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[unsane1]

Healthy multiplicity:

Some people who self-identify as having multiple personalities contend that it is not a disorder, but a natural variation of human consciousness. They believe that so long as communication and (especially) cooperation between selves are present, multiples can lead happy and productive lives, and that it is not necessary for

Comments

[hermajestyq]

I've heard about this viewpoint before. I'm still highly skeptical as to whether Multiple Personality Disorder (Dissociative Identity Disorder) even exists. Granted, I haven't exactly researched the topic, but it seems pretty counterintuitive. Why would we have evolved to black out and repress memories of traumatic experiences? It would seem much more adaptive to remember such events so we could avoid them in the future. Add that to the fact that nearly all cases were discovered when the patient was under hypnosis and that somehow, miraculously, all known patients manage to be seen and discovered by a few select doctors, despite the fact that it's an exceedingly rare disorder.

Also, I'd very much like to debate someone who thinks that the work of William James hinted at the existence of multiple selves. Jung maybe (but even then only in the most abstract way), but not William James.

[xenophile]

Maybe we just haven't yet evolved the hardwire to easily handle the stress of such trauma, and for the time being we split up...

[hermajestyq]

On the other hand, though, we have people with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, which is a much more researched and validated mental disorder. Patients with PTSD seem to have the opposite problem--intrusive flashbacks of the traumatic event. These "flashbulb" memories make sense based on the way our brain encodes event memories.

No doubt individuals will respond differently to traumatic experiences. The multiple personality idea doesn't seem to me to have any sort of basis in neurology, however. I'm just not convinced our brains are set up to respond that way without conscious will and training (like that which would occur when a person convinces himself he has DID or when or when he is convinced of such by a therapist).

[unsane1]

The person that wrote that bit about William James (and the whole original article in fact, 2 years ago) just got banned from editing wikipedia for a year. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Zeraeph They might be easy to contact, they seem to be the only person to use that nick on the internet.

If you're convinced the reference is wrong and are well-informed on his writing i suggest you edit James' name out of that line from the wikipedia article.