“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.