“Trust” (post 1) by Hernan Diaz: a character’s “part” wonders if her father had a dissociative fugue, a symptom seen in multiple personality

“During the war [WWI], Helen had been unable to reach her father at Dr. Bally’s clinic in Switzerland.” Now she learns that he had wandered off and his whereabouts are unknown…There was a “portion of her unaffected by grief…This same part of her also experienced a clear sense of relief from knowing that her father, with his…madness, was gone. But gone where?…Or he could he have recovered somehow and started a new family, dismissing the confused memory of his daughter as one of the hallucinations that had haunted him during his illness…” (1, p. 61).

Comment: Once again, an author assumes that his characters have “parts,” which is a common way for persons with undiagnosed multiple personality to refer to their alternate personalities.

In addition, the scenario of a person’s forgetting who he is, wandering off to where nobody knows him, adopting a new identity, and starting a new family, is a dissociative fugue, which, to a much less dramatic extent, may be seen in fifty-five percent (2, p. 59) of persons with multiple personality disorder (a.k.a. dissociative identity disorder).

But why is there anything at all related to multiple personality in this novel? Perhaps the author has multiple personality trait.

1. Hernan Diaz. Trust. Riverhead Books. 2022.

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

“The Last Thing He Told Me” by Laura Dave: “Parts” and “Witness Protection” as Metaphors for Multiple Personality

Hannah receives a one-line, two-word note, “Protect her,” from her husband, known to her as Owen, implying he is leaving, and that his last wish is that she protect his daughter from a previous marriage: 

“Part of me still wants to hold on to this one last moment—the moment where you still get to believe this is a joke, an error, a big nothing; the moment before you know for sure that something has started that you can no longer stop (1, p. 8).

[When they had first met] “I’m not saying it was love at first sight. What I’m saying is that a part of me wanted to do something to stop him from walking away…” (1, p. 14).

“If a part of you thinks that it will change one day,” he says. That one day this will go away and Ethan [Owen] can come back to you…That’s untenable. These men [gangsters], they don’t forget. That can never happen” (1, p. 280). So the authorities have been recommending Witness Protection, which Hannah has refused.

Comment: From beginning to end of this novel, more than one character expresses the author’s apparent notion that people have “parts,” which, as I’ve discussed in past posts, is a euphemism for alternate personalities.

The recommendations by the police in this novel for “Witness Protection” has made it occur to me that it is a good metaphor for multiple personality, because alternate personalities originate to protect a person who has experienced or witnessed trauma.

1. Laura Dave. The Last Thing He Told Me. New York, Simon & Schuster, 2021.

C. J. Box’s “Open Season”: No multiple personality in his first Joe Pickett novel

1. C. J. Box. Open Season. New York, G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2001.

2. Wikipedia. “C. J. Box.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C._J._Box 

2023 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction awarded to Novelist Hernan Diaz, who is also a biographer of Jorge Luis Borges: Please search “Borges” in this blog

1. Wikipedia. “Hernan Diaz.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernan_Diaz_(writer)

“Lessons in Chemistry” (post 4) by Bonnie Garmus: Is the dog, named Six-Thirty, merely a dog, at the end?

Elizabeth finally meets the long-lost mother of the man she had loved, a woman who is also the grandmother of her beloved daughter. That woman and her lawyer leave the room, and…

“As the door closed behind them, Elizabeth bent down and took Six-Thirty’s head in her hands. “Tell me. How soon did you know?” [that it was actually the long-lost mother of the only man I ever loved].

At two forty-one, he wanted to say. Which is what I plan to call her.

But instead he turned and jumped up on the opposite counter and grabbed a fresh notebook. Removing the pencil from her hair, she took it from him, then opened to the first page.

“Abiogenesis,” she said. “Let’s get started” (1, p. 386).

Comments: Elizabeth’s dog, whose person-like thoughts are evidently heard as voices in Elizabeth’s head, names himself and the long-lost mother according to the hour they first become known. And though, earlier in the novel, readers may regard the dog as amusing, his role on the last page is alter ego or alternate personality, suggesting multiple personality trait of the author.

1. Bonnie Garmus. Lessons in Chemistry. New York, Doubleday, 2022.

Is Elizabeth Holmes (Theranos Business Fraud) “Two Different People” (Multiple Personality), a Criminal Liar, or Both?

“…I realized that I was essentially writing a story about two different people. There was Elizabeth, celebrated in the media as a rock-star inventor whose brilliance dazzled illustrious rich men, and whose criminal trial captivated the world. Then there is “Liz,” (as Mr. Evans and her friends call her), the mom of two who, for the past year, has been volunteering for a rape crisis hotline. Who can’t stomach R-rated movies and who rushed after me one afternoon with a paper towel to wipe a mix of sand and her dog’s slobber off my shoe…”

“…Ms. Sterling said she thought about her friend as two distinct people: There was ‘black turtleneck Elizabeth’ and there was ‘real Elizabeth.’…”

Comment: Today’s New York Times article raises the possibility of multiple personality disorder without explicitly saying so. I have no opinion about this case, either the alleged criminality or the possible mental illness, except to note that The New York Times both raises and avoids the issue.

1. Amy Chozick. "Liz Holmes Wants You To Forget About Elizabeth." 

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/07/business/elizabeth-holmes-theranos-interview.html

“Lessons in Chemistry” (post 3) by Bonnie Garmus: Protagonist’s Dog, “Six-Thirty,” with person-like thoughts, is an Animal Alter(nate personality)

The most famous example of literature with an animal alternate personality is Kafka’s Metamorphosis, which I discussed in a post of 2014:

2014

Kafka’s Metamorphosis: An Animal (Insect) Alter (Alternate Personality) in a Multiple Personality Story

“When Gregor Samsa woke up one morning from unsettling dreams, he found himself changed in his bed into a monstrous vermin” (1), a big insect, and “It was no dream” (1). That is how Franz Kafka’s The Metamorphosis begins.

The story has had numerous and divergent interpretations. However, it is indisputable and well known that Kafka’s Wedding Preparations in the Country contains an earlier, more psychologically-revealing version.

“The Metamorphosis (1915)…borrows heavily from Wedding Preparations. When Raban [a character in the latter] sent his ‘clothed body’ traveling in 1907, he famously wanted to remain in bed and metamorphose into a beetle…We learn in the opening paragraphs of The Metamorphosis that Samsa has worked as a traveling salesman for exactly five years: from precisely the time Kafka wrote most of Wedding Preparations, in 1907, to the year he began The Metamorphosis (1912)” (John Zilcosky) (1, p. 249).

“The image of the beetle first appears in Wedding Preparations in the Country…The hero of the novel, a young man named Raban…enjoys imagining that in order to avoid exertions and discomfort, he splits himself. His authentic self stays home in the form of a gigantic beetle resting in bed. His ‘clothed body,’ literally his façade, staggers out into the world to do the job” (Walter H. Sokol) (2, pp. 165-6).

from Wedding Preparations in the Country:

“And besides, can’t I do it the way I always did as a child when dangerous matters were involved? I don’t even have to go to the country myself, it isn’t necessary. I’ll send [only] my clothed body…For I, I am meanwhile lying in my bed, all covered up with a yellow-brown blanket…As I lie in bed I assume the shape of a big beetle, a stag beetle or a June beetle, I think…The form of a big beetle, yes” (1, p. 67).

Note: “…the way I always did as a child when dangerous matters were involved.” Multiple personality starts in childhood as a dissociative (dividing the self) defense against traumatic experiences. He is saying that, when, as a child, he faced inescapable traumatic experiences, he would psychologically split, leaving an empty shell personality to deal with the trauma, while he imagined himself as a snug, safe, hidden bug. And that, as an adult, he would continue to switch into his bug personality when he had to face bad situations, leaving a sort of empty-suit personality to deal with the situation.

So I guess one day Kafka decided to use the insect personality as the main character of a story. Of course, the literary convention for a split personality or “double” story is to incarnate the alternate personality as a character in its own right, which, in this case, meant an actual insect (an unusually large one with human thoughts).

In real life, have there actually been people who had multiple personality disorder, whose alternate personalities included animal alters? Yes (3). (The cases cited involved people with multiple personality disorder, ones who had histories of extreme trauma, not all the memories of which could be corroborated, as opposed to normal multiple personality, which is discussed in this blog. But the point here is only that people can have animal alters, and there is no doubt about that.)

In conclusion, I have analyzed Kafka’s Metamorphosis from the perspective of Multiple Identity Literary Theory, and found that it is a multiple personality, theme-of-the-double type of story. As has often been the case in this blog, I have used facts that were already known and accepted, but whose significance in terms of multiple personality had not been fully appreciated.

1. Franz Kafka. The Metamorphosis. Translated and edited by Stanley Corngold. New York, Modern Library, 1972/2013

2. Franz Kafka. The Metamorphosis. Translated and edited by Stanley Corngold. New York, Bantam Classic, 1972/2004.

3. Hendrickson KM, McCarty T, Goodwin JM. “Animal Alters: Case Reports.” Dissociation, Vol III, No. 4 (Dec 1990), pp. 218-221.

“Lessons in Chemistry” (post 2) by Bonnie Garmus: Elizabeth Suddenly Dissociates While Discussing Her Daughter’s Day in Elementary School

Elizabeth asks her daughter if she enjoyed elementary school that day. Her daughter says that no one likes school. Elizabeth replies that it surely is possible to enjoy school. Like when you went to college? her daughter asks.

Elizabeth then has “a sudden sharp vision” floating in front of her (1, p. 190). Her daughter asks if Elizabeth is okay, because without realizing it, Elizabeth has covered her face with her hands.

Elizabeth quickly reorients herself and finishes the conversation with her daughter (1, pp. 189-190).

Comment: The above looks like a multiple personality scenario in which Elizabeth switches to an alternate personality with traumatic memories. But why would there be anything suggestive of multiple personality in this novel? Is it part of the plot or part of the author?

1. Bonnie Garmus. Lessons in Chemistry. New York, Doubleday, 2022. 

“Lessons in Chemistry” (post 1) by Bonnie Garmus”: He heard himself say

“Elizabeth Zott,” you’re going to change the world, he heard himself say (1, p. 56).

Comment: If I were cynical, I might say that the above is a psychological manipulation to get readers to think of this novel, and especially this character, as world-changing. But my focus is on the phrase "he heard himself say,” which is a kind of phrase found in many novels. It is commonplace. So why am I making an issue of it?

Because I, myself, never have the experience of hearing myself say things. My hearing is normal, and in that sense, I do hear what I say. But the phrase “he heard himself say” is like saying “In writing this post, I feel my hands hit keys on the keyboard.” Sure, I do, but I wouldn’t bother to say it, because my hands are me. They do not have independent agency.

I would explicitly say that I heard myself say something only if I felt it was, somehow, not the regular, one and only, me, saying it, which would imply that something inside me, but somehow distinct from me—perhaps an alter ego or alternate personality, with, in some sense, a mind of its own—were responsible for saying it.

In short, when characters in novels are said to hear themselves say things, it is probably a reflection of the author’s multiple personality trait.

1. Bonnie Garmus. Lessons in Chemistry. New York, Doubleday, 2022. 

“The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry” by Gabrielle Zevin: Novel’s Gratuitous Implications of Multiple Personality

Margaret Atwood’s Book-Reading Scenario

Judging by Gabrielle Zevin’s portrayal of a book-reading held at Fikry’s bookstore, she may agree with novelist Margaret Atwood’s insight, discussed here in past posts, that all novelists have two personalities—one for dealing with the public, the other for doing the writing—and that people who attend book-readings never see the personality that actually wrote the book. The man who comes to do the reading turns out to be an imposter, while the woman who actually wrote the book attends the event incognito.

Gollum, Protagonist’s Favorite Character 

When Fikry marries Amelia, the publisher’s representative to his bookstore, a joke is made that the girl who is ring-bearer at the wedding serves a very important function. This prompts mention that Fikry’s favorite character from Lord of the Rings is “Gollum” (1, p. 156), a two-name character who, readers may know, is often interpreted as having multiple personality.

Comment: Judging by the above, it would seem that the author had intended to raise the issue of multiple personality. But I have finished this novel and found nothing to confirm that the author had any such intention. 

Why, then, are the above in this novel? They may reflect the author’s own psychology, what I call “multiple personality trait.”

1. Gabrielle Zevin. The Storied Life of A. J. Fikry. Chapel Hill, N.C., Algonquin/Workman/Hachette, 2014. 

“The Divine Comedy (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso)” by Dante Alighieri (1265-1321)

“Dante and Shakespeare divide the world between them—there is no third,” said T. S. Eliot, quoted on the back cover of this 895-page, one-volume translation (1).

I had prepared to read Dante with Reading Dante (2), but have only gotten as far as the preface to Dante’s “Canto I, The Dark Wood of Error” (1, p. 16), which says that Dante will be aided in his quest by Virgil, symbol of human reason, and Beatrice, symbol of divine love.

If I had kept reading, would I have seen Virgil and Beatrice as Dante’s alternate personalities? I don’t know. Would my interpretations have made sense to T. S. Eliot (search him in this blog) and most Dante readers? Probably not. 

So I will keep my 895-page edition of this major classic, and may come back to it, but will not read it at this time.

1. Dante Alighieri. The Divine Comedy: The Inferno, The Purgatorio, The Paradiso. Translated by John Ciardi. New York, The New American Library, 1954/2003.

2. Prue Shaw. Reading Dante: From Here to Eternity. New York, Liveright, 2015. 

Dissociative self-strangulation didn’t register in her consciousness until someone asked her why she did it

“It was a gesture that, as Christina Sharpe puts it, amounted to ‘self-strangulation.’ She was a graduate student in English when it emerged. She would start to talk and then press the thumbs of both hands to her larynx as the rest of her fingers circled the back of her neck — a movement so involuntary that it didn’t even register in her consciousness until someone asked her why she was doing it. ‘I was strangling words before they even left my throat,’ she writes in [her new book] Ordinary Notes” (2).

Comment: Apparently, a dissociated part of her mind had been doing it.

1. Wikipedia. “Christina Sharpe.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christina_Sharpe

2. Book Review. Ordinary Notes. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/19/books/review/ordinary-notes-christina-sharpe.html

Transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney has “dissociative feeling”: Has “dissociative” become a popular word?

“It’s a very dissociative feeling and it was so loud that I didn’t feel part of the conversation,” she added, “so I decided to take a back seat and let them tucker themselves out” (1).

Comment: I'm surprised to see the word “dissociative” used so casually. Has “dissociative”—which I associate with dissociative disorders like multiple personality, also called "dissociative identity disorder"—become a popular word?

1. https://www.wsj.com/articles/transgender-influencer-dylan-mulvaney-speaks-out-after-bud-light-controversy-ec03af8 

“Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret” (post 2) by Judy Blume: New movie of the book acknowledges that Margaret was agnostic

“Puberty provides most of the movie’s outright and tender comedy. But its depths are captured in Margaret’s seeking, in the notion that her No. 1 interlocutor might be a God she’s not even sure exists” (1).

Comment: Since Margaret was agnostic, her conversations with God raised the question of what, psychologically, she was doing. In post 1, I mentioned possibilities, but the book doesn’t address the issue.

1. Movie Review. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/27/movies/are-you-there-god-its-me-margaret-review.html

“One for the Money” by Janet Evanovich: Why does protagonist, Stephanie Plum, have gratuitous, unintentional symptoms of multiple personality?

Memory Gap

“I heard the sirens wailing from far away, getting closer and closer, and the the police were pounding on my door. I don’t remember letting them in, but obviously I did. A uniformed cop took me aside, into the kitchen, and sat me down on a chair. A medic followed…” (1, p. 203).

Comment: Memory gaps are a cardinal symptom of multiple personality, because the regular personality may not remember what an alternate personality did.

Voices

“A little voice in my head whispered to get out of the apartment. Use the fire escape, it said. Move fast” (1, p. 294).

“…and the message came back to me…Do something! (1, p. 300).

Comment: Persons with multiple personality may hear voices of their alternate personalities in their head, sometimes italicized.

Concluding Comment: Since the author did not intend to make multiple personality an issue in plot or character development, the presence of its symptoms in her protagonist is what I call “gratuitous multiple personality,” which is probably in the novel only as a reflection of the author’s multiple personality trait.

1. Janet Evanovich. One for the Money. New York, Pocket Books, 1994/2018.

2. Wikipedia. “Janet Evanovich.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janet_Evanovich

3. Wikipedia. “Stephanie Plum.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephanie_Plum

“Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret” (post 1) by Judy Blume: Conversations with God or a psychological defense?

                          “Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret.

                           We’re moving today. I’m so scared

                           God. I’ve never lived anywhere but

                           here. Suppose I hate my new school?

                           Suppose everybody there hates me?

                           Please help me God. Don’t let New

                           Jersey be too horrible. Thank you” (1, p. 1).

Since Margaret, almost twelve, has a Christian mother and a Jewish father, but has not practiced either religion, her so-called conversations with God may be a metaphor for a psychological defense against adolescent angst.

Only halfway through the book, I don’t yet know whether Margaret is having conversations with an imaginary friend (2) or a “helper” alternate personality (3, p. 109), or whether the novel will provide psychological evidence one way or the other. But I am skeptical that a non-religious person would have conversations with God.

1. Judy Blume. Are you there God? It’s me, Margaret. Richard Jackson/ Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 1970/2014.

2. Wikipedia. “Imaginary Friend.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imaginary_friend

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

April 25: I finished the novel, but have nothing to add.

“Wifey” (post 4) by Judy Blume: From Author’s Introduction to this, her first novel for adults

“I grew up in the Fifties [1950’s], with a mother whose expectations for me didn’t go beyond wanting me to be a good girl. She urged me to get a college degree in education in case, God forbid, I ever had to go to work…

“But by the mid seventies all the rules had changed. I was thirty-seven at the time…And so, in 1975 I left my marriage and set off with my children to find out what I’d missed.

“No, I’m not Sandy, although many of the details of her life come from mine…And I was never married to Norman but I knew plenty of guys like him…

 

“When I look at the book today, I can’t believe how fearless I was in the writing…Maybe I didn’t know enough then to be worried. Maybe I really didn’t care what anyone thought. I just remember this burning inside; this need to get Sandy’s story on paper. I was, after all, raised to be Sandy. I still identify with her…”

1. Judy Blume. Wifey. New York, Berkley Books, 1978/2005.

“Wifey” (post 3) by Judy Blume: Two Conversations Involving Sandy’s Alternate Personality, whose words are Italicized only in the second one 

   “How easy it should be to hate this overconfident, independent woman! How easy to hate this Brenda, who wanted to renew her relationship with Norman on a ‘special occasions’ basis.

   Sandy, you sound jealous.

   I’m pissed, not jealous.

   You could have fooled me!” (1, p. 273).

   (The above is a dialogue in Sandy's mind).

“Was it good with him? [Norman asks]

“Different.” [Sandy replies]

“You always come twice with me.”

“Yes.”

“Did you with him?”

“No.” How about a five-course meal, kid? (1, p. 285)

 (The alternate personality comments at the end.)

Further Comment: In this novel, Judy Blume is quite inconsistent with her use and disuse of italics; and she never notes that some of what is said is probably said by her protagonist’s alternate personality. 

1. Judy Blume. Wifey. New York, Berkley Books, 1978/2005.