Novelists Philip Roth, Lisa Halliday, and the memory gaps of people with multiple personality

In my posts on Asymmetry by Lisa Halliday, I quote a character with memory gaps in a section of the novel that Halliday has said is somewhat autobiographical.  Memory gaps, if present, would suggest multiple personality trait, like most successful novelists.

Coincidentally, there is another character in Asymmetry that represents novelist Philip Roth, who, in real life, also had memory gaps, such as the several-month memory gap discussed in another past post on a memoir by Roth’s former wife, Claire Bloom: 

2014

In her memoir, the last time they met, Claire Bloom had hoped that she and Philip Roth could reconcile.

He began by asking her how she had been doing in recent months. She told him, and then asked how he had been doing in recent months. He replied that he couldn’t tell her, because he had “amnesia” (1).

Bloom—who didn’t know that Roth had multiple personality, or that multiple personality is known for its memory gaps and amnesia—thought that Roth’s claim of amnesia was absurd, dismissive, and insulting. As for Roth, he was disinclined to pursue the issue. Indeed, like most people with multiple personality, he would usually do his best to ignore his memory gaps, because they were nothing new, he couldn't do anything about it, and people might think he was crazy. Better to be thought insulting than crazy.

But why hadn't Bloom ever realized that Roth had multiple personality, since for eighteen years, she had repeatedly observed perplexing changes in his attitude and behavior? There are two main reasons. First, neither she nor any psychiatrist to whom she had ever spoken had seriously considered it. Second, alternate personalities usually don’t like to identify themselves or acknowledge their existence. They like to remain in disguise—for example, as being “only” a “literary alter ego”—or, better yet, they like to remain totally incognito. For when people don’t know about them, people can’t interfere with them, or, their worst fear, try to get rid of them.

1. Bloom, Claire. Leaving a Doll’s House: A Memoir. Boston, Little Brown, 1996.

Search “Philip Roth” for other past posts discussing evidence of his multiple personality trait.