“Dear Edward” (post 4) by Ann Napolitano: Mirror and Visual Hallucinations, Gratuitous Symptoms of Multiple Personality

“Edward thought he had seen Benjamin Stillman lifting weights in the mirror. The soldier was dressed in his uniform, the same one he’d been wearing on the plane. He was deadlifting an enormous amount of weight. He’d looked real, to the extent that Edward almost dropped the dumbbell he was holding. He spun around…But, of course, no one was there (1, p. 254).

“Edward watches [visually hallucinates] Jordan [his deceased brother]…He doesn’t know why Jordan remains perfectly distinct while his parents blur, but perhaps it’s because he’d always considered his brother to be a part of him…” (1, pp. 254-255).

Comment: As stated in a textbook on multiple personality disorder, “MPD patients often report seeing themselves as different people when they look into a mirror…MPD patents may also hallucinate their alternate personalities as separate people existing outside their bodies” (2, p. 62).

But since the author probably did not intend to portray her protagonist as having multiple personality, and would not have researched a textbook on multiple personality, why did she give him symptoms of multiple personality?

She apparently incorporated aspects of her own, novelist’s, multiple personality trait.

Apr. 20: At the end of this novel, "Edward hears his brother's voice inside him" (1, p. 336). And I suppose the author heard voices, too, by virtue of her creative multiple personality trait; as well as possibly did the many readers who loved this book.

1. Ann Napolitano. Dear Edward. New York, Dial Press, 2020/2021.

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