“Red Sorghum” by Nobel Prize novelist Mo Yan: Pen name may be name of alternate personality

"Mo Yan – ‘don't speak’ in Chinese – is his pen name. Mo Yan has explained on occasion that the name comes from a warning from his father and mother not to speak his mind while outside, because of China's revolutionary political situation from the 1950s, when he grew up” (1).

Comment: If Mo Yan was a young child when his parents warned him not to speak his mind in public, the surest way for him to obey would have been to create an alternate personality named “Don’t Speak” that took over and kept secrets when he was in public.

1. Wikipedia. “Mo Yan.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Yan

2. Mo Yan. Red Sorghum [1992]. Translated from the Chinese by Howard Goldblatt. Arrow Books, 2003. 

Added March 31, 2023: I didn't have the patience to read most of this novel, much of which described the Chinese-Japanese fog of war. And there didn't seem to be enough of the kind of individual character development that would be of interest here.

“Things We Never Got Over” (post 5) by NYTimes Bestseller, Romance Novelist, Lucy Score: Why is Naomi, an identical twin, portrayed as split?

This novel features identical twin sisters: Naomi, the nice twin, and Tina, the “evil” twin. As discussed in post 1, identical twins, intentionally or inadvertently, are a symbol for multiple personality.

Given the explicit presence of identical twins in this novel, why would the author, as seen in the following two instances, portray Naomi, in and of herself, as split?

— “Good Girl Naomi was warring with Bad Girl Naomi…” (1, p. 293).

— Naomi “was going to have an overdue chat with myself” and then was “lecturing myself” (1, p. 409).

The above suggests that the idea for identical twins may have come from one person, who, in and of herself, had experienced a creative split: perhaps a novelist with multiple personality trait.

1. Lucy Score. Things We Never Got Over. Naperville Illinois, Bloom Books, 2022

“Things We Never Got Over “ (post 4) by Lucy Score: Two characters have “parts,” not merely ambivalence

“My [Knox Morgan’s] fingers casually typed Naomi Witt into the search bar before the sane, rational part of me could hit the brakes” (1, p. 108).

“Part of me [Naomi Witt] wanted to crack him open. The other part wanted to just go back to bed and forget everything for a few hours” (1, p. 239).

Comment: Since many people are afraid of multiple personality, experts in making the diagnosis will often avoid asking new patients if they have more than one “personality.” Instead, they may ask if the person has “parts” (2, p. 92).

If an author’s characters have “parts,” but the author is not trying to imply that the characters have multiple personality, then it probably reflects the author’s multiple personality trait.

1. Lucy Score. Things We Never Got Over. Naperville Illinois, Bloom Books, 2022.

2. Frank W. Putnam MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989. 

“Things We Never Got Over” (post 3) by Lucy Score: Protagonist Naomi Witt describes another character as her “voice of reason”

She says “Stefan Liao was the world’s perfect man. He was smart, funny, thoughtful, outrageously generous, and so pretty it hurt to look directly at him…And somehow I’d gotten lucky enough to land him as a best friend. He swept me up in his arms and twirled me around…(1, p. 171).

“[Stef was] My voice of reason best friend. No judgments. No second guessing. Just unconditional love and support, and the occasional truth bomb. He was one in a billion” (1, p. 175).

Comment: Beautiful heterosexual women may have gay male friends and confidants. But I don’t recall reading any other novel in which one character referred to another character as a “voice” of any kind. 

“Voice of reason” may be merely a metaphor for saying that Stefan had good judgment. But I think that fiction writers tend to use the word “voice” to refer to the voices in their head of narrator, character or mentor, alternate personalities. And so I wonder if this author hears a gay male voice of reason. But I don’t know this author and she would probably say my guess is ridiculous.

1. Lucy Score. Things We Never Got Over. Naperville Illinois, Bloom Books, 2022. 

“Things We Never Got Over” (post 2) by Lucy Score: Protagonist’s Eye-rolling may correlate with susceptibility to multiple personality

Naomi Witt, the author’s protagonist, has a tendency to roll her eyes (1, pp. 163, 173), which she uses as a “passive-aggressive response to an undesirable situation or person. The gesture is used to disagree or dismiss or express contempt for the targeted person without physical contact” (2).

Coincidentally, a marked ability to do the eye-roll has been associated with increased susceptibility to hypnosis in the “Hypnotic Induction Profile” (3).

And since self-hypnosis or autohypnosis has been suspected for over 100 years to be the mental mechanism by which people create the alternate personalities of multiple personality (4, p. 233), Naomi’s tendency to do eye-rolls might reflect the author’s multiple personality trait.

1. Lucy Score. Things We Never Got Over. Naperville Illinois, Bloom Books, 2022.

2. Wikipedia. “Eye-rolling.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eye-rolling

3.Wikipedia. “Hypnotic susceptibility.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnotic_susceptibility

4. Frank W. Putnam MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. NewYork, The Guilford Press, 1989. 

“Things We Never Got Over” (post 1) by Lucy Score: Do Bestselling Romance Novelists Have Multiple Personality Trait?

When I started this blog, I read mostly literary classics. And when I found that almost all of them contained unintentional symptoms of multiple personality, I initially thought that this might be what made literary novels literary, and that “multiple personality trait” might be what distinguished serious, literary novelists from commercial, genre novelists. But I eventually realized that all kinds of fiction, and most fiction writers, share this psychology.

The premise of Things We Never Got Over by Lucy Score (1) is this: Naomi’s obnoxious, identical twin sister, Tina, has run off, leaving Naomi to care for a niece she had never met nor even known existed.

Things We Never Got Over is 552 pages long, so I hope it will have something relevant to this blog. But since identical twins are a symbol for alternate personalities—objectively, though not in their self-image and mirror images, which may differ dramatically, all personalities of a person with multiple personality have the same body—I am hopeful.

1. Lucy Score. Things We Never Got Over. Naperville Illinois, Bloom Books, 2022.

“Mad Honey” (post 6) by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan: Authors’ Epigraph for this novel (see post 5) quotes Kierkegaard, who is famous for his writing alternate personalities (see below), which inadvertently highlights the issue of multiple personality for this novel

From Wikipedia

“Kierkegaard [1813-1855] has also had a considerable influence on 20th-century literature. Figures deeply influenced by his work include W. H. Auden, Jorge Luis Borges, Don DeLillo, Hermann Hesse, Franz Kafka, David Lodge, Flannery O'Connor, Walker Percy, Rainer Maria Rilke, J.D. Salinger and John Updike…

“Kierkegaard's early work was written under various pseudonyms that he used to present distinctive viewpoints and to interact with each other in complex dialogue. He explored particularly complex problems from different viewpoints, each under a different pseudonym…

“Kierkegaard's most important pseudonyms, in chronological order, were:

— Victor Eremita, editor of Either/Or

— A, writer of many articles in Either/Or

— Judge William, author of rebuttals to A in Either/Or

— Johannes de silentio, author of Fear and Trembling

— Constantine Constantius, author of the first half of Repetition

— Young Man, author of the second half of Repetition

— Vigilius Haufniensis, author of The Concept of Anxiety

— Nicolaus Notabene, author of Prefaces

— Hilarius Bookbinder, editor of Stages on Life's Way

— Johannes Climacus, author of Philosophical Fragments and Concluding

— Unscientific Postscript

— Inter et Inter, author of The Crisis and a Crisis in the Life of an Actress

— H.H., author of Two Minor Ethical-Religious Essays

— Anti-Climacus, author of The Sickness Unto Death and Practice in Christianity.”

Kierkegaard Said:

“I suffer as a human being can suffer in indescribable melancholy, which always has to do with my thinking about my own existence…Only when I am producing do I feel well. Then I forget all life’s discomforts, all suffering, then I am absorbed in my thought and happy. If I let my work alone for a couple of days I immediately become ill, overwhelmed, troubled, my head heavy and burdened.” It was due to his melancholy, he tells us, that he “discovered and poetically traveled through a whole fantasy world.” His writing was not an agreeable amusement, but “the product of an irresistible inward impulse, a melancholy man’s only possibility…As Scheherazade saved her life by telling stories, so I save myself or keep myself alive by writing…

“…in the pseudonymous works there is not a single word which is mine, I have no opinion about them except as a third person, no knowledge of their meaning except as a reader, not the remotest private relation to them…My wish, my prayer, is that if it occur to anyone to cite a particular saying from the books, he do me the favor to cite the name of the respective pseudonym…

“Each time I wish to say something, there is another who says it at the very same moment. It is as if I were always thinking double, as if my other self were always somehow ahead of me…” (1, pp. 135-151).

1. Josiah Thompson. Kierkegaard. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1973. 

“Mad Honey” (post 5) by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan: Epigraph chosen by authors to precede this novel is a quote from Søren Kierkegaard

Life can only be understood backwards,

But it must be lived forwards.

SØREN KIERKEGAARD 

“Mad Honey” (post 4) by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan: Transgender Lily has a dialogue with a mirror

Liam (?) and Lily (?) have a dialogue with a mirror (1, p. 417).

Comment: What the authors apparently see as reinforcing the fact that Lily is transgender, I see as illustrating her multiple personality. Search “mirror” or “mirrors” to see past posts on mirrors in multiple personality. In short, persons with multiple personality may see alternate personalities when they look in a mirror.

1. Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. Mad Honey. New York, Ballantine Books, 2022

“Mad Honey” (post 3) by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan: Why might a novel about a transgender character mention multiple personality? 

I still have about a hundred pages to read in this novel (1) and I don’t expect the authors to intentionally raise the issue of multiple personality.

But I want to explain why they might have. 

Some transgender persons have actually been found to have multiple personality (2, 3), which is not surprising, because many persons with multiple personality have alternate personalities who identify with different genders.

1. Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. Mad Honey. New York, Ballantine Books, 2022.

2. Soldati, HaslerR, Recordon N, et al.”Gender Dysphoria and Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Case Report and Review of Literature.” Sex Med. 2022;10:100553.

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C33&q=gender+dysphoria+and+dissociative+identity+disorder&btnG=

3. Schwartz, P. G. (1988). A case of concurrent multiple personality disorder and transsexualism. Dissociation: Progress in the Dissociative Disorders, 1(2), 48–51. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1991-27591-001

“Mad Honey” (post 2) by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan: Co-author’s character also has voice in her head of an alternate personality

“That’s different, a tiny voice curls in my head. That’s an accident ” (1, p. 302).

Comments: In post 1, the quoted, italicized voice, of an alternate personality, had been heard by Lily, the transgender character written by Jennifer Finney Boylan, the transgender co-author of this novel.

When nonpsychotic persons hear a voice in their head, it is suggestive of multiple personality. And I don’t think that strictly diagnosed transgender persons should be depicted as having multiple personality.

The new quote, in this post, is the italicized voice of an alternate personality heard by Olivia, a character who is not transgender, and was written by co-author Jodi Picoult, who is not transgender, but who, as a novelist, may have multiple personality trait.

1. Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. Mad Honey. New York, Ballantine Books, 2022. 

“Mad Honey” (post 1) by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan: Transgender Character has Dialogue with italicized Voice of an Alternate Personality 

“It’s inconceivable, if you think about it, the complex ways people have come up with for being horrible to one another.”

“Inconceivable. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means” (1, p. 217).

Comment: The above is an example of the use of italics to indicate that words are spoken by a voice in the person’s head.

Since the authors probably feel that any association of multiple personality with being transgender is an example of being horrible, I assume that the implication of their quoted dialogue was inadvertent.

I, myself, do not think that transgender persons have multiple personality.

1. Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan. Mad Honey. New York, Ballantine Books, 2022. 

“Pineapple Street” (post 3) by Jenny Jackson: Why Georgiana has features of multiple personality in a novel that is not about multiple personality

The Multiple Personality Defense

Multiple-Personality usually begins in childhood, because young children cannot physically escape trauma, but may be able to psychologically escape trauma by imagining that it is happening to somebody else: alternate personalities (alters). 

Memory Gaps

The alters’ separate memory banks make the person prone to memory gaps, as noted in post 2 regarding the major character, Georgiana.

Two-Person Name

Georgiana’s very name suggests multiple people (George and Anna). Did the author have a subconscious reason for naming her that way?

Wants to be Someone Else

Georgiana doesn’t want to merely improve. She wants to “stop being herself and start being someone else” (1, p. 247). This is a multiple personality solution.

Age and Gender Idiosyncrasies

And since the alternate personalities of a person with multiple personality often include child-aged alters, and personalities of each sex, it is noteworthy that Georgiana is sometimes tempted to play with children’s toys (1, p. 275) and often uses the nickname “George” (1, p. 275).

Why is it in this novel?

Since multiple personality, per se, does not appear to be an intentional feature of either the plot or character development of this novel, the inadvertent presence of its features in one of the main characters may reflect multiple personality trait of the author.

1. Jenny Jackson. Pineapple Street. Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, 2023. 

“Pineapple Street” (post 2) by Jenny Jackson: Character who thought in italics (post 1) has memory gap from either alcohol or multiple personality

Georgiana “had a bruise on her forearm that she didn’t remember getting” (1, p. 200). And her friend, Lena, noticed that “when they drank, Georgiana slipped quickly from buzzed to blackout” (1, p. 204).

But since Lena knew that Georgiana had had only three drinks (1, p. 200), she wondered if Georgiana had “slipped quickly from buzzed to blackout,” because she had also taken a tranquilizer for anxiety.

And the distinction between alcohol’s blackouts and multiple personality’s memory gaps is often made only in retrospect, after multiple personality has been confirmed by other symptoms.

So with eighty more pages to read, I will be interested to see if there is anything else to suggest multiple personality. 

1. Jenny Jackson. Pineapple Street. Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, 2023.

“Pineapple Street” (post 1) by Jenny Jackson: Why Italics?

“They were standing so close she could have kissed him if she lurched fast enough. Oh my God, why would I lurch-kiss this person? She briefly hated her own brain” (1, p. 22).

Comment: Did she briefly hate her own brain, because her brain had had a socially inappropriate impulse to lurch-kiss a man? Or did she hate a voice in her head that had stopped her from doing it? If the latter, then the voice may have been the voice of a more inhibited and proper, alternate personality, and not just a metaphorical voice of reason or conscience.

I have seen many writers use italics to indicate a voice in the head (which, in a nonpsychotic person, may be the voice of an alternate personality). But I will need more evidence in this novel to support the idea that this particular author has multiple personality trait.

My position is that about 90% of novelists do have multiple personality trait, but about 10% of novelists may not. So I will keep reading.

1. Jenny Jackson. Pineapple Street. Pamela Dorman Books/Viking, 2023. 

“Sometimes I Lie” (post 3) by Alice Feeney: Protagonist fulfills diagnostic criteria for multiple personality, but it is not labeled as such

Since it is a fact that persons with multiple personality may sometimes see some of their alternate personalities when they look in a mirror (1, p. 62):

“I lock the bathroom door and turn to face myself in the mirror. I don’t like what I see, so I close my eyes. I unzip the body of who I used to be and step outside myself; a newborn Russian doll, a little smaller than I was before, wondering how many other versions of me are still hidden inside. I turn on the shower and step beneath it too quickly. The water is freezing cold but I don’t flinch. I let the temperature rise slowly so that I almost don’t feel the water burn my skin when it gets too hot. I don’t know how long I stand like that, I don’t remember. I don’t remember drying myself or wrapping my robe around my body. I don’t remember leaving the bathroom or coming back downstairs. I only remember being back in the lounge, looking in the big mirror above the fireplace and liking the look of the woman who stared back at me” (2, pp. 252-253).

Comment: The two main diagnostic criteria for multiple personality (a.k.a. “dissociative identity disorder”) are 1. the presence of two or more distinct personality states (which Alice Feeney calls “versions”) and 2. memory gaps (when one personality can’t remember what happened during the time that another personality had “come out” (personalities usually remain “inside” except during certain circumstances).

However, since, as in most novels, the multiple personality is not labeled, most readers don’t recognize it as such, and it is not certain that the author did, either. It might reflect the author’s own, creative psychology, which I’ve called their “multiple personality trait.”

1. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

2. Alice Feeney. Sometimes I Lie. New York, Flatiron Books, 2018.

“Sometimes I Lie” (post 2) by Alice Feeney: Title may be symptom of Multiple Personality if there are memory gaps or alternative realities

Memory Gaps

“The experience of being called a liar is common for multiple personality patients. Apparent pathological lying or disavowing of observed behavior is one of the best diagnostic predictors in child and adolescent multiples. Adult MPD patients will often recount that they acquired a reputation as liars in childhood. I will ask patients whether they have often had the experience of being accused of lying when they believed that they were telling the truth. This may happen to all of us at some time or other, but MPD patients will have this experience frequently in childhood and fairly often as adults.

“Multiples are perceived by other people as lying when they deny doing things that they were seen to do. In most instances, this is because the personality that is denying the behavior is amnesic for the actions of another personality who actually performed the action” (1, pp. 78-79).

Alternative Realities

Some alternate personalities have an imaginative view of reality, including awareness of other personalities. If the person labels it as fiction and characters, they may become storytellers or fiction writers. If they don’t label it as fiction, they may be seen as liars. Multiple personality is not categorized as a psychosis, because the person usually has some personalities who are in touch with ordinary reality.

1. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

2. Alice Feeney. Sometimes I Lie. New York, Flatiron Books, 2018.

“Sometimes I Lie” (post 1) by Alice Feeney: Will Truth Come Out at the End?

As I read this novel (1), I am beginning to think that expecting all of its true reality to come out at its end may be futile, like expecting to eventually meet the “real” or “original” personality in a person with multiple personality. 

In fact, the original personality of a person with multiple personality is often described as having been “put to sleep” or otherwise incapacitated because he or she could not cope with the person’s earliest trauma. In truth, the person’s regular, “host” personality, is not the original personality in most patients (2, p. 114).

The novel’s last numbered page (1, p. 258) is immediately followed by this:

“My name is Amber Taylor Reynolds. There are

three things you should know about me:

1. I was in a coma.

2. My sister died in a tragic accident.

3. Sometimes I lie.”

And the fact is, in the beginning of the novel, the first-person protagonist is named “Amber Reynolds.” Taylor, her friend, is another character. So her revealing herself as really named Amber Taylor Reynolds suggests that another character (or personality) had been named by using her real middle name, which would be a common way of naming an alternate personality in multiple personality.

1. Alice Feeney. Sometimes I Lie. New York, Flatiron Books, 2018.

2. Frank W. Putnam, MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. NewYork, The Guilford Press, 1989.

Artificial Intelligence Might Help Choose Literary Prize Winners

Added March 10: It might allow more books to be impartially considered.

“The Shipping News” (post 5) by Edna Ann Proulx, writing as Annie Proulx: Whatever happened to the names “Edna” and “Ann” (no “ie”)?

“Edna Ann Proulx is an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. She has written most frequently as Annie Proulx but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Annie_Proulx

Edna

“Remember Edna the rewrite woman on the Record?…

“Yeah. She never smiled at me. Not once.”

“…It hit me after Edna called what a fucking miserable place we’re in. There’s no place you can go no more without getting shot or burned or beat. And I was laughing.’ And Quoyle thought he heard his friend crying on the other side of the continent. Or maybe he was laughing again” (1, pp. 290-291). 

Comment: In multiple personality, the alternate personalities may be named with seemingly trivial variations of the name with which the person was born. 

The seemingly trivial difference between the author’s birth name, “Ann,” and her pen name or pseudonym, “Annie,” may be quite significant to the alternate personalities who have each of those names.

Perhaps the alternate personality who handles the author’s revisions is named “Edna, the rewrite woman” (1, p. 290). And there may also be a personality named “Ann,” who has other interests and responsibilities.

1. Annie Proulx. The Shipping News [1993]. New York, Scribner, 2003.

Comment added same day: The conclusion of this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, though plausible, insults the intelligence of the reader.