clothes off-the-rack and sought to make his movements hard to track by traveling on public buses, the adult writer would not have made his character six foot, five inches tall, because buying clothes off-the-rack would have been difficult, most seats on public buses would not have had room for the character’s legs, and a man who was unusually tall would have been easier to track.

My theory is that Jack Reacher was an alternate personality formed in Lee Child’s childhood.  See my past posts on Lee Child and Jack Reacher for facts that support my theory.

[Added February 8, 2022: Fans of the novels may point to major advantages of Reacher's height.  However, an author who was painstakingly creating the character would have found ways to avoid or overcome the inconveniences I cite.  More important, I refer the reader to my past posts in which I quote the author on his creative process.  He does not use multiple personality terms, but what he says amounts to the same thing.  And Reacher hears voices like a sane person with alternate personalities.]

A Reader of Twenty of Lee Child’s Jack Reacher Novels Has Begun The New Reacher TV Series on Amazon, And Is Loving It, Because It Is So Like The Novels

She has recently read my past posts on Lee Child and Jack Reacher, which she had never read before due to her concern that reading things about novels could spoil the fun.

She is loving the TV series, but has noticed something about Jack Reacher she had not noticed before: She gets the feeling that he is sometimes hearing voices that prompt his actions.

When reading the novels, she had rationalized his voices as merely talking to himself, since sane characters don’t hear voices.  But after reading my posts, she suspects he really is hearing voices, which suggests another dimension to his character: He may have multiple personality trait, in which a sane person may be advised by the voices of his alternate personalities.

The New York Times reports a forthcoming TV series based on Lee Child’s character, Jack Reacher (1)

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/03/arts/television/jack-reacher-amazon.html

I recalled the coining of my concept “gratuitous multiple personality” in the fourth of the five past posts on Lee Child and Jack Reacher:

1/5 — Friday, November 27, 2015

Jack Reacher (protagonist) and Lee Child (pseudonym) are protective alternate personalities, born in a difficult childhood, and all they want is love.

The novelist’s literary friend, Andy Martin, was given access to Lee Child while he wrote Make Me, his twentieth Jack Reacher novel. Martin wrote a book with observations and quotations (1).

Martin noted that when Lee Child writes, he enters an altered state of consciousness or trance in which he interacts with his alternate personality, Jack Reacher, who originated in the author’s childhood:

“When [Lee Child] writes, he goes into a ‘zone’ in which he really believes that the nonexistent Jack Reacher is temporarily existent. [As Lee Child, himself, says,] ‘I know I’m making it up, but it doesn’t feel that way’ “ (1, p. 18).

Lee Child says, “This isn’t the first draft, you know…It’s the only draft!…And remember, I’m not making this up. Reacher is real. He exists. This is what he is up to, right now. That’s why I can’t change anything—this is just the way it is” (1, pp. 32-33).

“Basically,” Lee said, “Reacher is me, aged nine. I used to fight all the time” (1, p. 95).

Pseudonym

Lee Child says that his pseudonym’s first name, Lee, comes from a family joke in which the French word for the, “le,” was pronounced lee (1, p. 102). Thus, his pseudonym, Lee Child means The Child. Additionally, according to the dictionary, the word “lee” means a protective shelter, and so Lee Child is, and writes about, a protector. Since multiple personality is a way to cope with childhood trauma, protector personalities are common.

These originally child-aged personalities may have grown up, but they are children at heart.

Childhood

Lee Child says, “I reckon all writers are trying to compensate for their unhappy childhoods. Or being sick all the time. Lack of affection. They’re all basket cases of emotional insecurity” (1, p. 149).

Can he recall any good times with his father? “Not an hour. Nothing. Blank. He was like a Martian” (1, p. 149).

“And my mother was a monster of martyrdom too, so no help on that side either. I was totally…disliked. My mother said I was dog shit brought in the house on someone’s shoe. Obviously, I’m writing with an idea of getting people to love me” (1, pp. 149-150).

1. Andy Martin. Reacher Said Nothing: Lee Child and the Making of Make Me. New York, Bantam Books, 2015.

2/5 — Sunday, November 29, 2015

Lee Child’s Killing Floor: Jack Reacher has two contradictory, alternate personalities—a silent, violent loner and a talkative, friendly, first-person narrator

Two Reacher Personalities

In this first of the series of Jack Reacher novels, the author wants the reader to enter into a long-term relationship with the protagonist. First-person narration promotes intimacy. I understand that.

But Reacher, the first-person narrator, describes himself as a person who travels by bus, because buses don’t keep passenger lists; who always pays by cash; and who does not carry a mobile phone. He is a reticent, violent loner, who doesn’t want anyone to keep track of him or know his business. This Jack Reacher personality is epitomized in the title of a book (quoted in a previous post), Reacher Said Nothing (1).

Therefore, Reacher’s providing an intimate, talkative, first-person narration is completely out of character. So there must be two personalities, as indicated in the title of this post.

Reacher Hears Voices

No issue is made of the fact that Reacher hears voices. It is mentioned in passing, as though most people hear voices, but most people don’t. In a nonpsychotic person, a rational voice may be an alternate personality, speaking from behind the scenes, which is probably the case here:

“I sat there in the back of the police Chevrolet listening to a tiny voice in my head asking me what the hell I was going to do about that” (2, p. 143).

“I…listened to the tiny voice inside my head saying: you’re supposed to do something about that” (2, p. 150).

“All of a sudden I was glad I had jumped off that damn bus. Glad I made that crazy last-minute decision. I suddenly relaxed. Felt better. The tiny voice in my head quieted down” (2, p. 156).

“I…started answering the question the tiny voice in my head was asking me again” (2, p.159).

Other than one personality’s hearing the voice of the other personality, the only other time that one of Reacher’s personalities is described as being aware of Reacher’s other personality is this:

“I noticed with a kind of detached curiosity that I was screaming, too” (2, p. 511). This takes place after the villains had been vanquished. It is a comment by the violent, reticent personality, who is watching the talkative personality celebrate.

E Unum Pluribus

The motto of the USA is E Pluribus Unum (From Many, One), meaning that the many colonies or states came together to form the one United States of America.

This novel reverses the motto for use as code words, which refer to a plot to make counterfeit hundred dollar bills: “E Unum Pluribus. Out of one comes many. Out of one dollar comes a hundred dollars” (2, p. 427). In the plot, one dollar bills were to be bleached, and then the paper was to be used to print hundred dollar bills.

Coincidentally, E Unum Pluribus could be code words for multiple personality, meaning that, from one person, comes more than one personality. Is that what Lee Child meant? Not intentionally.

1. Lee Child. Killing Floor. New York, Jove Books, 1997/2012.

2. Andy Martin. Reacher Said Nothing. New York, Bantam Books, 2015.

3/5 —Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Lee Child’s Make Me: Jack Reacher still hears voices—the “small voice” plus “radio chatter” voices “tuning up for a fight” and “working out the implications”

In my last post, on the first Jack Reacher novel, Killing Floor, I discussed the fact that Reacher hears voices; specifically, a “small voice.” Now, in the twentieth Reacher novel, Make Me, I find that he still hears the “small voice”:

“A small voice, full of defeat” (1, p. 384).

“A small voice, full of defeat” (1, p. 385).

These two lines are wedged in on two successive pages without any comment or explanation.

Lee Child doesn’t explain or justify including those two lines, because he evidently still thinks, probably based on his own personal experience, that most people hear voices. But while people with multiple personality do occasionally hear the voices of their alternate personalities, speaking from behind the scenes, most other people don’t hear voices.

In Make Me, Reacher also hears “radio chatter”:

“The back part of my brain knows it was the same guy” [says Reacher].

“How?”

“The radio chatter is off the scale.”

“You hear radio chatter?”

“I listen out for it hard. We were wild animals for seven million years. We learned a lot of lessons. We should be careful not to lose them.”

“What is the radio chatter saying?”

“Part of it is tuning up for a fight. It knows nothing good is coming.”

“What about the other part?”

“It’s having a back-and-forth, working out the implications…” (1, p. 185).

Reacher interprets the “radio chatter” as instinctual perception learned by the evolving brain during millions of years. But his interpretation does not fit his metaphor, “radio chatter,” which implies voices in his head, who happen to be preparing and planning to cope with Reacher’s specific situation, just the way that good alternate personalities would be doing.

1. Lee Child. Make Me. New York, Delacorte Press, 2015.

4/5 — Thursday, December 3, 2015

Lee Child postscript: Jack Reacher hears the rational, autonomous voices of his alternate personalities, an example of unintended “gratuitous multiple personality”

Most readers pay no attention to Reacher’s voices, and rightly so, because they are unnecessary to both plot and character development in these Lee Child novels.

There is no indication the author even knows that rational, autonomous voices imply the existence of alternate personalities.

I have had to invent a term for this situation—gratuitous multiple personality—because so many of the novels discussed in this blog have had it, and have had it for no apparent reason other than that it probably reflects the author’s own subjective experience.

For previous discussions, search gratuitous multiple personality in this blog, for a discussion of the issue in only a small fraction of the novels in which I found it to occur.

5/5 — Saturday, January 16, 2016

Author Lee Child switches among three personal pronouns—“I” “it” “we”—in the review he wrote for January 17, 2016 New York Times Book Review.

Since I have several past posts about Lee Child and two of his novels, I was interested to read his review of “Hunters in the Dark” by Lawrence Osborne: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/17/books/review/hunters-in-the-dark-by-lawrence-osborne.html?_r=0

Using the above link, you can judge for yourself whether his use of personal pronouns is perfectly ordinary or is consistent with the normal version of multiple personality that is common among novelists.

The first sentence of the review begins: “I read this book…”

The third sentence says: “…the pedant in me reared its caviling head…”

The first sentence of the second paragraph says: “…we can acknowledge…”

Who is “we”? Does it refer to “I” and “the pedant”? Or does “we” refer to we readers? The use of “we” toward the end of the review could easily be interpreted as referring only to we readers.

Yet, it is a rule of good writing to maintain a consistent point of view in a circumscribed piece like a single chapter in a novel or a book review. And when the book review starts from the perspective of “I,” it is a little unsettling to have it switch back and forth between “I” and “we,” plus “it” on one occasion.

If I had not read the Lee Child biography and two novels, I might not have noticed his use of pronouns in this book review. If you have not read my previous posts, you may feel I am making something out of nothing.