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Populär Culture Review
Mort’s unbearable guilty conscience towards John Kintner that was only
triggered by Amy’s disloyalty.
As Mort’s memory weakens, his state of fiinctional amnesia following
the violent acts increases. He suffers from “temporarily impaired consciousness”
(Cartwright 1149) during which his fear of memory activation is cut off. As a
result, the writer lives in total denial of his dark half. His inability to remember
his deeds, in combination with his absolute unawareness of being “both great
good and profound evil” (Moskowitz 23) is disclosed in his repetitive questions:
“If I did all that, why can’t I remember? ... Why can’t I remember even nowT
(King, Window 241). Mort’s mental confusion is indicative for the young
author’s highly developed DID, which allows “a disruption in the usually
integrated functions of consciousness, memory, identity, or perception of the
environment” (Moskowitz 23). In these dissociative States, Mort’s once familiär
environment transforms into an unfamiliar place filled with hypnopompic and
hypnagogic images.5 Mort’s attempts to escape from reality by accessing the
land of dreams, in combination with his suffering from DID, psychogenic
amnesia, and identity alterations, prove that he is suffering from both normal
and pathological dissociative States6 during which he finds himself involved in
actions of which he later does not have any recollection.
Progressing Self-alienation Towards Self-dissolution
Ignorant about his true seif, Mort Rainey misperceives his unease as
Professional unproductiveness, bad marriage, sexual betrayal, alcohol, low selfesteem, an “un-woman smell” (King, Window 310) in the house, or simply as
John Shooter whom he understands as “a donkey to [be used to] pin this rotten,
stinking tail on” (King, Window 261). In projecting his unknown sensations that
provoke his sincere inner tumult on the outside, he not only objectifies and shifts
his responsibility of dealing with these inner disturbances on his companions but
also detaches himself from everything familiär. Hence, he experiences selfalienation and the incapability of self-definition. The resulting inner conflicts
manifest themselves in the character’s change of physical appearance and
psychological temper, which is representational for an unconscious
extemalization and projection of his usually well-repressed inner conflict at
whose core is the defmition of identity.
As a consequence, Mort lets love tum into disgust and hatred, beauty
into horror, total silence into mysterious noises, and sanity into madness. Mort
changes into “some stranger who [looks] like Mort (