“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” (post 3) by Gabrielle Zevin: UNLABELLED MULTIPLE PERSONALITY SCENARIO

As noted in post 2, the psychological highlight of this novel on video game design and designers, is the video game, Love Doppelgängers (1, p. 204), which means, roughly, Love Alternate Personalities. Renamed Counterpart High, “It’s our most successful series [of video games] by a mile” (1, p. 328).

Comment: Why is the multiple personality scenario (see post 2) of the novel’s most successful video game not labelled as multiple personality? Because most people think of multiple personality as a mental illness. And so, if they are not discussing mental illness, they don’t think of it.

But one theme of this blog is that most people with multiple personality are not mentally ill. Indeed, for some people, like fiction writers, it is often an asset. Does that include video game designers?

1. Gabrielle Zevin. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2022.

“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” (post 2) by Gabrielle Zevin: Video game designers consider a multiple-personality scenario.

Midway in this novel, Sadie and Sam, a pair of video game designers, are considering a proposal for their next video game:

“The game took place in a high school, and each character could summon alternate versions of themselves through a complicated system of wormholes. Love Doppelgängers, its tentative title, was part romance and part science fiction” (1, p. 204).

Comment: I don’t know whether Sadie and Sam will pursue that concept, or if they will recognize it as being a multiple-personality scenario, in which persons have alternate versions of themselves.

1. Gabrielle Zevin. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2022.

“Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow” (post 1) by Gabrielle Zevin: Sam has “secret part.” Sam and Sadie try to create video game paracosm

“Without knowing why, Sam had tried to keep Sadie and Marx apart…There was another secret part of him that feared they would prefer each other to him” (1, p. 71).

Comment: People with undiagnosed multiple personality often refer to their alternate personalities as “parts” of themselves of which they are only vaguely aware, but which seem to have minds of heir own.

Sadie and Sam are planning to work together to create a successful video game, which would entail the creation of an imaginary world. They have not used the word, but an imaginary world is a “paracosm” (2), which, along with imaginary companions, are the two main talents of normal childhood that help traumatized children develop multiple personality as a psychological defense and/or an asset in creating video games and novels.

1. Gabrielle Zevin. Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow. New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2022.

2. Wikipedia. “Paracosm.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paracosm

“And Then There Were None” by Agatha Christie: Confession of murderer inadvertently reflects author’s multiple personality

To read past posts on the author’s multiple personality, search “Agatha Christie” in this blog. But I have often made the general point that persons with multiple personality tend to be “self-contradictory,” like the murderer in this novel. An excerpt from the murderer’s confession follows:

“From my earliest youth I realized that my nature was a mass of contradictions…I have a definite sadistic delight in seeing or causing death…But side by side with this went a contradictory trait—a strong sense of justice…Crime and its punishment has always fascinated me. I enjoy reading every kind of detective story and thriller. I have devised for my own private amusement the most ingenious ways of carrying out a murder…I have wanted—let me admit it frankly—to commit murder myself. I recognized this as the desire of the artist to express himself! I was, or could be, an artist of crime! My imagination, sternly checked by the exigencies of my profession, waxed secretly to colossal force. I must—I must—I must commit murder! It must be a fantastical crime—something stupendous—out of the common! In that one respect, I have still, I think, an adolescent’s imagination. I wanted something theatrical, impossible!

“A childish rhyme of my infancy came back into my mind—the rhyme of ten little soldier boys [and then there were none] had fascinated me as a child of two…(1, pp. 285-288).

Comment: Multiple personality usually starts in childhood. And the confession of the murderer in this novel, which suggests multiple personality, appears to reflect the author’s multiple personality trait.

1. Agatha Christie. And Then There Were None. New York, William Morrow/HarperCollins, 1939/2019.

“Identity” (post 2) by Milan Kundera: Ends as “Treacherous Fantasy”

“And I ask myself, who was dreaming? Who dreamed this story? She? He? Both of them? Each one for the other? And starting when did their real life change into this treacherous fantasy?…At what exact moment did the real turn into the unreal, reality into reverie?” (1, p. 167).

Comment: This short psychological novel with inadvertent features of multiple personality eventually gives up trying to make sense of itself.

1. Milan Kundera. Identity (a novel). Translated from the French by Linda Asher. New York, HarperPerennial, 1997/1999.

“Identity” (post 1) by Milan Kundera: His “inner self” kept silent

“When he wondered: what should I choose for my whole life’s work? His inner self would fall into the most uncomfortable silence. When finally he decided on medicine, he was responding not to some secret predilection but rather to an altruistic idealism…he studied medicine for three years before giving up with a sense of shipwreck. What to choose after those lost years? What to attach to, if his inner self should keep as silent as it had before? (1, pp. 67-68).

Comment: Since “inner self” is not a standard term in psychology or psychiatry, I will infer what the author means from the way he uses it. If it is sometimes silent, but not always, it would seem to be a personified voice in the person’s head that may or may not choose to say what the person truly likes or wants. In other words, it is a conscious, behind-the-scenes, core alternate personality, whose thoughts cannot be read by the person’s regular personality, but whose opinions could be communicated to the regular personality as a voice in the person’s head.

Since the character hasn’t been labeled as having multiple personality, the reticent voice in his head may reflect the author’s multiple personality trait.

1. Milan Kundera. Identity (a novel). Translated from the French by Linda Asher. New York, HarperPerennial, 1997/1999.

Search “Kundera” in this blog for past posts on this author. 

“Identity” (post 5) by Nora Roberts: Split Inconsistent Narrative

As noted in post 2, the villain was introduced as having “a million personas” (1, p. 100). But since I haven’t read anything in the rest of the novel to justify that opinion, I wonder whether the novel was written by two or more personalities who differed in their perspectives.

For discussion regarding other novels, search “split inconsistent narrative” in this blog.

1. Nora Roberts. Identity (a novel). New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2023.

“Identity” (post 4) by Nora Roberts: Serial killer hears voice laughing at him in his head

“…the bitch lived her life on the other side of the country, laughing at him as she sat in that big-ass house. He heard her laughing even when he left the light on at night. He imagined killing her countless times, in countless ways. But those sweet, sweet dreams shattered to shards when he heard her laughing…” (1, p. 339).

Comment: The serial killer does not cover his ears, because he knows that the “bitch” is on the other side of the country and that her laughter is coming from inside his own head…He wants to kill her to free himself from his obsession with her laughter. She is not merely under his skin, but inside his head.

When someone seems to have, and hear, other people in his head, it is called either multiple personality or writing a novel. A serial killer with undiagnosed multiple personality disorder might benefit from a correct diagnosis and specific psychotherapy for it. Novelists may “kill” the people in their head by writing the novel, unless it is a serial.

1. Nora Roberts. Identity (a novel). New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2023.

“Identity” (post 3) by Nora Roberts: Protagonist hears voices, again, which may explain Shakespeare's belief in ghosts

“Her trip to the garden center flooded her with bittersweet memories of Nina. But having her [deceased] friend’s voice whispering in her ear as she wandered, as she chose plants brought comfort” (1, p. 174).

Comment: Coming after the voice heard by the protagonist in post 1, readers should understand this author’s attitude toward hearing voices: that it is ordinary, normal psychology, which many people, probably including the author, experience in their everyday life.

The reason that voices are surprisingly common in mentally well persons is that they are probably the voices of alternate personalities in people with multiple personality trait, which I estimate to be present in thirty percent of the general population and ninety percent of novelists. 

1. Nora Roberts. Identity (a novel). New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2023.

Added June 19: Since the protagonist heard a voice she attributed to a deceased person, this may illustrate why some people, such as Shakespeare, have believed in ghosts.

“Identity” (post 2) by Nora Roberts: “million personas” of the villain

“Gavin Rozwell had learned early on the female of the species offered almost endless opportunities to exploit and manipulate…He had a million personas he could wear like a bespoke suit…a natural-born psychopath…He knew he killed his mother over and over with the termination of each mark…just the way his father had taken everything his mother had valued” (1, pp. 101-103).

Comment: Where did the author get a villain with a million personas? From a stereotype of serial killers? Or from the antithesis of prolific authors with multiple personality trait?

1. Nora Roberts. Identity (a novel). New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2023.

“Identity” (post 1) by Nora Roberts: As she drives to her job interview at a Vermont hotel, a quoted third-person voice criticizes her thoughts

“She spotted the first cabins tucked in those snowy woods and admitted she’d never understand the appeal of a winter vacation that involved winter.

A tropical beach, now, a sun-washed Italian villa, those made absolute sense. But a cabin in the Vermont woods, paying to freeze on a ski lift or skate on a frozen lake?

Forget it. 

“And you can keep those opinions to yourself if you hope to land this job.”

She followed the signs to the hotel [where she was going for a job interview], winding her way” (1, pp. 90-91).

Comment: The quoted voice of an alternate personality disapproves of her regular personality’s thoughts (if she wants to get the job she is seeking). 

But since the character had not been labeled as having multiple personality, the multiple personality scenario—a voice of an alternate personality criticizing a person’s regular thoughts—is probably an inadvertent reflection of the author’s multiple personality trait.

1. Nora Roberts. Identity (a novel). New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2023. 

Added June 18: You might presume that the author could have made the character think, "Of course, I will keep my opinions to myself if I want to land this job." But many novelists experience their characters and personalities as having minds of their own. So an alternate personality intervened.

Blog’s Tenth Anniversary (2013-2023) Question

If this blog were destined to ever go viral, wouldn’t it have already happened? Probably not, for various reasons.

First, most visitors, readers of novels, have their own theories about how novels are written; for example, writing down and elaborating daydreams.

Second, most visitors really don’t care how novels are written, as long as there are people who do that.

Third, most visitors think of multiple personality as a mental illness (which it occasionally is), not as a trauma-induced talent that may be used to imagine characters and stories (which is more frequent). 

“David Copperfield” (post 6) by Charles Dickens: David gets drunk, revealing symptoms of multiple personality

“Somebody was leaning out of my bed-room window, refreshing his forehead against the cool stone of the parapet, and feeling the air upon his face. It was myself. I was addressing myself as ‘Copperfield,’ and saying, ‘Why did you try to smoke? You might have known you couldn’t do it.’ Now, somebody was unsteadily contemplating his features in the looking-glass. That was I too. I was very pale in the looking-glass; my eyes had a vacant appearance; and my hair — only my hair, nothing else — looked drunk” (1, p. 369).

Comment: When Dickens wrote The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1870), he may have expected his readers to understand that when the murderer, John Jasper, refers to himself in the third person, it indicates that Jasper has multiple personality (in which one personality is referring to another personality). 

Did Dickens have the same expectation for readers of David Copperfield, which was published twenty years earlier? I don’t know. And since he acknowledged autobiographical aspects of David Copperfield, but may not have been ready to associate multiple personality with himself, he blames David’s dissociation on intoxication.

Intoxication may camouflage or uncover, but does not cause, multiple personality.

1. Charles Dickens. David Copperfield [1850]. Revised Edition. New York, Penguin Books, 2004.

Added June 15: The rest of this novel has nothing quite as definitive of multiple personality as the passage I quote above. But if you have not read my extensive, introductory post, please search “Dickens” in this blog. A famous novelist called it “Engaging.”

“David Copperfield” (post 5) by Charles Dickens: “Mr. Dick” is an abbreviation of “Mr. Dickens”

Wikipedia has an entry on Mr. Dick (1), but the published commentary it reviews fails to note certain issues.

First, Mr. Dick is not simply a diminutive of the character’s first name, Richard. It is an abbreviation of the author’s name, Mr. Dickens, which, surprisingly, makes this character a kind of spokesman for the author.

Second, the main thing that Mr. Dick does regarding David Copperfield is to second Aunt Trotwood’s notion (post 4) that David’s first name be changed to Trotwood. Thus, this author’s spokesman seconds the idea of giving the protagonist a pseudonym. But what is the significance of pseudonyms?

Pseudonyms are often discussed in this blog, because the names of alternate personalities in multiple personality are pseudonyms. And for an author’s spokesman to give the protagonist a pseudonym raises the issue of multiple personality. Combine this with Dickens’s use of the word “scattered” (see post 3), and the attentive reader will realize that Dickens, either intentionally or inadvertently (due to his multiple personality trait) has raised the issue of multiple personality.

1. Wikipedia. “Mr. Dick.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mr._Dick

“David Copperfield” (post 4) by Charles Dickens: Idea to change protagonist’s personal name from David to Trotwood suggests Dickens’s multiple personality

When David takes refuge with his Aunt Betsey Trotwood, and his evil stepfather tries to reclaim him, his Aunt insists that she will take over guardianship. Furthermore, she agrees with the idea that David be addressed as “Trotwood Copperfield” (1, p. 225), not as a mere nickname, leaving his real name as David, but as a new personal name, to be written in indelible ink in his clothes.

I presume that the main character of David Copperfield is not going to be formally and permanently renamed, but it is peculiar that Dickens has a character even raise the possibility that David have an alternate personal name. Most persons have nicknames, but it is only persons with multiple personality who have alternate personal names (for their alternate personalities). If Dickens did not, himself, have that kind of arrangement in his own mind, he would not have had a character raise such a possibility for his protagonist.

Added June 13: It is noteworthy that the renaming of David as Trotwood is suggested by Aunt Trotwood's "mad" friend, whom she calls "Mr. Dick," a name which is a component of the author's name, Dickens.

1. Charles Dickens. David Copperfield [1850]. Revised Edition. New York, Penguin Books, 2004. 

“David Copperfield” (post 3) by Charles Dickens: Dickens's use of the word “scattered” associates David with the multiple personality in Edwin Drood

My first post in 2013 (search “Dickens” in this blog) noted that Dickens used the word “scattered” to describe the mind of three of his characters: John Jasper, the multiple personality character in Edwin Drood; Pip in Great Expectations, and David in David Copperfield.

2013 post: At the beginning of The Mystery of Edwin Drood, there are various ways that Dickens foreshadows the revelation that John Jasper had a split personality; for example, Jasper switches back and forth between two contradictory sets of attitudes. Another foreshadowing is Dickens’s description of Jasper as having a “scattered consciousness,” which makes it noteworthy that in David Copperfield, David is described at one point as having “scattered senses,” and in Great Expectations, Pip is described as having “scattered wits.” Since Dickens used a “scattered” mind to foreshadow a character with a split personality, this implies that not only Jasper, but also Dickens’s alter egos David and Pip were, in Dickens’s view, dissociative.

David Copperfield: “For anything I know, I may have had some wild idea of running all the way to Dover, when I gave up the pursuit of the young man with the donkey cart, and started for Greenwich. My scattered senses were soon collected as to that point…” (1, p. 190)

 

1. Charles Dickens. David Copperfield [1850]. Revised Edition. New York, Penguin Books, 2004. 

“David Copperfield” (post 2) by Charles Dickens: Peggotty’s “people” may allude to Dickens’s alternate personalities

“ ‘…I don’t know how it is,’ said Peggotty…but my head never can pick and choose its people. They come and go, and they don’t come and go, just as they like…’ ” (1, p. 124).

Comment: Remember post 1, in which Dickens described David, his protagonist, as practicing how to impersonate fictional “people.”

The difference between created characters and alternate personalities is that the latter have independent agency: Like Peggotty’s “people,” they come and they go, just as they like.

1. Charles Dickens. David Copperfield [1850]. Revised Edition. New York, Penguin Books, 2004. 

Submit your honest opinion: Do fiction writers' minds work like the minds of everyone else?

“David Copperfield” (post 1) by Charles Dickens: As an abused child, David psychologically defends himself by impersonating fictional characters

After the love of David’s widowed mother is replaced by the tyranny of his new father and aunt, David takes psychological refuge by impersonating characters in novels:

“I believe I should have been almost stupified but for one circumstance. It was this. My father had left a small collection of books in a little room up-stairs…From that blessed little room, Roderick Random, Peregrine Pickle, Humphrey Clinker, Tom Jones, The Vicar of Wakefield, Don Quixote, Gil Blas, and Robinson Crusoe, came out, a glorious host, to keep me company. They kept alive my fancy, and my hope…and did me no harm…It is astonishing to me now, how I found time…to read those books as I did…by impersonating my favorite characters in them…” (1, p. 66).

Comment: According to the novelist Philip Roth (search past post), the main pleasure of fiction writing is “impersonation.” Dickens’s daughter observed her father impersonate characters when he wrote (search Dickens).

Normal children have two ways of practicing the basic phenomena of multiple personality: 1. imaginary companions, and 2. impersonation of fictional characters. But only traumatized children tend to elaborate these normal talents into multiple personality disorder, or use this ability creatively (e.g., fiction writing) as multiple personality trait.

1. Charles Dickens. David Copperfield [1850]. Revised Edition. New York, Penguin Books, 2004.

“American Gods” by Neil Gaiman: As novel begins, the protagonist, a convict named Shadow, hears a voice in his head

“There was a voice in the back of his head whispering that they were going to slap another year onto his sentence, drop him into solitary, cut off his hands, cut off his head. He told himself he was being stupid, but his heart was pounding fit to burst out of his chest” (1, p. 10).

Comment: The protagonist, Shadow, has not been described as mentally ill, but only worried that his scheduled release from prison will be delayed.

The question here is why the author would think that a worried, but mentally well person, might hear a voice in his head? Does the author consider it ordinary psychology? If so, why?

As discussed in many past posts, voices in the head of a mentally well person may be voices of alternate personalities. Does the author intend to portray Shadow as having multiple personality? I don’t know.

1. Neil Gaiman. American Gods. New York, William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2001/2021.

Next Day: I soon stopped reading this book, because it didn't make sense. Is this what's called "Absurdist fiction" (Wikipedia)?

Multiple Personality in Everyday Life

The “Modern Love” essayist in today’s New York Times says “For years, I have trained myself to dissociate…to compartmentalize.” She has had episodes of “not remembering exactly how I had gotten there”…and says “Dissociation became essential protection from objectification” (1).

Yet “dissociative identity,” also known as “multiple personality,” is never mentioned, because the essayist and New York Times mistakenly believe it is a rare mental illness that would never occur in ordinary life.

But it’s not rare, and, when helpful, is not a mental illness.

1. Ariella Steinhorn. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/06/02/style/modern-love-sexual-assault-slap-that-changed-everything.html 

“The Poisonwood Bible” by Barbara Kingsolver: Character with twin has read the Jekyll-Hyde multiple personality classic many times

“ ‘It was neither diabolical nor divine; it but shook the doors of the prison house of my disposition; and like the captives of Philippi, that which stood within ran forth.’  So feel I. Living in the Congo shakes open the prison house of my disposition and lets all the wicked hoodoo Adahs run forth…The quote is from The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which I [Adah] have read many times…” (1, p. 55).

Comment: This character represents multiple personality in two ways: Twins are a metaphor for multiple personality and so is Jekyll-Hyde.

But why is such a character in this novel? Will multiple personality be integral to the plot? Does this character reflect the novelist’s multiple personality trait? Or both?

Same day: Skimming ahead, I do not find Adah seriously discussed, psychologically. Thus, I have insufficient evidence that this author has multiple personality trait. I have previously estimated that only ninety percent of novelists do.

Later Same day: Many novelists do serious research, but Kingsolver’s 28-source bibliography at the end of this novel suggests her process differs from most novelists.

1. Barbara Kingsolver. The Poisonwood Bible. New York, HarperPerennial Modern Classics, 1998.