Selection of Fiction Writers to Illustrate Multiple Personality Trait

Almost all the writers I discuss in this blog are either commercially successful or award-winning, because I don’t want you to think it is unusual or odd to find writers with multiple personality trait.  In fact, it is more likely to be found in successful and award-winning writers, including 33 winners of the Nobel Prize in Literature, because the trait is an asset for fiction writing.  I wonder if the people who award literary prizes know this.

33 Winners of Nobel Prize in Literature in Past Posts

1. Saul Bellow (1976)

2. Pearl Buck (1938)

3. J. M. Coetzee (2003)

4. Bob Dylan (2016)

5. T. S. Eliot (1948)

6. William Faulkner (1949)

7. William Golding (1983)

8. Knut Hamsun (1920)

9. Ernest Hemingway (1954)

10. Hermann Hesse (1946)

11. Kazuo Ishiguro (2017)

12. Rudyard Kipling (1907) 

13. Selma Lagerlof (1909)

14. Doris Lessing (2007)

15. Naguib Mahfouz (1988)

16. Thomas Mann (1929)

17. Gabriel Garcia Marquez (1982)

18. Czeslaw Milosz (1980)

19. Patrick Modiano (2014)

20. Toni Morrison (1993)

21. Alice Munro (2013)

22. V. S. Naipaul (2001)

23. Eugene O’Neill (1936)

24. Orhan Pamuk (2006)

25. Harold Pinter (2005)

26. Luigi Pirandello (1934)

27. Jose Saramago (1998)

28. Jean-Paul Sartre (1964)

29. Isaac Bashevis Singer (1978)

30. John Steinbeck (1962)

31. Olga Tokarczuk (2018)

32. Patrick White (1973)

33. W. B. Yeats (1923)

“The Christie Affair” by Nina de Gramont

In this novelization of Agatha Christie’s famous 11-day disappearance, the narrator assumes Agatha hears multiple personality voices, an apparent reflection of the author’s own psychology.

“No, no, no, no.”

“Who hasn’t heard that word…rebelling against events unfolding against our dearest…wishes?”  The narrator assumes Agatha was hearing these voices in regard to her imminent divorce from her husband…

“Agatha gave herself over to utter collapse — falling into…wounded pieces” (1, pp. 51-52).

Parts or “pieces” may be a euphemism for alternate personalities.  Voices heard by sane persons may be voices of alternate personalities.

1. Nina de Gramont. The Christie Affair. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 2022.

NOTE: The rest of the novel did not hold my interest.

FUGUES: a common symptom of multiple personality

“Multiple personality is the ultimate dissociative disorder… Patients do not, however, usually first present with complaints directly referable to dissociation.  On the contrary, in many cases it requires several months or more before the patient will begin to discuss these symptoms with the therapist.  Amnesia or ‘time loss’ is the single most common dissociative symptom in MPD (multiple personality disorder) patients.  The NIMH (National Institute of Mental Health) survey study found that the most commonly reported dissociative symptoms in MPD patients were as follows: amnesias (98%), fugue episodes (55%)” (1, p. 59)…

“Fugue-like experiences are common in MPD.  They range from minifugues, in which the patient loses only brief amounts of time and travels short distances, to extensive fugues, in which the patient may ‘wake up’ in another state or country.  In most cases, it is the host personality who ‘comes to’ and is baffled by the situation” (1, p. 77).

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

Lee Child’s Jack Reacher “Said Nothing” (1, pp. 26,32,49,78,80) 

In the subtitle of this blog, I ask readers to submit comments, but you, like Jack Reacher, have said nothing.

However, Reacher is sometimes quite talkative.  So if he visited this blog, he might have many comments.  You, too.  Please, do.

1. Lee Child. No Middle Name: The Complete Collected Jack Reacher Stories. New York, Dell, 2018.

“To Kill a Mockingbird”: Harper Lee’s “Go Set a Watchman” (1950’s) revealed racism and multiple personality behind her “To Kill a Mockingbird” (1960)

2018 (post 1)

Since Go Set a Watchman (mid-1950s) was written before, and was revised under editorial guidance into what became To Kill a Mockingbird (1960), the former may be a less polished, but more authentic, reflection of the author.

In this novel, twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise returns home from New York City to Alabama to visit her aging father, Atticus, and also to renew her romantic relationship with Henry Clinton, who says to Jean Louise:

“You’re a Jekyll-and-Hyde character” (1, p. 47).

“In the years when he was away at the war and the University, she had turned from an overalled, fractious, gun-slinging creature into a reasonable facsimile of a human being. He began dating her on her annual two-week visits home, and although she still moved like a thirteen-year-old boy and abjured most feminine adornment, he found something so intensely feminine about her that he fell in love” (1, p. 13).

“ ‘Want to drive?’ said Henry. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said. Although she was a respectable driver, she hated to operate anything mechanical more complicated than a safety pin: folding lawn chairs were a source of profound irritation to her; she had never learned to ride a bicycle or use a typewriter” (1, p. 11).

At age eleven, when she got her first menstrual period, “It had never fully occurred to Jean Louise that she was a girl: her life had become one of reckless, pummeling activity; fighting, football, climbing…and besting anyone her own age in any contest requiring physical prowess.” And so she felt “a cruel practical joke had been played upon her: she must now go into a world of femininity, a world she despised, could not comprehend…” (1, p. 116).

“Go Set a Watchman” by Harper Lee (post 2): Jean Louise’s multiple personality indicated by her dissociative fugue after finding father racist.

Twenty-six-year-old Jean Louise is shocked, disillusioned, angered, and nauseated—she literally vomits—when she discovers that her idolized father, Atticus, is a racist.

However, in view of the obvious racist hierarchy of their community, and how freely Atticus and her other close relatives acknowledge their racist attitudes, I think that the only way Jean Louise could not have been aware of her family’s racism would have been for her to have compartmentalized awareness of it in an alternate personality. But that is just my opinion.

The main textual evidence for her multiple personality (aside from her duality, described in the previous post), is her dissociative fugue:

She thinks to herself, “Two solid hours and I didn’t know where I was.”

And when her Aunt asks her where she has been, she replies, “I—I don’t know” (1, pp. 120-121).

Search “fugue” and “dissociative fugue” for previous posts on this common symptom of multiple personality.

I would also interpret the episode at the end of the novel—when her uncle convinces her not to leave town and not to estrange herself from the family—as further evidence of multiple personality, because both his backhand to her mouth (p. 260) and his giving her whiskey appear to have changed her mind not by intimidation or intoxication, but by altering her state of consciousness (pp. 262, 269) and causing a switch to a more pliant personality.

1. Harper Lee. Go Set a Watchman. New York, Harper, 2015.

Multiple Personality: Not Crazy

Multiple Personality, called “Dissociative Identity” in the diagnostic manual, DSM-5 (1), is not a psychosis, because persons who have it can distinguish subjective and objective reality.  But their subjective reality, like virtual reality, can feel more real than objective reality.  So when a person seems crazy, but is not crazy, consider multiple personality.

1. American Psychiatric Association: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition. Arlington, VA, American Psychiatric Association, 2013.

Inconsistency in Novels: Writers are more than one writer

“Can a great book be badly written?…Yes, many pages in Faulkner’s most celebrated novels are atrociously written…” (1).

Also search “split inconsistent narrative.”

1. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/books/review/pankaj-mishra-by-the-book-interview.html

Multiple Personality begins with surprisingly widespread childhood trauma...

…and since childhood trauma has a wide range of severity, and children differ in their use of dissociative, split personality, defenses, multiple personality has a wide range, from multiple personality trait to multiple personality disorder.

Here is recent news on widespread childhood trauma:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/03/world/asia/new-zealand-child-sexual-abuse.html

Flagrant Lies as a symptom of multiple personality

One question to screen for multiple personality: Did you have a reputation as a liar when you were a child?  A child may get that reputation when an alternate personality is seen doing things that the host personality later denies (due to a memory gap for the witnessed behavior).

Preposterous lies may also occur when the person is an adult if an alternate personality has a fixed belief.  For example, an alter may believe he is a winner who can never lose and that, if he ever loses, it must be that he was cheated.  His host personality may know very well that he lost, but his winner personality may take control and insist that he won.

Another example is an abuser personality who assaults his wife, but his loving personality denies that he would ever do such a thing, or that something must have come over him, because he really loves his wife and would never hurt her.  And his loving personality may be so sincere that his wife forgives him.

Tricksters (post 2) and Multiple Personality

As noted in post 1, a trickster is a “shape shifter,” who switches into different personifications or alternate personalities.  Are both Trump and Putin shape shifters in that sense?

Trump calls Putin “shrewd” (tricky): What is a Trickster? (post 1)

The trickster is a “boundary-crosser,” “shape shifter,” “the patron of thieves and the inventor of lying” (1).

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

Self-contradictory people (post 2): Hypocrites

Not all hypocrites have had multiple personality, but if I were looking for historical people whose self-contradictions might have reflected multiple personality, I would start with hypocrites (1, 2).

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

2. Hypertexts. “Famous Hypocrites.”

http://www.thehypertexts.com/Famous%20Hypocrites%20Infamous.htm

Self-contradictory people: Which ones have multiple personality? (post 1)

Multiple personality is usually hidden behind a facade called the “host personality,” which is a consistent personality designed to deal with the public and most social situations.  The two most common indications that alternate personalities are behind this facade are memory gaps and remarkable self-contradiction.

You will usually never know that a person has memory gaps unless you ask them.

You will usually never know that a person is remarkably self-contradictory unless you know enough about them and see them in different situations.  For example, you may never discover alternate personalities who play the piano or write poems if you never see them in their private hours when they play the piano or write poems.  And you may be puzzled when a person has contradictory political views or behavior at different times.

Once it is known that a person has memory gaps or remarkable self-contradiction, an expert interview can contact the person’s alternate personalities.

Vladimir Putin (previously a spy), John le Carré (author of spy novels), and the connection between spying and multiple personality

Search “spy” for several relevant past posts.

Lisa Gardner: New York Times’ new interview and my past post on her multiple personality novel, “Catch Me”

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/24/books/review/lisa-gardner-by-the-book-interview.html 

2016

The Bestselling D. D. Warren thriller “Catch Me” by Lisa Gardner: Three characters have multiple personality, but D. D. is not particularly interested.

Charlene is a young woman who, as a child, had suffered horrendous physical and emotional abuse by her mother. Since then, she has had the memory gaps—search “memory gap” and “memory gaps”—typical of multiple personality: She says, “Time escapes me, days, weeks. Entire conversations with my best friends…” (pp. 100-101).

Christine, Charlene’s mother, now deceased, but often referred to in flashbacks and retrospect, is described as “powered by madness” (p. 7), “crazy” (p. 101), “Munchausen’s by proxy” (p. 171), “psychopath” (p. 270), and having “psychosis” (p. 349). “She’d been insane in the truest sense of the word. Unpredictable, unstable, unreliable. Driven by wild ambitions and deeper, darker bouts of despair. She loved, she hated” (p. 354). The Munchausen’s diagnosis is not a psychosis and is applied incorrectly to the behavior described. Psychopath is different from both psychosis and Munchausen’s. In short, there is no consistent, serious attempt to understand the nature of the mother’s disturbed behavior.

Detective O, who has joined D. D.’s detective squad in this novel, is eventually discovered to be Charlene’s long lost younger sister, Abigail, and  also a serial murderer. (Charlene had been the primary suspect.)

Detective O is the one who suggests that Charlene has “multiple personalities.” And as noted above, Charlene does have multiple personality. But that is mostly forgotten about when it is discovered that she is not the serial killer.

The real serial killer has left written notes with the victims that have two messages, one in regular ink and the other in disappearing ink. The two messages are contradictory and written in different handwritings, which suggests that the murderer has multiple personality.

In short, both sisters, Charlene and Detective O/Abigail, are found to have multiple personality. But this is mostly forgotten about once the murders are solved.

Moreover, there are indications that the mother had multiple personality, too. In the novel’s Prologue, six-year-old Abigail is described as trying to cope with one of her mother’s episodes of violent, delusional behavior. Abigail's pleas with “mommy” to stop are to no avail, so she changes the way she addresses her mother as follows:

“Christine!” [said the little girl] changing tactics…”Christine! Stop it! This is no time to play with matches!”…Her mother blinked…She stared at her daughter, right arm falling lax to her side…Her mother stared at her. Seemed confused, which was better than crazy” (pp. 5-6).

What appears to be happening is that the mother’s craziness is the behavior of an alternate personality who had some name other than Christine. Since, in multiple personality, the most effective way to prompt a switch in personalities is to address the person by the name of a different personality, when the girl addresses her mother as “Christine,” that causes a switch to the mother’s regular personality, Christine, who was confused to find herself in a situation that she didn’t remember getting into. Unfortunately, this tactic worked only temporarily, and the mother switched back to the disturbed personality.

In short, there is good reason to believe that three characters in this novel have multiple personality: both sisters and their mother. This is two more than is necessary for a multiple personality plot gimmick. So even if D. D. Warren is not that interested in multiple personality, Lisa Gardner may be.

1. Lisa Gardner. Catch Me. New York, Dutton/Penguin, 2012.

“Saturday” (post 2) by Ian McEwan (post 8): Protagonist’s wife’s late mother is named like a writer’s alternate personality

“Marianne Grammaticus was not so much grieved for as continually addressed…The death was too senseless to be believed — a late-night drunk jumping traffic lights… — and three years on…Rosalind didn’t accept it.  She remained in silent contact with an imaginary intimate” (1, p. 48).

1. Ian McEwan. Saturday. USA, Doubleday/Random House, 2005.

Added same day: I found nothing further of relevance.

Ian McEwan (post 7): “Saturday” begins with protagonist’s auditory hallucinations and small memory gaps, suggestive of multiple personality

The first six posts on this writer (search “Ian McEwan”) were mostly on his novel Enduring Love.  In Saturday, the neurosurgeon protagonist has this:

“Patients would be less happy to know that he’s not always listening to them.  He’s a dreamer sometimes.  Like a car-radio traffic alert, a shadowy mental narrative can break in, urgent and unbidden, even during a consultation.  He’s adept at covering his tracks, continuing to nod or frown or firmly close his mouth around a half-smile.  When he comes to, seconds later, he never seems to have missed much” (1, pp. 19-20).

Unless you ask people about such experiences, they will not report them, because it has been routine and has not caused them problems.  Since the author is probably not intending to portray the protagonist as having multiple personality, the above probably reflects the author’s own psychology.

1. Ian McEwan. Saturday. USA, Doubleday/Random House, 2005.

“Whose Body?” by Dorothy L. Sayers (conclusion): Lord Peter Wimsey proves to be no Sherlock Holmes

At the beginning of the novel, the author thinks Wimsey has two selves, one of which is a deductive detective like Sherlock Holmes (1, p. 4).  But he proves to be more intuitive than deductive (1, p. 91).  For the details of the case, the author and the reader must rely on the confession by the murderer (1, pp. 129-140).

1. Dorothy L. Sayers. Whose Body? Mineola, New York, Dover Publications, 1923/2009.

“Whose Body?” by Dorothy L. Sayers: Lord Peter Wimsey introduces himself as a man of two selves, who wear different attire

One self is “the amateur of first editions.” His “other self” is “Sherlock Holmes, disguised as a walking gentleman” (1, p. 4).

The author could have said he was one man with two interests.  Instead, she said he was one man with two selves, each of which had its own interest and attire, like alternate personalities.  Assuming she did not intend to portray him as having multiple personality, why did she describe him this way?  It is what I call “gratuitous multiple personality” and is probably reflective of the author’s own psychology.

1. Dorothy L. Sayers. Whose Body? Mineola, New York, Dover Publications, 1923/2009.