Double Life of Romain Gary and Emile Ajar

Lee, Byung Wook

Abstract

Romain Gary was a famous 20th century French writer. He suffered a self-inflicted gunshot wound one year after his wife's suicide. His death was even more shocking when it was disclosed that he had been living a double life as both Romain Gary and Emile Ajar. At the time, the shock of this finding, resonated throughout French society together with Marxist philosopher Althusser's homicide case. I studied the psychological background of his unusual behavior as well as exploring the process of his development in order to understand this individual. His dramatic and tragic life history seems to be related to an identity crisis and his own inner object relationships. Roman Kachew, who was a Jewish Russian boy, became the famous French writer Romain Gary. Subsequently, he created his secret identity as the writer Emile Ajar. He grew up under the care of a single mother, and while she loved him, her overprotective and controlling nature resulted in the development of his narcissistic ways. Even though he was temporarily depressed after his mother's death, he was more frustrated after the sudden death of his wife, who had been a type of surrogate mother. Perhaps he seemed to wish for his own death as well, complete with all of his identities. He felt that he had failed to maintain his true self as well as his stable object relationships. He was unable to reestablish a new identity and new objects. In other words, it meant that he was never successful in overcoming his everlasting feeling of loss and mourning due to his narcissism and identity confusion. Really his mother was not an ideal being to him, and he ended up being very ambivalent to her. In conclusion his confusion over his identity and his seeking of new objects was illustrated in his taking on various pennames and ultimately, suffereing a self-inflicted gunshot.