Caroline, Jansy,
Please forgive my intrusion here, but wouldn’t multiple personality disorders be categorized more as forms of psychosis than neurosis? I always thought forms of derangement from the actual as severe as MPD would be diagnosed as psychotic following the unwritten rule that neurotics know that something is the matter while psychotics either don’t know or are at least severely mistaken about their condition.
“It is possible to suppress knowledge of a language, especially one learned in early childhood, and it is also possible to suppress one's homosexuality.”
Possibly, perhaps, but to what end? I don’t understand why an actual psychiatric patient would contrive such a complicated and nihilistic dodge.
Best,
Andrew
On 10/9/06 3:00 PM, "Carolyn Kunin" <chaiselongue@EARTHLINK.NET> wrote:
>
> Andrew Brown noted three clear points:1. " Shade suppressing a knowledge of
> Russian as well as his homosexuality is an awful lot of suppressing" ;jansy
Dear Jansy,
From what I understand of the phenomenon, multiple personality disordered folk (you and I agree that true multiples are a rarity*) actually do "an awful lot of suppressing." It is their uncanny ability to do just that which distinguishes them from the run of the mill neurotic. It is possible to suppress knowledge of a language, especially one learned in early childhood, and it is also possible to suppress one's homosexuality.
Carolyn
*see especially Ian Hacking's book on the subject
Search the Nabokv-L archive at UCSB <http://listserv.ucsb.edu/archives/nabokv-l.html>
Contact the Editors <mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu>
All private editorial communications, without exception, are read by both co-editors.
Visit Zembla <http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm>
View Nabokv-L Policies <http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm>