The Mind Creative FEB 2014
Recently biographer Andrew Norman, a former doctor, believes the
novelist was in a fugue state, or, more technically, a psychogenic
trance; a rare, deluded condition brought on by trauma or
depression, which may also have led the writer and actor Stephen
Fry to travel to Bruges in 1995 without leaving word with his friends
or family.
According to Norman, “This kind of fugue state, which is much better
understood these days, fits the symptoms that Christie showed
during her stay in Harrogate.” In his book, The Finished Portrait,
Norman says that her adoption of a new personality (she took the
name Teresa Neele) and the failure to recognise herself in newspaper
photographs were signs that the novelist had fallen into a
psychogenic amnesia after a period of depression. “I believe she
was suicidal,” said Norman. “Her state of mind was very low and she
writes about it later through the character of Celia in her
autobiographical novel, Unfinished Portrait.”
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