Multiple Personalities and Pastiches: Proust père et fils

IT HAS BEEN SOME TIME SINCE PSYCHIATRY, followed by the mass media, rediscovered a syndrome that kept specialists in various dis- ciplines, including philosophy, in suspense even at the turn of the century: multiple personality disorder. The genealogy and archaeology of this oddly “literary” illness seem not yet sufficiently linked to cultural and literary history, despite the contributions of scientific theorist Ian Hacking in describing the appearance, reappearance, and disappearance of double and multiple personalities, and their metamorphoses.