The central idea of this book by Rita Carter is that most of us are comprised of multiple personalities, but not disordered because these personalities share memories with each other. In what used to be called multiple personality disorder, now dissociative identity disorder, the real problem is that the personalities are disconnected from each other and don't share information. In this book, Carter gives examples of people who are co-conscious of multiple personalities and use that as a strength.
She builds a case for multiplicity as a survival trait in the human species that has become increasingly important as the modern world forces us into diverse roles, often within a single day. For example, you might know a woman executive who is a very different person in her office from the person she is with her young daughter.
Carter writes, "I found that if one thinks of each person as a group rather than as a single, unchanging personality, many familiar but previously puzzling things made much more sense. ... The way we can remember some things at some times and not at others, for instance, is entirely understandable if you think of each person as a vessel in which different personalities-each carrying their own 'bag' of memories-come and go."
Later in the book she acknowledges, "This is not a popular idea. We badly want to think of ourselves as essentially unchanging beings. Useful and beneficial though it might be, our shiftiness makes us uneasy. Hence we embark on an inevitably hopeless and unending quest for our 'real' selves." (p. 35)
She suggests that we view dissociation as a spectrum with normal behaviors, such as being completely absorbed in a task or daydreaming, at one end. In the middle are adaptive behaviors: trance, out of body experiences, detachment in traumatic situations. At the far end are the disordered patterns of dissociation: chronic detachment and compartmentalization -- both of which cause some part of ourselves or all of us to be out of touch with our lives for long periods of time.
She recommends that we start paying attention to the cast
of personalities that make up ourselves and allow them to work to their
strengths. There are many ways to do this. She gives some exercises in the
book. There are also therapies that will open communication internally, like
psychodrama (a word that looks much funnier than it should). Also many shamanic
and indigenous spiritual traditions hold a place for spirit guides or other
aspects of a person's internal power that work well with this idea of
multiplicity as an adaptive human strength.
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