BASIC CONCEPTS

— When novelists claim they do not invent it, but hear voices and find stories in their head, they are neither joking nor crazy.

— When characters, narrators, or muses have minds of their own and occasionally take over, they are alternate personalities.

— Alternate personalities and memory gaps, but no significant distress or dysfunction, is a normal version of multiple personality.

— normal Multiple Personality Trait (MPT) (core of Multiple Identity Literary Theory), not clinical Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD)

— The normal version of multiple personality is an asset in fiction writing when some alternate personalities are storytellers.

— Multiple personality originates when imaginative children with normal brains have unassuaged trauma as victim or witness.

— Psychiatrists, whose standard mental status exam fails to ask about memory gaps, think they never see multiple personality.

— They need the clue of memory gaps, because alternate personalities don’t acknowledge their presence until their cover is blown.

— In novels, most multiple personality, per se, is unnoticed, unintentional, and reflects the author’s view of ordinary psychology.

— Multiple personality means one person who has more than one identity and memory bank, not psychosis or possession.

— Euphemisms for alternate personalities include parts, pseudonyms, alter egos, doubles, double consciousness, voice or voices.

— Multiple personality trait: 90% of fiction writers; possibly 30% of public.

— Each time you visit, search "name index" or "subject index," choose another name or subject, and search it.

— If you read only recent posts, you miss most of what this site has to offer.

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Saturday, December 10, 2022

John le Carrè was David Cornwell:  Pseudonym suggests multiple personality

John le Carrè’s newly published letters. https://www.wsj.com/articles/a-private-spy-book-review-john-le-carre-letter-by-letter-11670605055


2016 past Post

“A Perfect Spy” by John le Carré: In first hundred pages, spy tells how unhappy childhood taught him the “art” of multiple personality.


This is John le Carré’s most autobiographical novel, especially in regard to his childhood.


The following scene takes place when the spy, the protagonist, was a schoolboy, after the latest episode of his chaotic childhood, when he was taking refuge in his school’s staff lavatory:


“He took out his penknife, opened it and held its big blade uppermost before his face in the mirror…He thought of cutting his throat…He pressed his cheek against the wood panelling…The knife was still in his hand. His eyes went hot and blurred, his ears sang. The divine voice inside him told him to look, and he saw the initials “KS-B” carved very deeply into the best panel…


“All afternoon he waited, confident nothing had happened. I didn’t do it. If I went back it wouldn’t be there…


“It was not until evening line-up that the full name of the Honorable Kenneth Sefton Boyd was called out…[Boyd was] Mystified. Mystified himself, [the protagonist] watched [Boyd] go [to get corporal punishment]…


“ ‘It had a hyphen,’ Sefton Boyd told [the protagonist] the next day. ‘Whoever did it [carved ‘KS-B’] gave us a hyphen when we haven’t got one. If I ever find the sod I’ll kill him.


“ ‘So will I,’ [the protagonist] promised loyally and meant every word. Like [his father, he] was learning to live on several planes at once. The art of it was to forget everything except the ground you stood on and the face you spoke from at that moment” (1, pp. 97-98).


Comment


The protagonist had evidently carved the initials in the wood panelling: The initials were carved, and he was right there holding the knife. But he had no memory of doing it—he had a memory gap (search “memory gaps”)—and he did not notice the carving until a voice in his head told him to look.


That is, an alternate personality had carved the letters, and his regular personality had amnesia for what the alternate personality had done. And then a third personality, the voice, told the regular personality to look and see what the alternate personality had done.


“Learning to live on several planes at once” means having several different personalities. As previously discussed in this blog, the “alternate” in “alternate personality” is misleading, because all the personalities are conscious simultaneously, and they alternate only in regard to which one is out in front and is most in control of overt behavior at that moment, “the face you spoke from at that moment.”


It is noteworthy that, even after the protagonist’s regular personality sees, from circumstantial evidence, that he must have been the one who carved the initials in the wood panel, he does not really believe it. Why? Because remembering is believing. And the regular personality does not remember doing it. That is why you can give a person (the regular personality) all kinds of proof, even videotapes showing, that they have multiple personality, and they may still deny it.


In conclusion, this episode in the novel is a description of multiple personality, but since the terminology is not used, the author may not have understood it in those terms.


1. John le Carré. A Perfect Spy. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1986.

1 comment:

  1. I am not interested in spying, per se, but this appears to be a serious comment of interest to others.

    ReplyDelete

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