“Finding Me” by award-winning actress Viola Davis (post 1): Davis sees her child-aged alternate personality; novelist Charles Dickens had done the same thing

In chapter one, Davis recalls that as an 8-year-old Black schoolgirl, she always had to run home after school to escape white racist schoolboys, who would always chase her.

“At the age of twenty-eight, I woke up to the burning fact that my journey and everything I was doing with my life was about healing the eight-year old girl…until a therapist a few years ago said, ‘Why are you trying to heal her…she survived.’ (Her therapist thought the 8-year-old was now 28.)

“I sat there with my arms crossed. No way! I’m the one who made it out…I looked over at the empty space next to me on the couch and saw my younger self so clearly. She sat there waiting…I saw that young girl so clearly that day in my therapist’s office. I could hear her saying, ‘You are my home. Let me in’ ” (1, pp. 1-9).

Charles Dickens

As quoted in the first chapter of Forster’s biography, Dickens tells about when he was once on his way to Canterbury, was nearing the house called Gadshill-place, and he thought he saw, standing by the road, a strange young boy:

“Holloa!” said I [Dickens], to the very queer small boy, “where do you live?”

“At Chatham,” says he.

“What do you do there?” says I.

“I go to school,” says he.

      I took him up [into his carriage] in a moment, and we went on [Dickens recalls]. Presently, the very queer small boy says, “This is Gads-hill we are coming to, where Falstaff went out to rob those travellers, and ran away.”

“You know something about Falstaff, eh?” said I.

“All about him,” said the very queer small boy. “I am old (I am nine), and I read all sorts of books. But do let us stop at the top of the hill, and look at the house there, if you please!”

“You admire that house?” said I.

“Bless you, sir,” said the very queer small boy, “when I was not more than half as old as nine, it used to be a treat for me to be brought to look at it. And now I am nine, I come by myself to look at it. And ever since I can recollect, my father, seeing me so fond of it, has often said to me, If you were to be very persevering and were to work hard, you might some day come to live in it. Though that’s impossible!” said the very queer small boy, drawing a low breath, and now staring at the house out of window with all his might.

      I was rather amazed to be told this by the very queer small boy [Dickens recalls]; for that house happens to be my house, and I have reason to believe that what he said was true.

Thus, Dickens, in real life, conversed with a “ghost,” which was actually a child-aged alternate personality. This doesn’t surprise me. Child-aged alters (alternate personalities) are one of the most common kinds, because multiple personality starts in childhood. And people with multiple personality do sometimes converse with their alters like Dickens did (which is similar to the way many novelists talk with their characters). In terms of his writing, his child-aged alters may have helped Dickens write certain things from a child’s perspective. And since Dickens saw “ghosts,” it is not surprising that one of his most famous and beloved works, “A Christmas Carol,” is a ghost story.

1. Viola Davis. Finding Me. New York, HarperOne/Ebony, 2022.