“Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir” by Irvin D. Yalom: Author eavesdrops on his characters

Like a novelist with “multiple personality trait,”—my name for the mentally well, creative version of multiple personality disorder (a.k.a. “dissociative identity disorder,” common among fiction writers, as discussed in this blog—Dr. Yalom experiences person-like entities inside him that seem to have minds of their own (the definition of alternate personalities):

“I have often heard writers say a story writes itself, but I hadn’t understood it until then. After two months, I had an entirely new and deeper appreciation of an old anecdote that Marilyn [his wife] had told me years before about the English novelist William Thackeray. One evening, as Thackeray came out of his study, his wife asked how the writing had gone. He responded, ‘Oh, a terrible day! Pendennis [one of his characters] made a fool of himself and I simply could not stop him.’

“Soon I became used to listening to my characters speaking to one another. I eavesdropped all the time—even after finishing the day’s writing, when I was strolling arm in arm with Marilyn on one of the endless buttery beaches. Before long I had another writerly experience, one of the peak experiences of my life. At some point while deep into a story, I observed my fickle mind flirting with another story, one taking shape beyond my immediate perception. I took this to be a signal—an uncanny one, to myself from myself—that the story I was writing was coming to an end and a new one was readying for birth…” (1, p. 227).

1. Irvin D. Yalom. Becoming Myself: A Psychiatrist’s Memoir. New York, Basic Books, 2017/19.