“Self” (post 2) by Yann Martel: Protagonist’s switch to female alternate personality, including the mirror symptom of multiple personality

Before starting college in Canada, after his parents had recently died in a plane crash, when he was visiting Portugal by himself:

“I awoke suddenly…confused. I couldn’t remember anything—my name, my age, where I was—complete amnesia. I knew that I was thinking in English, that much I knew right away. My identity was tied to the English language. And I knew that I was a woman, that also. English-speaking and a woman. That was the core of my being. The rest, the ornaments of identity, came several seconds later, after some mental groping. What I remember most clearly of this confusion is the feeling that came upon me afterwards, the feeling that everything was all right. I looked about the dark room. A deep sense of peace sifted through me, so deep that it felt like a dissolution. I was falling asleep again. I lay on my side, brought the sheet up to my neck and returned, smiling to the realm of Morpheus. Everything was all right.

“This happened on a special night. I got up in the morning, stood naked in front of the mirror looking at myself and thought, ‘I’m a Canadian, a woman —and a voter.’

“It was my birthday. I was now eighteen years old. Full citizen” (1, pp. 107-108).

Comment: The above is best explained by his switching to an English-speaking, female, alternate personality, with amnesia for his regular male, English and French-speaking personality. He has the mirror symptom of multiple personality that I have discussed in various past posts: He looks in a mirror and sees, instead of his regular self, the image of an alternate personality. Search “mirror” and/or “mirrors” in this blog for related past posts.

I will read on to see whether the author probably based the above on his own, similar, understanding, or on his own personal experience.

1. Yann Martel. Self (a novel). Toronto, Alfred A. Knopf Canada, 1996.