selves to agree

[tessagratton.livejournal.com]

Though you'd all enjoy this peice of art.

The artist has some other really great ones. But this made me think of us. As in, this community.

Melia et al

So apparently, we're not human.

[rabbitsystem.livejournal.com]

I was reading a book today (The Singular Self, Rom Harre) that tries to clarify the meaning of 'self'. Quite apart from my problems with his chain of reasoning, the author also says I'm not real, or else not human.

"Only those human beings who display a single, continuous Self 1 [singularity of point of view] as an aspect of whatever Self Three [the publicly presented self] they may from moment to moment be presenting are to be counted as psychologically normal, perhaps even as persons properly so called."

Excuse me? There's more than just me in this head, so I'm not a person? How did you figure that out?

He appears to regard systems that share memories as even less real that those who don't, on the grounds that to be an 'I' means to have a completely unique autobiography. Well, my autobiography IS unique. Because it's me that's telling it, and because I am not the same person as Ellen whatever he thinks on the matter.

Admittedly he's working from the usual psychiatric 'fragmented singleton with amnesia' model, but that still implies that people brought into being by trauma aren't people. I've shared a head with such people, I KNOW they can be people!

If this is how I'm likely to be regarded I'm never coming out at all.