(no subject)

[sophiaserpentia]

This morning I'm revisiting an idea I contemplated a little over a year ago -- that 'fragmented personalities' are far more common than any of us suspect. We are used to thinking of "selves" as something that are handed out one to a customer. That is: in popular belief, one body = one self.

I'm no longer convinced that this is how it works at all.

I'm not talking about what the medical community calls Multiple Personality Disorder, though I think that this is possibly only an exaggerated case of what goes on in all of us.

Please bear with any generalities or imprecision in the following questions. This poll is meant to be intuitive and illustrative, not scientific or precise.

To protect anonymity, I am setting this poll so that only I can see the results. I'll post the figures as people reply.

Which of the following, if any, match your experience?

[Poll #199820]

Comments

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

I have never been formally diagnosed with MPD or its newly named incarnation, "DID". However, I know this is just because I am never honest with therapists - and why would I be?
The very "disorder" itself is considered by some to be a hoax, which really pisses me off. The people who come up with this are the same people who write books that says recovered memories are all lies, when amnesia of traumatic events is something that has been recorded for hundreds of years. They also want to pretend childhood abuse doesn't exist, which leads me to believe that they are either trying to hide something (either their own abusiveness or their past experiences they cannot admit to) or they cannot for whatever reason believe the very common tragedy of abuse that impacts so many families and children.
But even beyond the authorized psychiatric view of what the mind "should" be - I don't think people are as singular as they believe. RAW refers to himself in much of his writing by various names, depending on which aspect of himself he was exhibiting at the time: The Skeptic; The Scientist; The Mystic. The Qabalah teaches that there is one god, yet s/he is referred to by a multitude of names depending on the aspect s/he is showing or the capacity in which s/he is moving/acting: there is EHEIEH, the Creator or the I AM; Elohim Gibor, the warlike god form of Geburah; Adonai ha'Aretz, the God-form who rules earthly matters and concerns; yet these are understood to be different aspects of the same deity. If man was created in God's image, we can expect the same diversity within ourselves.

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

Interesting that you brought God-names into this. One of the thoughts I intend to explore with this is the idea that pagan gods relate or reflect different aspects of the psyche, some of which manifest within us. A structured course of deity-invocation -- like pathworkings or "rising through the aethyrs" -- seems to take us through the whole spectrum, as a way of integrating all of these psychic aspects into our individuality.

No monotheistic religion has a single conception of God. Judaism, as you point out, uses different God names. Christianity has at least three (if you exclude qualities like charis and soteria which may be additional aspects of God). Islam has the 99 Names of God.

[azaz-al.livejournal.com]

Ah, the Trinity (more commonly known than the Qabala) is a classic "MPD" version of God... three in one.

I concur on the pagan names and such. I like to lok behind the actual belief in an actual entity known as (insert name of deity) and more into the common human archetypal thinking patterns that give rise to common experiences which are them externalized...