(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

[sophiaserpentia.livejournal.com]

There also appears to be a second axis, perpendicular to the first with internal peace at one end and internal strife at the other.

This is an excellent point. If I had thought to explore that angle the questions asked would be a bit different.


Because of shrink-induced social stigma, many pretend they are one person internally, when they are not.

Indeed. Or, many never think to question the prevailing view.


I strongly feel there is no correlation between one's perceptions of internal persons and so-called "mental illness". However, I do feel that being at war with oneself is perhaps prone to make it very hard to be functional, or love oneself.

I agree heavily. To me the indication of mental illness would not be the presence of internal persons (whole or partial) or other deviations from the "psychic norm" -- but rather the level of peace one is able to find within and without.