Alice Munro, 1931-2024

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/books/alice-munro-dead.html

2019

Alice Munro: Retraction of hypothesis that Nobel Prize short-story writer’s inability to write novels is due to her not having multiple personality

I have just read two of Alice Munro’s favorite short stories, and they both feature unlabeled, unacknowledged symptoms of multiple personality.

“Royal Beatings”

The main characters are a family of four: the father (nameless), Flo (stepmother), Rose (adolescent daughter from father’s first marriage), and Brian (half brother).

In many past posts, I have discussed the association between namelessness and multiple personality (search “nameless” and “namelessness”). That association is confirmed in this story by the following passing remark about the father: “The person who spoke those words and the person who spoke to her as her father were not the same, though they seemed to occupy the same space” (1, p. 4).

Moreover, after her father gives Rose a “royal beating” at the instigation of her mean stepmother, the family can soon sit down together in peace, almost as if nothing had happened. Rose grows up in a multiple personality family.

“The Beggar Maid”

Rose (now a college student) suggests that her boyfriend, Patrick, might have been the unidentified person who had grabbed her leg in the library: “He did not think it would be funny. He was horrified that she would think such a thing. She said she was only joking…‘You know [Rose says], if Hitchcock made a movie out of something like that, you could be a wild insatiable leg-grabber with one half of your personality, and the other half could be a timid scholar’ ” (1, p. 38). When a character makes a multiple personality joke, the issue has been on the author’s mind.

At another time, Rose hears voices: “Some outrageous and cruel things were being shouted inside her. She had to do something to keep them from getting out. She started tickling and teasing him [Patrick]” (1, p. 42). Nonpsychotic people who hear voices probably have multiple personality. Rose is probably hearing the voice of an alternate personality.

Soon Rose is sexually aggressive, in both words and behavior, in ways that her host personality finds out-of-character: “She had never said anything like this before, never come near to behaving like this” (1, p. 43). An alternate personality had temporarily taken control of her overt behavior.

The couple gets married, divorced, temporarily reconciled, and estranged in the years that follow. When she sees him at the airport many years later, he is unalterably against a reconciliation, but she could go either way.

In short, I see Rose as having multiple personality trait, which originated in childhood to cope with the inconsistency and beatings from her nameless, multiple personality father.

In conclusion, I can’t attribute Alice Munro’s self-claimed inability to write novels to her not having multiple personality trait, since two of her favorite short stories suggest that it is an issue.

1. Alice Munro. Carried Away: A Personal Selection of Stories. New York, Everyman’s Library/Alfred A. Knopf, 1977/2006.

“Memory Man” (post 3) by David Baldacci: Super Hero concept (“Memory Man”), bolstered by science (“high-functioning acquired savant”), suggestion of Multiple Personality psychology (“Jekyll-Hyde”), as quoted in post 2 (1, pp. 146-150)

What is your opinion of the above issues in this novel?

1. David Baldacci. Memory Man. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2015.

“Memory Man” (post 2) by David Baldacci: Amos Decker as Mr. Hyde

“I’m a high-functioning acquired savant…The injury on the field had ended forever his football career, but had given him one of the most exceptional brains in the world…the odds being somewhere around one in a billion…It was like a stranger had stepped into his body and taken over, and he could do nothing to get him out…A Jekyll and Hyde. Only Jekyll was gone and would not be coming back” (1, pp. 146-150).

Comment: How did the author create his protagonist? He starts with an extremely unlikely head injury and concludes with a metaphor for multiple personality, because multiple personality is much more common than one in a billion. And the name “Mr. Hyde” raises the question of whether the author secretly thought of him as a hero or villain.

1. David Baldacci. Memory Man. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2015 

“Memory Man” (post 1) by David Baldacci: Amos Decker thought his brain “seemed to have a mind of its own”

Decker, a 42-year-old detective, is preoccupied with the fact that someone has just confessed to the unsolved murder of his family—wife, daughter, and brother-in-law—several years ago.

“He wanted to see this guy. Smell this guy. Size him up…He was thinking back to what he once was [before his ability to work and function had markedly deteriorated, in reaction to the murder of his family]. He thought about this often, even when he didn’t want to. Sometimes, most of the time, the decision wasn’t up to him. It was up to his brain, which, ironically enough, seemed to have a mind of its own” (1, p. 30).

Comment: The essence of alternate personalities in multiple personality is that they seem to have minds of their own, which was the essential finding in a study of how fiction writers experience their characters (2). 

Thus, the author, David Baldacci, while highlighting his protagonist’s “hyperthymesia” (he never forgets anything) (1, p. 30), has also, perhaps unintentionally, given him the psychology of fiction writers, which is the psychology of multiple personality trait, my own interpretation of that study (2).

1. David Baldacci. Memory Man. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2015.

2. Marjorie Taylor, Sara D. Hodges, Adèle Kohányi. “The Illusion of Independent Agency: Do Adult Fiction Writers Experience Their Characters as Having Minds of Their Own?” Imagination, Cognition and Personality, Vol. 22(4) 361-380, 2002-2003.https://pages.uoregon.edu/hodgeslab/files/Download/Taylor%20Hodges%20Kohanyi_2003.pdf 

“Mean Streak” by Sandra Brown: Italics & Namelessness

Two Uses of Italics

1.“Push on, Emory. Place one foot in front of the other. Eat up the distance one yard at a time” (1, p.1): Third-person voice in her head, probably from an alternate personality.

2. “How much farther to go? God, please not much farther” (1, p. 2): First-person thoughts of her regular personality, with italics used only for emphasis.

Nameless Hero

For much of this novel, the big, strong, invincible hero, who rescues and romances Emory, a pediatrician, refuses to disclose his name. Reasons are given for hiding his identity, but they may be rationalizations. His name is eventually disclosed.

Comment: Namelessness, a recurring subject in this blog, is common in multiple personality:

“Many personality systems will have one or more “unnamed” personalities…Most of the “unnamed” personalities will turn out to have names as the therapy progresses. Many alternate personalities are unwilling to reveal their names early in the course of therapy, because this knowledge allows the therapist to call them out. It is important to learn each personality’s name and to use it in working with that personality as part of the patient’s system. Chapter Six covers ways of learning about the names and functions of the alternate personalities in a patient’s personality system” (2, p. 117).

Gratuitous symptoms of multiple personality in a novel probably reflect the author’s multiple personality trait, a creative asset.

1. Sandra Brown. Mean Streak. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 2014.

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

“The Three Faces of Don” by Maureen Dowd: Multiple Personality Origin of The Title of Her Essay About Donald Trump in Today’s New York Times (1, 2)

1. Maureen Dowd. “The Three Faces of Don”

 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/04/opinion/donald-trump-time-magazine.html

2. Wikipedia. “The Three Faces of Eve” 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Three_Faces_of_Eve

Added May 6, 2024: Since multiple personality is rarely mentioned in the New York Times, I doubt that the allusion was serious and intentional, but I have no way of knowing.

“The Black Echo” (post 3) by Michael Connelly: Unintentional Symptoms of Multiple Personality

“Rourke…moved in close and put the barrel of the gun against Bosch’s forehead” (1, p. 444). The protagonist, Detective Harry Bosch, seemingly on the verge of being shot dead, didn’t know if he could hang on much longer: “But from somewhere a voice told him to hang in” (1, p. 446).

Since the two men appeared to have been isolated in the dark tunnel, I had initially wondered if Bosch were hearing a comforting voice of an alternate personality in his head.

The true situation is eventually, but tentatively, clarified: “There was another light in the tunnel and he thought he heard a voice, a woman’s voice, telling him everything was okay. Then he thought he saw Elinor Wish’s face, floating in and out of focus. And then it sank away into inky blackness. That blackness was finally all he saw” (1, p. 448).

Comment: At first, Bosch seemed to have had two symptoms of multiple personality: 1. Hearing the voice of an alternate personality in his head, and 2. a blackout or memory gap.

But the next day he will wake up in a hospital, treated as having had physical trauma. I suspect that character development had temporarily gotten away from the no-nonsense image of the protagonist that the author had intended to project; so, then, in effect, he says, just kidding.

1. Michael Connelly. The Black Echo. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 1991.

“The Black Echo” (post 2) by Michael Connelly: Bosch is Described as Alternating, a Word Suggestive of Alternate Personalities

Michael Connelly describes his protagonist as alternating between the attitudes of detective and lover when he is on a stake-out with his FBI partner, Eleanor Wish, to whom Bosch is attracted:

“For the rest of the night Bosch thought alternately of Eleanor Wish” (1, p. 405) [and what they were supposed to be there to watch].

Comment: Why didn’t the author simply say that Bosch was distracted by a “mixture” of feelings, which he might have been if he had only one personality with more than one facet? It is very unusual to describe a character as alternating, per se, unless that character has multiple personality.

1. Michael Connelly. The Black Echo. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 1991.