November 14, 2005

Multiple Personalities. "Each alter is designed to do a job and only that job. It is endowed with characteristic traits which the Original Personality would have taken on, if it were in charge. The situation can be viewed as operating a doll factory, with only the outfits of clothes being produced. The doll, itself, is not present. The alters are the sets of clothes, but there is no doll inside any of them. Therefore, they cannot grow and change. They can only do what the ISH has programmed them to do."
posted by jeraboam 18 years ago
  • Thinking about this, seems the distressing thing is not that individuals exhibit multiple personalities -- which children playing, novelists, and actors all do at times -- but that the abiltity to consciously shift from role to role becomes impaired, and there seems to be little or no way for the individual to have an overview of his/her internal processes. The concept of 'a self' is more fluid and more frail than many of us understandd, it would seem.
  • One curious thing about MPD or DID, if I remember rightly, is that there seem to have been two big waves of it. Cases were first reported in the literature in the 19th century, rose to a peak, and then died away to nothing again in the early part of the twentieth century. Then in the seventies, cases started to crop up again and the incidence has been growing rapidly more or less ever since. One theory (which I mention with all due diffidence) relates this pattern to popular literature: the current wave began around the time the best-selling books Sybil and The three faces of Eve were published. The nineteenth century wave, of course, followed the publication of The strange case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
  • I can't wait to get multiple personality disorder and be twice the idiot we already am.
  • What a load of cobblers.
  • Who said that?
  • I did!
  • Oh. That's OK then. Sorry.
  • Don't mention it. Fruit pastille?
  • Um...
  • Go on. It's a black one...
  • Well in that case, ta! Yum.
  • I'm Happy I Live In A Split-Level Head Dr. Demento flashback
  • Dead Puppies Pencil-Neck Geek Irving
  • There are too many posters in this thread, and Kitfisto's all of them. But the Quid's comment is hill-are-yus!
  • "What a load of cobblers." Where in that pithy statement Chyren, is Pyrrhonian Skepticism? One is almost disillusioned, and dwells once more upon discomfort and barbed-wire.
  • I was right with him until I found stuff like this in the glossary: CELESTIAL INTELLIGENT ENERGY: Full-time residents of Thoughtspace, nonmaterial beings who have never inhabited human bodies of their own. Called Angels by theologians. SPIRITUAL PROFESSOR OF THE TEACHERS OF THE GUARDIANS OF THE ESSENCES: A CIE who is Project Manager for 250,000 Spiritual Teachers and their Guardians and Essences. More of his "unique" life philosophy is available here. Wonder where this guy's delusions fit in the DSM?
  • I notice petebest is keeping quiet on this one.
  • I notice petebest is keeping quiet on this one. Okay, that one got a laugh out of me.
  • :X
  • I notice petebest is keeping quiet on this one. posted by Plegmund at 07:31AM UTC on November 15, 2005 I notice petebest is keeping quiet on this one. Okay, that one got a laugh out of me. posted by Wolof at 07:59AM UTC on November 15, 2005 :X posted by petebest at 04:53PM UTC on November 15, 2005 How'd you manage to post a reply before the comment which inspired it?!!?
  • ain't tellin'. /theremin