The Poet's Mind: John Keats, W. B. Yeats, Emily Dickinson, T. S. Eliot, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, William Wordsworth

Note: Prompted by the observance of National Poetry Month by tomorrow's edition of The New York Times Book Review, I offer this post to quote and discuss these poets' point of view.

“In the letters Keats coined ideas such as the “Chameleon Poet,” which came to gain common currency and capture the public imagination…The poetical mind, Keats argued:

“has no self – it is every thing and nothing – It has no character – it enjoys light and shade…What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion [chameleon] Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity – he is continually in for – and filling some other Body – The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them an unchangeable attribute – the poet has none; no identity – he is certainly the most unpoetical of all God's Creatures” (1).

1. Wikipedia. “John Keats.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats

July 11, 2016

W. B. Yeats, 1923 Nobel Prize winner, hoped his “double” and “anti-self” “Leo” was a genuine spirit, but admitted “Leo” might be “a secondary personality”

“It was at Wimbledon, in 1912, that Yeats felt himself contacted by the spirit claiming to be ‘Leo’…’Leo’…said he had been with Yeats since childhood as his ‘opposite’…’Leo’ thereafter frequently reappeared to Yeats, who was so stirred that he began composing a correspondence with this alternate self…This imaginary dialogue was not wasted. It inspired the great antiphonal poem ‘Ego Dominus Tuus’ written in 1915,” which included the following lines:

“I call to the mysterious one who yet

Shall walk the wet sands by the edge of the stream

And look most like me, being indeed my double,

And prove of all imaginable things

The most unlike, being my anti-self…”

“Yeats freely confessed that his useful sparring partner ‘Leo’ might come from his own imagination. As he explained in 1917 to Sir William Barrett, past President of the Society for Psychical Research, ‘I think one should deal with a control on the working hypothesis that it is genuine. This does not mean that I feel any certainty on the point, but even if it is a secondary personality that should be the right treatment’ " (1, pp. 9-10).

1. Brenda Maddox. George’s Ghosts: A New Life of W. B. Yeats. London, Picador, 1999.

2016

“Emily Dickinson’s Use of the Persona” by John Emerson Todd: But is it more likely that she constructed personae or had alternate personalities?

Todd points out that in many of Dickinson’s poems, the “I” speaking is not Emily. It is a persona. He says she has four kinds: 1. The “Little Girl” Persona, 2. The “Lover-Wife-Queen” Persona, 3. Personae in Death and Eternity, and 4. Personae involving Psychology and the Divided Personality (1). He gives an example of the latter:

“I felt a Cleaving in my Mind —

As if my Brain had split —

I tried to match it — Seam by Seam —

But could not make them fit” (1, p. 83).

Todd uses the word “persona” to imply that Dickinson “more or less consciously adopted” those four kinds of “non-Emily” (1, p. xv) narrators.

But is that how most poems are written? Is that how Dickinson wrote? Where did her personae come from? Did she purposely, intellectually, construct them? I’m guessing that she didn’t construct her personae any more than most novelists construct their characters and narrators.

And that’s the trouble with concepts like persona, voice, alter ego, double, etc.: they are misleading about the creative process and uninformative psychologically. Emily Dickinson probably had alternate personalities.

1. John Emerson Todd. Emily Dickinson’s Use of the Persona. The Hague, Mouton, 1973.

T. S. Eliot: Multiple personality in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” and in Eliot’s real-life identity as “The Captain,” possibly an alternate personality

This post continues my poetry-post retrospective. I want to make it clear that multiple personality is not an isolated quirk of any particular poet.

June 14, 2017

“The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T. S. Eliot: In the first line—“Let us go then, you and I”—the “you and I” may refer to Prufrock’s alternate personalities.

“Eliot offered different identifications. At some time in the 1950s, he answered the enquirer that ‘anything I say now must be somewhat conjectural, as it was written so long ago that my memory may deceive me; but I am prepared to assert that ‘you’ in The Love Song is merely some friend or companion, presumably of the male sex, whom the speaker is at the moment addressing…’ On the other hand, in a 1962 interview, Eliot said that Prufrock was in part a man of about forty and in part himself, and that he was employing the notion of the split personality…

“But the immediate source for ‘you and I’ is likely to have been Bergson’s Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience (1889), published in translation in 1910…In the Essai, Bergson develops the idea of a double self: one aspect being the everyday self, experiencing common reality; the other, a deeper self, attuned to profound truths, and normally in subjugation to the superficial self” (1, pp. 48-49).

“Frederick Locke contends that Prufrock himself is suffering from multiple personalities of sorts…” (2). Laurence Perrine writes "The 'you and I' of the first line are divided parts of Prufrock's own nature” (2).

Comment

Why did Eliot, speaking about the poem in a 1950s interview, have to conjecture and presume what he had meant? Why didn’t he know for certain who “you” is in his poem? And why did he give a different explanation in the 1962 interview? Perhaps different personalities were answering the question in the two interviews. Prufrock.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Love_Song_of_J._Alfred_Prufrock

1. B. C. Southam. A Guide to the Selected Poems of T. S. Eliot, 6th ed. New York, Harcourt Brace, 1996.

2. Wikipedia. “The Love Song of J. Alfred

June 18, 2017

T. S. Eliot: In a secret life, Eliot called himself “The Captain,” who may have been the alternate personality responsible for his pornographic poems.

“The flat Tom rented in early 1923 was to be the hub of his secret life…At Burleigh Mansions he underwent a metamorphosis: here he was no longer ‘Mr. Eliot,’ banker and dutiful husband, but ‘Captain Eliot,’ hero of the Colombo verses, captain of his crew…

“Osbert Sitwell noticed, when he visited Eliot in the ‘bizarre’ atmosphere of the Charing Cross Road flat, that ‘Visitors on arrival had to enquire at the porter’s lodge for ‘The Captain,’…

“ ‘Noticing how tired my host looked, I regarded him more closely, and was amazed to notice on his cheeks a dusting of green powder…I was all the more amazed at this discovery, because any deliberate dramatisation of his appearance was so plainly out of keeping with his character, and with his desire never to call attention to himself, that I was hardly willing, any more than if I had seen a ghost, to credit the evidence of my senses.’

“Osbert was almost ready to disbelieve what he had seen, but he went to tea with Virginia Woolf a few days later. ‘She asked me, rather pointedly, if I had seen Tom lately, and when I said ‘Yes’ asked me—because she too was anxious for someone to confirm or rebut what she thought she had seen—whether I had observed the green powder on his face—so there was corroboration!’ Osbert and Virginia were apparently equally astounded, and although they discussed Tom’s use of cosmetics at considerable length, could find no way of explaining his ‘extraordinary and fantastical pretence’…He remained mystified: Osbert never did discover why T. S. Eliot called himself ‘The Captain’ and wore make-up…(1, pp. 356-358).

“As a student at Harvard, he began circulating his Columbo and Bolo jingles between about 1908 and 1914. For men only, and degrading women, Jews and blacks, they offer the spectacle of a penis so mighty it can rip a “whore” “from cunt to navel”. This revel in violence is varied by the antics of the sex-mad King Bolo and his Big Black Kween, whose bum is as big as a soup tureen…

“At first, when I came upon the Bolovian Court and Columbo and his crew, I assumed that they were a juvenile aberration. The third volume of Letters (covering the period of Eliot’s conversion to the Anglican faith in June 1927) presents a challenge to this. For the obscene verse that Eliot continued to write and disseminate as late as the age of 44 is not, in his own post-conversion view, an aberration” (2).

Perhaps “The Captain” was an alternate personality responsible for Eliot’s Colombo poems.

1. Carole Seymour-Jones. Painted Shadow: The Life of Vivienne Eliot, first wife of T. S. Eliot. New York, Anchor/Random House, 2001.

2. Lyndall Gordon. “T S Eliot and the sexual wasteland.” NewStatesman, 20 November 2015. http://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2015/11/t-s-eliot-and-sexual-wasteland

Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s “The Two Voices” in “The Poet’s Mind” by Gregory Tate: Poem demonstrates “double consciousness,” which means multiple personality

Professor Tate says that Tennyson’s “view of the embodied mind in his early writing, epitomized in ‘The Two Voices’, is of a fragmented and fluctuating compound of mental states whose operations often defy conscious control; a view that was also partly formed through personal experience…

"‘The Two Voices’ comprises a dialogue between a depressed speaker and an insidious inner voice that urges suicide” (1, p. 45).

The poem refers to states of consciousness that differ in what they remember, so that the relation of the poem to the psychological concept of “double consciousness…is evident in the emphasis that both place on the separation of the two states of consciousness through the fragmentation of memory” (1, p. 48).

Double Consciousness

Tate credits the concept of double consciousness to the work of 19th century doctor Henry Holland, who defined it as a condition in which “the mind passes by alternation from one state to another, each having the perception of external impressions and appropriate trains of thought, but not linked together by…mutual memory” (1, p. 48).

Here is another history of “double consciousness”:

“…the term "double consciousness" was applied to cases of split personality; by the late nineteenth century, it had come into quite general use not only in professional publications but also in discussions of psychological research published for general audiences as well…

“In 1817, in a New York professional journal called the Medical Repository, an account headed ‘A Double Consciousness, or a Duality of Person in the same Individual’ made use of the term in a way that remained fairly constant for psychology through the nineteenth century. The account was of a young woman—later identified as Mary Reynolds—who at about age nineteen fell into a deep sleep from which she awoke with no memory of who she was and with a wholly different personality. A few months later, after again falling into a deep sleep, she awoke as her old self. At the time of the 1817 account, she had periodically alternated selves for a period of about four years. As it turned out, this was to continue for about fifteen or sixteen years in total, until in her mid-thirties she permanently entered the second state. Her two lives were entirely separate; while in one, she had no knowledge or memory of the other. Such utter distinctiveness of the two selves was what made the editors of the Medical Repository refer to hers as a case of ‘double consciousness.’

“As a result of the Mary Reynolds case, the term ‘double consciousness’ entered into fairly extensive use. For example, Francis Wayland's influential mid-nineteenth-century textbook Elements of Intellectual Philosophy treated the concept of double consciousness as part of a general discussion of consciousness as such and recounted the Mary Reynolds case along with a few others by way of illustration. An 1860 article in Harper's also focused on the Reynolds case and on double consciousness as a medical and philosophical issue. As a medical term, then, it was hardly confined to the use of medical professionals.

“During the time Du Bois was formulating his ideas of African American distinctiveness, there had been renewed interest in double consciousness as a medical and theoretical issue. Most important for Du Bois was the role of his Harvard mentor William James. James stimulated this interest, not only in his Principles—in describing what he called ‘alternating selves’ or ‘primary and secondary consciousness,’ he drew on a body of contemporary French work which had been widely publicized in the United States as well—but also as a result of his own experience about 1890 with a notable American case of double consciousness, that of Ansel Bourne. James's work with Bourne (whose discoverer, Richard Hodgson, did use ‘double consciousness’ to label the case), as well as the American publication of the French studies on which James drew, occurred at the same time Du Bois's relationship with James was at its closest. Whether James and Du Bois talked about it at the time is impossible to say, but based on Du Bois's use of ‘double consciousness’ in his Atlantic essay he certainly seems to have known the term's psychological background, because he used it in ways quite consistent with that background” (2).

“The Two Voices” (3).

1. Gregory Tate. The Poet’s Mind: The Psychology of Victorian Poetry 1830-1870. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2012.

2. Dickson D. Bruce Jr. “W. E. B. Du Bois and the Idea of Double Consciousness.” http://xroads.virginia.edu/~UG03/souls/brucepg.html

3. Alfred, Lord Tennyson. “The Two Voices.” http://www.philaletheians.co.uk/study-notes/constitution-of-man/the-two-voices-of-lord-tennyson.pdf

William Wordsworth on his Multiple Consciousness: “often do I seem Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself And of some other Being.”

Wordsworth is famous for saying that poetry is “emotion recollected in tranquility,” which is from his Preface to Lyrical Ballads. But he says something quite different in The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet’s Mind; An Autobiographical Poem.

His Preface may be quoted more often than his Prelude, because of prejudice against multiple personality (multiple consciousness).

August 3, 2014

William Wordsworth on his “Two Consciousnesses” and “other Being”

It is natural to believe that everyone has the same sense of self that you do. If you have a single sense of self, then you may suspect that anyone who claims otherwise is joking, lying, or crazy. If you have a multiple sense of self, then you may suspect that anyone who claims otherwise is lying or in denial.

So you might find it interesting to show the following quotation to people you know and get their reactions.

It is from Wordsworth’s The Prelude or, Growth of a Poet's Mind; An Autobiographical Poem, Book Second, School-time (1850 version):

A tranquillising spirit presses now

On my corporeal frame, so wide appears

The vacancy between me and those days

Which yet have such self-presence in my mind,

That musing on them, often do I seem

Two consciousnesses, conscious of myself

And of some other Being.

Wordsworth J, Abrams MH, Gill S (Eds). William Wordsworth The Prelude 1799, 1805, 1850: Authoritative Texts, Context and Reception; Recent Critical Essays. New York, WW Norton, 1979.

August 4, 2014

Wordsworth footnote:

I almost did not write the last post, because the first time I read those lines from Wordsworth’s Prelude, I misread them.

At first, I thought he was making the trivial point that he had seen things differently when he was younger. But rereading, I realized that he was not making that trivial point.

Rather, he is saying that, now, as an adult, he is subjectively aware of two distinct, conscious Beings within him, one of which originated in, and relates to, his childhood; in other words, a child-aged alternate personality (the most common kind of alternate personality, because multiple personality starts in childhood).

Multiple consciousness—each with its own sense of “I”—is the essence of multiple personality. And that is what Wordsworth is describing.

Note: Please excuse some glitches in my reassembling of the above past posts. 

LITERARY CRITICS WITH MULTIPLE PERSONALITY TRAIT

2019

New York Times obituary omits Harold Bloom’s “The Daemon Knows”:  Literary creativity and appreciation depend on alternate personalities

The New York Times obituary for the eminent Yale professor and literary critic Harold Bloom https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/15/books/harold-bloom-appraisal.html fails to mention Bloom’s book “The Daemon Knows,” his theory that literary creativity and his own ability to appreciate literature have been due to alternate personalities, which he calls “daemons,” as I discussed in a past post:

December 11, 2015

"The Daemon Knows" by Harold Bloom: He refers to daemons as supernatural, alternate personalities, who produce and/or appreciate creative works.

“What lies beyond the human for nearly all of these writers is the daemon, who is described and defined throughout this book. The common element in these twelve writers…is their receptivity to daemonic influx. Henry James, the master of his art, nevertheless congratulates his own daemon for the greatest of his novels and tales” (1, p. 4).

“Whitman had no poetic method except his self, though I should say ‘selves,’ as there were three of them: ‘myself, Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs,’ and also ‘the real Me’ or ‘Me myself,’ and the nearly unknowable ‘my Soul’ “ (1, p. 54). “The ‘real Me’ or ‘Me myself’ is an androgyne, whereas the persona Walt is male and the soul is female” (1, p. 57).

But Whitman said that he had more than three personalities:

“Do I contradict myself?

Very well then…I contradict myself;

I am large…I contain multitudes” (1, p. 68).

“Shakespeare entertained a bevy of daemons: Hamlet, Falstaff, Iago, Cleopatra, Macbeth among them. They did not possess him, though Hamlet and Falstaff edged closest. It is a nice question whether daemonic Ahab possessed Melville. The twelve great writers centering this book were all possessed…” (1, p. 122).

“Where is Melville the man in Moby-Dick? Split at least three ways (Ishmael, Ahab, narrator), he is somewhat parallel to Whitman, who in 1855 also is tripartite…” (1, p. 125).

“Daemonic agency is the hidden tradition of American…narrative (Poe, Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, James, Faulkner)…In narrative, the protagonists are possessed by daemons, conquistadores somehow ordering a chaos of unruly other selves” (1, p. 135).

“The obscure being I could call Bloom’s daemon has known how it is done, and I have not. His true name (has he one?) I cannot discover, but I am grateful to him for teaching the classes, writing the books, enduring the mishaps and illnesses, and nurturing the fictions of continuity that sustain my eighty-fifth year” (1, p. 156).

Hart Crane…Like John Keats, he had a truer sense of other selves than most of us can attain” (1, p. 158).

“Emerson, a scholar in the broadest sense, formulated what he chose to call ‘the double consciousness’ " (1, p. 165). Search “double consciousness” in this blog.

“I conclude by expressing a lifelong sense of personal gratitude to Hart Crane, who addicted me to High Poetry. He taught me that my own daemon desired that I read deeply, appreciate, study, and clarify my response to his work. In doing so, my long education began and is ongoing” (1, p. 496). 

1. Harold Bloom. The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime. New York, Spiegel & Grau, 2015.

Comment: Do literary critics often overlook symptoms of multiple personality in literature, because it seems to them like ordinary psychology?

ANOTHER OLD POST NEW VISITORS ARE READING

2016

Basic Kinds of Alternate Personalities; Why People Fail to Recognize Multiple Personality When They See It; and Why People Who Have It, Deny It.

Each person with multiple personality is unique. But here is a brief review and general framework.

Host Personality

This is the regular personality, the one who uses the person’s regular name, and who is out, in control, most of the time. The host is often a single, specific, fairly robust personality. In novelists, this might be the personality who does interviews, but who may have little or nothing to do with the actual writing. Indeed, the host may know little or nothing about the alternate personalities.

(However, in some people, the “host” is a group of personalities who take turns in various social situations. In other people, the host is just facade or puppet, whose strings are pulled by other personalities from behind the scenes. As I said, each person with multiple personality is unique, and there are innumerable possibilities.)

Alternate Personalities (“Alters”)

All the other personalities—who, like characters in novels, may range in number from a few to a cast of thousands—are called “alternate personalities” or “alters.” But the word “alternate” is misleading if it makes you think that only one personality is conscious at a time.

All personalities are conscious, simultaneously. However, only some personalities are conscious of each other. As I said above, the host may not be conscious of the alters, but that does not mean the alters are unconscious. I am not conscious of your thoughts, but that does not make you unconscious.

How do I know that alters, when they are not out and in control, are conscious? Because when I interview the host of a person who has multiple personality, and then the person switches to an alter, the alter may know everything that I was just discussing with the host, and can tell me things that the host had done, which the host had not told me, but which the host later confirms.

And how do I know that the host may not be conscious of the alter? Because when the person switches back from the alter to the host, the host may have no knowledge of the alter or what was said—the host has a memory gap—and the host will insist that the whole idea of their having alters or multiple personality is unbelievable. And if I confront the host with the fact that the clock is a half hour later than it was, to their knowledge, a moment ago, they will reply that they sometimes “lose time,” but it’s nothing new, and in their opinion, proves nothing. [I don't use hypnosis or drugs in any of these interviews.]

Protectors and Persecutors

Many of the alters may be off in their own realms—like J. M. Barrie’s Peter Pan and the lost boys who never grow up, who are usually off in Neverland—and they are not aware, or only intermittently aware, of the host and everyday life. But for some alters, it is their business to monitor the host and current situation, because they are protectors or persecutors of the host.

The “Mr Hyde” alter, mentioned in yesterday’s post, would be one type of persecutor. Another type would be one who tries to kill the host, behavior which would outwardly appear to have been an attempted suicide. That’s why you have to ask people who attempt suicide if they actually remember the attempt. If they really don’t remember, it may be because you are speaking to a host, while the suicide attempt was, psychologically speaking, an attempted murder by a persecutor alter.

Protector personalities monitor the host so that they can take over if the host is threatened. When a generally peaceful person has a history of violent episodes, you have to ask if they actually remember the violence.

It may often be the case that persecutor personalties originated as protector personalities, who, over the years, have gotten angry that the host is such a wimp.

Child-aged Personalities

Multiple personality begins in childhood (as a way to cope with traumatic experiences) and some alters never grow up, which is why Peter Pan is so obviously a multiple personality story. Search J. M. Barrie in this blog.

Observing or Supervisory Personalities

There may be a personality who has wide knowledge of the whole system of personalities or who is a sort of guru or muse. These kinds of personalities—sometime called “internal self-helpers” or ISH’s—although wise, often do not have the power to control behavior or boss other alters.

Special Interest Personalities

Most personalities have characteristic emotions or interests. Some alters may always be joking, others tearful. Alters may specialize in marriage and family life, playing the piano, or writing novels.

Names

Personalities may be named or nameless. Some names are quite distinct from each other, while other names may appear to be insignificant variations: Annie and Anne may be two different alters.

Named alters are very attached to their names. The surest way to get an alter’s attention is to address that alter by name. Pseudonyms are an illustration of the importance that alters place on their names. Some writer-alters insist on publishing under their own name (pseudonym). Or the regular writer-alters want to distance themselves from the other alter’s genre.

Mostly Behind the Scenes

The greatest misconception about multiple personality is the expectation that, if a person had multiple personality, it would be obvious, that you would see the person flip from one personality to another, like in the movies or a video.

But all you are likely to see is the host personality, and when alters do come out, they usually do so incognito (answering to the host’s name). They don’t want you to know it is them, raise questions, and interfere. Also, they may not want news of their existence to get back to the host.

Most alters, most of the time, are conscious and aware, but behind the scenes. The only times that a person with multiple personality will obviously flip from one personality to another like you see in a video is when they are either in a crisis or are doing it after being diagnosed, for an educational demonstration.

People with multiple personality frequently deny it…

The host personality may not know that they have alters. All they may know is that they occasionally lose time and have memory gaps, and that things happen which nobody else could have done, but they don’t remember doing it. And because the memory gaps make no sense to them and usually cause no serious problems, they may come to forget that they even have them (“amnesia for their amnesia”).

Meanwhile, the alters, who see themselves as people in their own right, not as alternate personalities, do not agree with a diagnosis of multiple personality. Indeed, persecutor alters may think they are so distinct from the host that they can kill the host and go on living.

It is typical for people with blatant multiple personality—who have just been observed to switch personalities, carry on a conversation under a different name, reveal facts that can be verified, but which the host does not know about, then switch back to the host, who has amnesia for the switch and conversation—to adamantly deny that they have multiple personality.

…or call it something else

People with a normal version of multiple personality often do know, to some extent, that they have alternate personalities, but they usually don’t call them alternate personalities or think of it as multiple personality. Euphemisms include alter ego, muse, shadow, character, pseudonym, voice, narrator, double, double consciousness, imaginary companion, waking dream, and daemon, or, in Henry James’s phrase, “the madness of art.”

TWO OLD POSTS NEW VISITORS HAVE BEEN READING

July 4, 2019

“Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury (post 2): Novel about “man falling in love with books” reflects author’s multiple personality

The title is the temperature at which books burn. The protagonist, Guy Montag, is a fireman of the future, when the job of fire departments is to set fire to, and destroy, the homes of people who own books, most of which are illegal.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451

Author’s Comment

“I’m a preventer of futures, I’m not a predictor of them. So Montag is myself running through the future, as afraid as I am at times…And along the way, meeting other people who are really myself…

“And all this goes back into my own background…I’m a library-educated person; I’ve never made it into college. When I left high school, I began to go to the library every day of my life…And my books are full of libraries and librarians and book people…I have written a book about a man falling in love with books” (1, pp. 195-196).

Gratuitous Multiple Personality

In my previous post on Bradbury, I quoted a poem by him, which is a virtual declaration that he had multiple personality. And I was curious to see whether it would be reflected in his best-known novel, Fahrenheit 451.

The novel makes no mention of multiple personality. It is not necessary to the plot. But the following descriptions of characters’ thoughts, behavior, and subjective experience are typical of multiple personality.

“‘What?’ asked Montag of that other self, the subconscious idiot that ran babbling at times, quite independent of will, habit, and conscience” (1, p. 8).

“He felt his body divide itself into a hotness and coldness, a softness and a hardness, a trembling and a not trembling, the two halves grinding one upon the other” (1, p. 21).

“Montag had done nothing. His hand had done it all, his hand, with a brain of its own, with a conscience and a curiosity in each trembling finger, had turned thief” (1, p. 35).

“But that was another Mildred [Montag’s wife], that was a Mildred so deep inside this one, and so bothered, really bothered, that the two women had never met” (1, 49).

“Montag’s hands picked up the Bible. He saw what his hands had done and he looked surprised” (1, p. 84).

“Montag felt himself turn and walk to the wall slot and drop the book in through the brass notch to the waiting flames” (1, p. 97).

Several of the above are made actions, in which persons feel that they are made to act in certain ways. If persons feel they were made to act that way by an outside force, then it may be psychotic. But if, as in the above examples, they feel they were made to act against their will, or in an out-of-character way, by something inside them, then it is probably an alternate personality, pulling the strings from behind the scenes.

1. Ray Bradbury. Fahrenheit 451 [1953]. 60th Anniversary Critical Edition. New York, Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 2013.

June 12, 2019

“Praise Other Me” by Ray Bradbury: Acknowledges and Gives Credit to His Alternate Personality

I do not write—

The other me

Demands emergence constantly.

But if I turn to face him much too swiftly

Then

He sidles back to where and when

He was before

I unknowingly cracked the door

And let him out.

Sometimes a fire-shout beckons him,

He reckons that I need him,

So I do. His task

To tell me who I am behind this mask.

He Phantom is, and I facade

That hides the opera he writes with God,

While I, all blind,

Wait raptureless until his mind

Steals down my arm to wrist, to hand, to

fingertips

And, stealing, find

Such truths as fall from tongues

And burn with sound,

And all of it from secret blood and secret soul on

secret ground

With glee

He sidles forth to write, then run and hide

All week until another try at hide-and-seek

In which I do pretend

That teasing him is not my end.

Yet tease I do and feign to look away,

Or else that secret self will hide all day.

I run and play some simple game,

A mindless leap

Which from sleep summons forth

The bright beast, lurking, whose preserves

And gaming ground? My breath,

My blood, my nerves.

But where in all that stuff does he abide?

In all my rampant seekings, where’s he hide?

Behind this ear like gum,

That ear like fat?

Where does this mischief boy

Hatrack his hat?

No use. A hermit he was born

And lives, recluse.

There’s nothing for it but I join his ruse, his game,

And let him run at will and make my fame.

On which I put my name and steal his stuff,

And all because I sneezed him forth

With sweet creation’s snuff.

Did R.B. write that poem, that line, that speech?

No, inner-ape, invisible, did teach.

His reach, clothed in my flesh, stays mystery;

Say not my name.

Praise other me.

Ray Bradbury. “The Other Me.” In Zen in the Art of Writing. Santa Barbara, Joshua Odell Editions, 1994, pp. 162-164.

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

Will Smith (post 4): Memory Gap vs. Justification for slapping master of ceremonies at Academy Awards might depend on which personality you asked

A personality who had not given the slap might know about the slap from what people have said, but might have a memory gap for the actual slap.

He might not admit the memory gap, fearing he’d be called a liar (as he was in childhood) (post 1) unless he believed you’d keep it confidential.

However, the personality who did give the slap—perhaps “the General” (post 3)—would not have had a memory gap and might even give a justification for the slap.

“Will” a memoir by actor Will Smith (post 3): He is helped, but misdiagnosed, by a Jungian therapist

Near the end of this memoir, in a chapter titled “Surrender,” Will Smith has hit bottom.  He is very successful, but very unhappy.  So he sees a Jungian therapist who refers to his nice-guy “persona” as “Uncle Fluffy,” and its “shadow counterpart” as “the General” (1, pp. 379-381).  Jungian therapists would not recognize this as multiple personality, because Jung, himself, had multiple personality, but was in denial, as I discussed in a past post:

December 6, 2015

C. G. Jung’s Memories, Dreams, Reflections: A psychiatrist who had multiple personality and who built a psychological theory partially based on it.

Carl Gustave Jung (1875 -1961) is of interest here for three reasons: First, Jungian therapists have a tradition of treating creative artists. Second, Jung described himself as having a normal version of multiple personality, and some of his psychological theory is based on his own psychology. Third, I like to give examples of successful people, and not just novelists, who have had multiple personality.

In his autobiography, Jung explicitly describes himself as having more than one personality since childhood:

“Then, to my intense confusion, it occurred to me that I was actually two different persons. One of them was the schoolboy who could not grasp algebra and was far from sure of himself, the other was important, a high authority, a man not to be trifled with…This ‘other’ was an old man who lived in the eighteenth century…I began pondering these isolated impressions, and they coalesced into a coherent picture: of myself living in two ages simultaneously, and being two different persons” (1, pp. 33-35).

Since he continues to function well, he infers that he does not have a medical illness, multiple personality disorder, but rather a normal psychological phenomenon. He is right, except when he assumes that everyone has normal multiple personality (most people don’t):

“The play and counterplay between personalities No. 1 and No. 2, which has run through my whole life, has nothing to do with a ‘split’ or dissociation in the ordinary medical sense. On the contrary, it is played out in every individual. In my life No. 2 has been of prime importance, and I have always tried to make room for anything that wanted to come from within. He is a typical figure, but he is perceived only by the very few” (1, p. 45).

It is true that many people with multiple personality don’t realize it, but it is going too far to say that everyone has it (most people don’t).

“…I once asked myself, ‘What am I really doing? Certainly this has nothing to do with science. But then what is it?’ Whereupon a voice within me said, ‘It is art.’ I was astonished. It had never entered my head that what I was writing has any connection with art. Then I thought, ‘Perhaps my unconscious is forming a personality that is not me, but which is insisting on coming through to expression…I said very emphatically to this voice that my fantasies had nothing to do with art, and I felt a great inner resistance…Then came the…same assertion: 'That is art.’ This time I caught her and said, ‘No, it is not art!'…and prepared myself for an argument…She came through with a long statement…Later…I called her the ‘anima’…I felt a little awed by her. It was like the feeling of an invisible presence in the room…” (1, pp. 185-186).

1. C. G. Jung. Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Recorded and Edited by Aniela Jaffé. Translated by Richard and Clara Winston. Revised Edition. New York, Vintage Books/Random House, 1961/1973.

Comment: Treatment for multiple personality is more effective when the therapist knows how to diagnose and treat it.

1. Will Smith. Will a memoir by the actor, written with Mark Manson. New York, Penguin Press, 2021.

“Will” a memoir by actor Will Smith (post 2): Method acting gets out of control, probably due to multiple personality trait

Will Smith was to play the part of Paul in the movie Six Degrees of Separation…“This character was so drastically different from who I was” that “During the months of my preparation, I would spend four or five days at a stretch without breaking character. Not once, not one moment…

“It was fun…at first. But then slowly, and imperceptibly, I lost touch with my own likes and dislikes, I lost access to the intonation and rhythm of my own speech — I lost touch with Will Smith. Sheree [his wife] started to say things like, ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ and ‘Stop talking like that.’…Sheree was suddenly living with a stranger…

“I had lost touch with Fresh Prince [his character in his TV series based on his Grammy award-winning fame as a hip-hop recording star]…I had lost my sense of humor, my timing, my swag, my charisma…Cast and crew alike were terrified…So I hired five or six of my friends from Philly [his home city of Philadelphia] to surround me…It worked by around mid-season” (1, pp. 225-228).

1. Will Smith. Will a memoir by the actor, written with Mark Manson. New York, Penguin Press, 2021.

“Will” a memoir by actor Will Smith (post 1): As in multiple personality, childhood reputation as compulsive liar, and imaginary friend with own mind

“As a child, I would disappear into my imagination…I developed a reputation in the neighborhood as a compulsive liar. My friends felt like they could never trust what I said. This is a strange quirk about me and continues to this day…what the other kids didn’t understand was that I didn’t lie about my perceptions, my perceptions lied to me.

“A lot of kids go through the imaginary-friend phase — usually between four and six years old…The imaginary friend wants whatever the child wants, hates what the child hates…But Magicker was different…He was a full-blown person…Magicker had distinct preferences and opinions…Sometimes he would disagree with me…he’d make me go outside when I didn’t want to. He had strong ideas about certain types of food…Even as I’m sitting here recalling our relationship, I’m thinking, Damn it, Magicker, this is my imagination!

“And if my mother wasn’t making any headway with me, she’d talk to Magicker instead” (1, pp. 21-22).

Search “liar” and “imaginary” for relevant past posts.

1. Will Smith. Will a memoir by the actor, written with Mark Manson. New York, Penguin Press, 2021.

“Educated” by Tara Westover (post 4): “I was two people, a fractured mind”

At the end of this memoir, the author explains why she was finally able to break away from the malignant influence of her father.  In the past, when she would visit his home, she would look into a mirror there, but this time “I was unable to climb through the mirror and send out my sixteen-year-old self in my place.  Until that moment she had always been there…I was still her.  At best I was two people, a fractured mind.  She was inside, and emerged whenever I crossed the threshold of my father’s house.  That night I called on her and she didn’t answer…She stayed in the mirror” (1, pp. 328-329).

Persons with multiple personality may see alternate personalities when they look in the mirror.

Search “mirrors” for past posts.

1. Tara Westover. Educated (a memoir). New York, Random House, 2018.

“Educated” by Tara Westover (post 3): A person may have more than one valid diagnosis

The author’s own main diagnosis is that she had been uneducated, and that its main cure was that she became educated.  My main diagnosis is that she had a posttraumatic condition, multiple personality, which included memory gaps, impersonations (alternate personalities), and now arguing voices:

“I searched my mind and discovered a new conviction there: I would never be a plural wife [polygamy]. A voice declared this with unyielding finality; the declaration made me tremble. What if God commanded it? I asked. You wouldn’t do it, the voice answered. And I knew it was true” (1, p. 246).

1. Tara Westover. Educated (a memoir). New York, Random House, 2018.

“Educated” by Tara Westover (post 2): At Cambridge University, Tara has a memory gap and looks like she is impersonating someone else

My professor said to me, “I have been teaching at Cambridge for thirty years…and this is one of the best essays I’ve read”…and he “must have said more about [my] essay but I heard nothing…I don’t remember leaving the clock tower, or how I passed the afternoon” (1, p. 240).  Another professor later said to me, “You act like someone who is impersonating someone else” (1, p. 242).

Comment:  In multiple personality, when an alternate personality takes over, it may look like another person who is impersonating (looks like) the regular person, because, obviously both personalities have the same body.

1. Tara Westover. Educated (a memoir). New York, Random House, 2018.