“The Three Musketeers” (post 1) by Alexandre Dumas: The musketeers have pseudonyms and secret histories like typical patients in a textbook on multiple personality

This Novel

“D’Artagnan…did his best to learn the real identities of Athos, Porthos, and Aramis, for each of these pseudonyms hid an aristocratic name” (1, p. 75)…Despite all his efforts, d’Artagnan was unable to learn anything more about his new friends. He decided that for the present he would have to believe whatever was said about their past and hope for more extensive and reliable revelations in the future. Meanwhile he regarded Athos as an Achilles, Porthos as an Ajax, and Aramis as a Joseph (1, p. 77).

Textbook

“During initial interviews of patients who later proved to have MPD…I find that it is difficult to obtain a coherent history…This reflects the fact that…memories of their life history…are divided up among a number of alternate personalities” (2, p. 72), (of which the regular personality is either unaware or considers secret). Of course, the names of alternate personalities are pseudonyms.

Comment:I do not expect these characters to turn out to have multiple personality, per se. The above probably reflects the fiction writer’s multiple personality trait. Please search “Dumas” and “pseudonyms” in this blog for relevant past posts.

1. Alexandre Dumas. The Three Musketeers. Trans. Lowell Bair. New York, Bantam Classic, 1844/1984.

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

“Squeeze Me” by Carl Hiaasen: Why is a split consciousness and sense of self not seen in this character until the second half of this novel?

“He grinned when Angie walked in.

‘What’s so amusing, Jerry?’

‘It’s the first time I’ve seen you out of uniform.’

‘This is my jaunty alter ego,’ she said. ‘I do have a life, you know’ ”(1, p. 203).

“Hell, a ten-footer [python] is big enough to choke somebody,’ Angie heard herself saying, just not big enough to to swallow ‘em” (1, p. 226).

Comment: Is this a natural development of the character or did a different personality of the writer take over? I will think about this as I read the second half of this novel.

Added Jan. 30: I read, but lost interest in, the rest of this mostly plot-driven novel. Nevertheless, the examples noted above are suggestive of multiple personality trait in the author.

1. Carl Hiaasen. Squeeze Me. New York, Vintage Crime, 2020/2021. 

Trump’s Bright Blue Necktie Today: Why Not His Usual Bright Red Necktie?

On TV today, I saw Trump giving a speech. He looked the same as usual, except that I am so used to seeing him in his bright red necktie that I was taken aback by seeing him in a bright blue necktie. 

For years, I’ve been puzzled by changes in Trump’s hair color. But do changes in a person’s grooming and/or clothes mean anything? According to a textbook on multiple personality, such changes may reflect the different tastes of a person’s various alternate personalities (1, p. 75).

But for all I know, Trump has other people to do his hair and choose his clothes, so that any changes in his hair or clothes may reflect their changing preferences, not Trump’s. Or maybe, today, he was trying to get Democrats to vote for him, too. Without interviewing him, I cannot know.

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

When Trump says he can’t recall Carroll, what if he’s not lying, but has a memory gap?

Comment: When former president Trump denies having known her (1), my first thought is that he’s lying to avoid punishment. And isn’t that what most people think? But what if he’s not lying? What if the assault was committed by an alternate personality, during a time for which his regular personality has a memory gap? As the saying goes, truth is stranger than fiction. And novelists are not the only high-functioning people with multiple personality trait.

1. https://time.com/5612502/trump-jean-carroll-sexual-assault-allegation/ 

“The Death of Ivan Ilyich” by Leo Tolstoy: Novella has less multiple personality than “Anna Karenina”

“What is this? Is it true that this is death?” And an inner voice answered: “Yes, it is true.” “Then why these torments?” And the voice answered: “For no reason—they just are” (1, p. 103).

Comment: Rational conversation with an inner voice is multiple personality, not psychosis or delirium. Please search “Anna Karenina” and "Tolstoy” in this blog for extensive discussion in past posts.                        

1. Leo Tolstoy. The Death of Ivan Ilyich (1886). Trans. Lynn Solotaroff. New York, Bantam Classic, 1981.

2. Wikipedia. The Death of Ivan Ilyich. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Death_of_Ivan_Ilyich 

“An Obituary to Die For” a novel by Richard P. Kluft, M.D., Ph.D., Eminent Expert on Multiple Personality (a.k.a. Dissociative Identity Disorder)

Dr. Kluft’s main character, Benjamin Jordan, M.D., Ph.D., a psychiatrist, plans to locate his office in “Bala Cynwyd, a near suburb of Philadelphia” (1, p. 92), the same location as Dr. Kluft’s office in real life.

In the novel, Dr. Jordan “uncovers an extraordinary conspiracy involving an ultra-wealthy and political elite plotting to seize control of the United States of America” (1, back cover).

Comment: Since there is explicit multiple personality in this novel, I have not done my usual analysis for unintended symptoms.

1. Richard P. Kluft. An Obituary to Die For. London, Karnac, 2016.

“The Woman in White” (post 4) by Wilkie Collins: Was “Sir Percival Glyde” a good impostor, because he was a good actor or an alternate personality?

“Of all the suspicions which had struck me, in relation to that desperate man, not one had been near the truth. The idea that he was not Sir Percival Glyde at all, that he had no more claim to the baronetcy and to Blackwater Park than the poorest labourer who worked on the estate, had never once occurred to my mind” (1, pp. 631-632).

Comment: If the impostor had had an alternate personality who believed he was Sir Percival Glyde, he would be quite convincing. Search “actor” in this blog for relevant past posts.

1. Wilkie Collins. The Woman in White. New York, Bantam Classic, 1860/1985.

“The Woman in White” (post 3) by Wilkie Collins: Marian Holcombe, Laura’s sister and confidant, may be the third character with dissociative symptoms (but see added note re eventual, belated, medical diagnosis)

Marian, who has just overheard Laura’s husband and Count Fosco conspire against Laura, narrates (in her diary): “I recall the impulse that awakened in me to preserve those words in writing, exactly as they were spoken…while my memory vividly retained them. All this I remember plainly: there is no confusion in my head yet. The coming in here…with my pen and ink and paper, before sunrise…the ceaseless writing, faster and faster, hotter and hotter, driving on, more and more wakefully, all through the dreadful interval before the house was astir again—how clearly I recall it, from the beginning by candlelight, to the end on the page before this, in the sunshine of the new day!

Why do I sit here still?…I dare not attempt it. A fear beyond all other fears has got possession of me…Have I been sitting here asleep? I don’t know what I have been doing. 

Oh, my God! Am I going to be ill?

Ill, at such time as this! (1, pp.411-12).

[The above is followed by a note from Count Fosco:

“The illness of our excellent Miss Halcome has afforded me the opportunity of enjoying an unexpected intellectual pleasure. I refer to the perusal (which I have just completed) of this interesting Diary. There are many hundred pages here…(1, p. 413).

Comment: Marian, via her diary, has been one of this novel’s major narrators. But what she had overheard this night (a conspiracy against her sister) had frightened her into dissociative confusion, causing her to break off writing in her diary and be “ill” for some period of time, which is not immediately described.

Multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder) is classified as one of the dissociative disorders, which feature problems with identity and memory, and a wide range of function, with which an author who has what I call “multiple personality trait” may be personally familiar and reflect in his characters.

Added Jan. 15: Marian is diagnosed with Typhus (1, p. 457), after her regular physician had missed it. Today, she would have been evaluated by Medicine before ever being referred to Psychiatry.

1. Wilkie Collins. The Woman in White. New York, Bantam Classic, 1860/1985

“The Woman in White” (post 2) by Wilkie Collins: Count Fosco joins the title character (see post 1) in probably having multiple personality

“All the smallest characteristics of this strange man [Count Fosco] have something strikingly…and perplexingly contradictory in them” (1, pp. 266-271).

Comment: According to a textbook on multiple personality, one hallmark of new patients who later prove to have MPD is “frequent inconsistencies” (2, p. 72), because each (as yet undiagnosed) alternate personality has its own memories, interests, attitudes, and behaviors.

I won’t assume that the author intended that either the title character or Count Fosco be seen as having multiple personality unless and until he explicitly labels them as such. If he never does label them as such, then I will view these symptoms of multiple personality as unintended, and probably reflective of the author’s own “multiple personality trait.” Up to the point I’ve read, Count Fosco’s perplexing contradictions have served only to make the good-guy characters doubt that they can trust him.

Search “contradictory,” “inconsistency,” and “puzzling” in this blog to see relevant past posts on other novels.

1. Wilkie Collins. The Woman in White. New York, Bantam Classic, 1860/1985

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

“The Woman in White” (post 1) by Wilkie Collins: Title Character Probably Has Multiple Personality

The narrator, Walter Hartright, talks with the mysterious title character, trying to find out if she was the one who wrote an anonymous letter warning Miss Fairlie not to marry a particular man.

But it is a difficult interview, because the Woman in White has strange memory gaps and changes in demeanor.

She is confused by her memory gaps, saying, “It’s little enough I remember…little enough, little enough!” (1, p. 118).

“Don’t ask me about mother,” she went on. I’d rather talk of Mrs. Clements. Mrs. Clements is like you, she doesn’t think that I ought to be back in the Asylum; and she is as glad as you that I escaped from it. She cried over my misfortune, and said it must be kept secret from everybody…

“What misfortune?” I asked.

“The misfortune of my being shut up, she answered, with every appearance of feeling surprised at my question. “What other misfortune could there be?”

“There is another misfortune,” I said, “to which a woman may be liable, and by which she may suffer lifelong sorrow and shame.”

"What is it?” She asked eagerly…

“She looked up at me, with the artless bewilderment of a child. Not the slightest confusion or change of color; not the faintest trace of any secret consciousness or shame struggling to the surface, appeared on her face—that face which betrayed every other emotion with such transparent clearness.”

[She had probably written an anonymous letter warning Miss Fairlie not to marry a particular man, who was probably the man responsible for her own “misfortune.”]

“I never wrote it…I know nothing about it!”

[But] The instance I risked reference to [the man who had probably caused her "misfortune,” and put her in the Asylum [to cover up his crime]…a most extraordinary and startling change passed over her. Her face… became suddenly darkened by an expression of maniacally intense hatred and fear. Her eyes dilated….like the eyes a wild animal…

“Talk of something else,” she said. I shall lose myself if you talk of that” (p. 118-123).

Comment: Memory gaps for writing the letter and for her probable sexual “misfortune,” together with her talk of “losing” herself (switching away from her regular personality), all suggest dissociative identity disorder (multiple personality).

I recognize this as a presentation of multiple personality, because of my clinical psychiatric experience in its diagnosis and treatment. And I’m not surprised to find it in a novel by Wilkie Collins, who was a friend of Charles Dickens. Search “Dickens,” “memory gaps,” and “diagnosis” in this blog.

1. Wilkie Collins. The Woman in White. New York, Bantam Classic, 1860/1985. 

“Skippy Dies” (post 2) by Paul Murray: Literary Hoax?

At the beginning of this widely acclaimed novel, the title character, a teenager, dies, but there is no immediate medical inquiry as to his cause of death.

The bottom of each page of my paperback edition has the page numbers, from page 1 to page 661, but the tops of each page, where a novel’s title and author’s name are usually found, are blank.

Comment: Therefore, in spite of this novel’s wide acclaim and rave reviews, I think it may be a literary hoax and won’t read further.

1. Paul Murray. Skippy Dies. New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010. 

“Skippy Dies” (post 1) by Paul Murray: “Mysterious Personae”

—Some students have “mysterious personae” (1, p. 20).

—What makes the personae “mysterious”?

—Do any of these students have memory gaps?

—Are any of these “personae” alternate personalities?

—Had the author ever had “mysterious personae"?

1. Paul Murray. Skippy Dies. New York, Farrar Straus Giroux, 2010. 

“Slow Horses” (post 2) by Mick Herron: Does Herron hope “not to be found out,” because his writing is not as good as people think, or because he feels like he really didn’t create it?

In Mike Herron’s new Preface to the tenth anniversary edition of Slow Horses, he says, “A writer spends the first part of his or her career hoping to be discovered; the rest hoping not to be found out” (1, p. XIII).

Comment: Many novelists may feel like Charles Dickens, who told his biographer that he knew he created his characters, but didn’t feel like he created them, because he heard them speak their mind and wrote down what they said. Search “Dickens” in this blog.

1. Mick Herron. Slow Horses. New York, Soho Press, 2010/2020. 

“Slow Horses” (post 1) by Mick Herron: Protagonist is addressed in the third person by an italicized voice in his head

“This is how River Cartwright slipped off the fast track and joined the slow horses” (1, p.1).

Italicized Voice in protagonist’s Head

“And nothing River said would get Webb to admit it was him who’d screwed up, not River. Who’d screwed up didn’t matter; who’d been visible during the screw-up did…The only reason you’re still here is your connections, River Cartwright. If not for your grandad, you’d be a distant memory” (1, p. 55).

Comment: The italicized words are spoken in the third person by an alternate personality to his regular personality, which is a textbook symptom of multiple personality. But since the protagonist has not been labeled as having multiple personality, I infer that the author thought it was ordinary psychology, because of the novelist’s own personal experience, what I call “multiple personality trait,” which, I have argued in this blog, is typical of most successful novelists.

1. Mick Herron. Slow Horses. New York, Soho Press, 2010/2020.