“Holmes, Marple & Poe” by James Patterson: Are Holmes’ “MULTIPLE PERSONAS” merely his roles or are they his alternate personalities?

”Holmes felt the familiar thrill as he tapped a tiny hill of powder into the hollow between his curled thumb and forefinger. His heart thudded even harder. His pupils dilated. All his fight-or-flight responses were activated and firing. In some ways, this was his favorite moment. The anticipation of the rush. The delicious danger of being discovered. And the intensely heightened awareness of his multiple personas.

Business partner. Crime fighter. Drug fiend” (1, p. 122).

Comment: I read “multiple personas” as a euphemism for alternate personalties. Otherwise, the above is much ado about nothing.

1. James Patterson (and Brian Sitts). New York, Little Brown, 2024. 

“The Truths We Hold: An American Journey" by Kamala Harris: Both Her father and antagonist, Donald Trump, were named "Donald"

“My father, Donald Harris…” (1, p. 4). 

Comment: I'm amused. Are Kamala and the Donald amused? Are you?

1. Kamala Harris. The Truths We Hold: An American Journey. New York, Penguin Books, 2019/2020. 

Coup by Female Alternate Personality May Be the Way Men with Undiagnosed Multiple Personality Become Transgender Women

Wikipedia (1, 2) ignores the fact that most men with multiple personality disorder (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder) already have female alternate personalities (3, p. 110). So if a female alternate personality were to come out and arrange transgender surgery, the person would become physically transgender, and the female alternate personality would be able to remain in control.

Comment: Persons requesting transgender surgery may be screened for multiple personality, but the person doing the screening may not be an expert in multiple personality, and the alternate personality may guess the right answers to get what she wants. 

1. Wikipedia. “Transgender.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender

2. Wikipedia. “Blanchard’s transsexualism typology.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanchard's_transsexualism_typology

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

"Nevada" by Imogen Binnie: Maria, trans protagonist, is puzzled by tendency to “dissociate” Also see study added July 26 (3)

“Maria kind of wishes she could videotape what Steph is saying and take it in later…pausing it whenever she starts to dissociate…

“She’s so far gone into her own head, she only barely catches Steph asking: Are you even here now?

“I am, Maria says. Kind of. There’s a lot going on in my head, and I can’t process the whole thing at once” (1, p. 76).

“On top of which, sex has always been super problematic for you. Even before you knew you were trans, it stressed you the fuck out…And further, you didn’t even know you were dissociating during sex until you’d been doing it for about a decade, and you’d heard about dissociating a lot of times, and then you finally put together that, actually, that’s what it was when you had to stop paying attention to the person you were fucking so that you could fantasize about a number of situations that didn’t have anything to do with having a penis and fucking somebody with it. So you have no idea what it’s like to have a loving relationship with fun sex in it, which you assume everybody else has, although really how are you gonna know?” (1, p. 109).

Comment: She’d “heard about dissociating a lot,” which may mean dissociation is well-known in the trans community. The word catches my attention, because multiple personality, a.k.a. “dissociative identity disorder,” is classified by The American Psychiatric Association as one of the “Dissociative Disorders” (2, pp. 291-307).

Added July 26 There has been a study (3).

Closing July 27: I got nothing from the rest of the book.

1. Imogen Binnie. Nevada. New York, MCD x FSG Originals, Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 2013/2022.

2. American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition [DSM-5]. Arlington, VA. American Psychiatric Association, 2013.

3. Erika Sigurdsson MA and Etzel Cardeña Ph.D Dissociative Experiences Among Transgender Women.

 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/epdf/10.1080/15299732.2024.2372563?needAccess=true

“Remain Silent” (post 2) by transgender lawyer-novelist Robyn Gigl: Transgender Persons, Warmly Accepted, Do Very Well

The theme of this novel (1) is to be nice to transgender people. The American Psychological Association has proposed treatment guidelines (2). Wikipedia gives an overview (3). But the basic theme of this novel is to be accepting and nice.

Comment: In this blog, search “Jennifer Finney Boylan” for possible multiple personality issues of a very high-achieving trans novelist.

1. Robyn Gigl. Remain Silent. New York, Kensington, 2023. 

2. American Psychological Association Transgender Guidelines. https://www.apa.org/practice/guidelines/transgender.pdf

3. Wikipedia. “Transgender.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender 

“Remain Silent” (post 1) by transgender lawyer-novelist Robyn Gigl: Italicized voice in character’s head suggests author may have multiple personality trait, a creative asset of most successful novelists

“Gordon took a deep breath. Don’t screw this up” (1, p. 38).

Comment: The italicized words—“Don’t screw this up”—are not merely thought by Gordon, which would be “I can’t screw this up,” but are addressed to him, as though by a voice in his head, which suggests the voice of an alternate personality in multiple personality.

But since Gordon is neither labeled nor intended to have multiple personality, the above probably reflects an ordinary way of thinking by the author, as discussed in many past posts of this blog about the “multiple personality trait” of most successful novelists.

The possible relation between being transgender and having multiple personality trait is controversial, but the issue is raised by the fact that most persons with multiple personality will have an opposite-gender alternate personality, which, if dominating, would make the person feel genuinely transgender.

1. Robyn Gigl. Remain Silent. New York, Kensington, 2023. 

“The Talented Mr. Ripley” (post 3) by Patricia Highsmith: Memory Gaps for Two Murders are Tom Ripley’s Major Diagnostic Symptom of Multiple Personality

Text: Sometimes Ripley recalled his having murdered men on two separate occasions, but “Sometimes he could absolutely forget that he had murdered…” (1, p. 238).

Diagnostic Criteria for Multiple Personality (dissociative identity disorder)

B. “Recurrent gaps in the recall of important personal information or traumatic events that are inconsistent with ordinary forgetting” (2, p. 292).

Comment: Search “memory gaps” in this blog to see past posts on this major diagnostic symptom of multiple personality disorder.

1. Patricia Highsmith. The Talented Mr. Ripley. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1955.

2. American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition [DSM-5]. Arlington VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013. 

“The Talented Mr. Ripley” (post 2) by Patricia Highsmith: Tom Ripley’s fluid identity as he looks in a mirror is a textbook symptom of multiple personality

“He had a curious feeling that his brain remained calm and logical and that his body was out of control…He put on a pair of Dickie’s shoes…The suit fitted him. He re-parted his hair and put the part a little more to one side, the way Dickie wore his…“Marge, you must understand that I don’t love you,” Tom said into the mirror in Dickie’s voice, with Dickie’s higher pitch on the emphasized words, with the little growl in his throat at the end of the phrase that could be pleasant or unpleasant, intimate or cool, according to Dickie’s mood. “Marge, stop it!” Tom turned suddenly and made a grab in the air as if he were seizing Marge’s throat. He shook her, twisted her, while she sank lower and lower, until at last he left her, limp, on the floor…“You know why I had to do that,” he said, still breathlessly addressing Marge, though he watched himself in the mirror. “You were interfering between Tom and me—No, not that! But there is a bond between us!”

He turned, stepped over the imaginary body…It surprised him how much he looked like Dickie…[Dickie enters the room.]

“What’re you doing?…I wish you’d get out of my clothes,” Dickie said.

Dickie looked at Tom’s feet. “Shoes, too? Are you crazy?” (1, pp. 75-77).

Comment: Search “mirror” and “mirrors” in this blog for past posts on this textbook symptom of multiple personality.

1. Patricia Highsmith. The Talented Mr. Ripley. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1955.

“The Talented Mr. Ripley” (post 1) by Patricia Highsmith: Tom Ripley thinks of himself in the Third-person, inadvertently suggesting multiple personality

“Slowly he took off his jacket and untied his tie, watching every move he made as if it were somebody else’s movements he was watching. Astonishing how much straighter he was standing now, what a different look there was in his face. It was one of the few times in his life that he felt pleased with himself” (1, p. 15).

Comment: The above suggests a switch to an alternate personality, but is not identified as such, because multiple personality is not an explicit issue in the novel, and may only reflect the multiple personality trait of the author.

Added same day: This novel re-uses the basic plot of Henry James's The Ambassadors, in which the protagonist is explicitly said to have "double-consciousness," a synonym for multiple personality. Search "Ambassadors" in this blog to see my posts.

Also search "double-consciousness" in this blog.

 

And Added July 9: In fact, Jamesian scholars, with a book load of facts and analysis (2), accuse James of pervasive and serial duplicity, both moral (deceit) and literary (doubling), in both fiction and nonfiction. And they can’t explain it, but multiple personality might. 2. Tredy D, Duperray A, Harding A (eds.): Henry James and the Poetics of Duplicity. Newcastle upon Tyne, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013.

1. Patricia Highsmith. The Talented Mr. Ripley. New York, W. W. Norton & Company, 1955. 

Novelist Patricia Highsmith: Transgender and/or Multiple Personality

Note: “At least half of all MPD patients have cross-gender alternate personalities” (3, p. 110).

Added same day: Therefore, if you are not experienced and adept at interviewing persons who have multiple personality, you may be unable to distinguish between transgender and multiple personality.

“I am a…boy in a girl’s body” (1, p. 46).

“When she came in contact with people, she realized she split herself into many different, false, identities…” (1, p. 119).

“Highsmith revealed that in order to write she often deliberately thought herself into a different frame of mind, by pretending she was not herself…‘I suppose it’s a measure of how professional one is, how quickly one can do this’" (1, p. 123).

“I am troubled by a sense of being several people…” (1, p. 134).

“The Talented Mr Ripley…was written at speed in 1954, taking only six months. ‘It felt like Ripley was writing it,’ she said later, ‘it just came out’…The story is a dark reworking of Henry James’ The Ambassadors (1, p. 191-192)…‘I often had the feeling Ripley was writing it and I was merely typing’”  (1, p. 199).

1. Andrew Wilson. Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith. New York, Bloomsbury, 2003.

2. Wikipedia. “Patricia Highsmith.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Highsmith

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

“Never Mind” (Book 1) by Edward St Aubyn: Patrick, Age 5, is Abused and Raped by His Father, in this First of Five Patrick Melrose Novels

Memory Gap:“The thought of lunch dragged him back into the present with a strong sense of anxiety. What was the time? Was he too late?…Would he have to eat alone with his father? He always recovered from his mental truancy with disappointment. He enjoyed the feeling of blankness, but it frightened him afterwards when he came out of it and could not remember what he had been thinking (1, pp. 96-7).

“The harder he struggled, the harder he was hit. Longing to move but afraid to move, he was split in half by this incomprehensible violence…After the beating, his father dropped him like a dead thing onto the bed” (1, p. 100).

“Who could he [Patrick’s father] tell that he had raped his five-year-old son?” (1, p. 105).

Comment: Memory gaps are a cardinal symptom of multiple personality (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder). Search “memory gaps” in this blog.

1. Edward St Aubyn. Never Mind. London, Picador. 1992/1998.

“Bad News” (Book 2) by Edward St Aubyn: Patrick, Now a 22-year-old drug addict, in New York City for the Funeral of his Father, has “another bout of compulsive mimicry”

“Patrick [abusing heroin and cocaine], slumped back in the chair…For a moment he fell quiet. But soon a new character installed itself in his body…launching him into another bout of compulsive mimicry” (2, p, 103-122): including “The Fat Man, “Nanny,” “Gary,” and more than five others.

Comment: A history of childhood trauma, memory gaps, and changes in personality suggest multiple personality disorder, not “compulsive mimicry” (which is not a diagnosis). In a novel, a character’s multiple personality may reflect the author’s creative, multiple personality trait. 

And a clinical diagnosis of multiple personality is often missed when there is an easier, more obvious diagnosis like drug abuse.

Finally, as the back cover says, Patrick heard “insistent inner voices.” Search "voices” in this blog for past discussions of this symptom of multiple personality.

2. Edward St Aubyn. Bad News, London, Picador, 1992/1998.