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[hexpiritus.livejournal.com]

"The style of resolution of inner conflicts is one of the strongest features of personality.

It is a common myth that each person is a unity, a kind of unitary organization with a will of its own. Quite the contrary, a person is an amalgamation of many subpersons, all with wills of their own. The "subpeople" are considerably less complex than the overall person, and consequently they have much less of a problem with internal discipline. If they are themselves split, probably their component parts are so simple that they are of a single mind-- and if not, you can continue down the line. This hierarchical organization of personality is something that does not much please our sense of dignity, but there is much evidence for it."

-from Mind's I: Fantasies and Reflections on Self and Soul, specifically in a section written by Douglas Hofstadter (physicist, and professor of Cognitive Science, Computer Science, History, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and Psychology)

(x-posted)

Comments

[pengke.livejournal.com]

They're not talking about multiplicity. They're talking about the different aspects of someone's personality and how they can be in conflict. This guy is just taking it a step further and theorizing that everyone makes committee decisions with themselves.

I don't get why multiples always jump on these things. It's like pointing to inner child work as an example of multiplicity. They're not the same things. Even when the psychologists and philosophers are talking about multiplicity, they always get it wrong and turn it back into everyone in the system really being part of a whole which reflects to people having many aspects of their personality.

[duathir.livejournal.com]

Yes. I often find that I am not 'of a single mind' - that my will and my desires conflict; that my judgement of people and circumstances varies according to my mood or perspective; that it is difficult to determine a course of action and hold to it without wavering. But this has nothing to do with my Kin, who have their own inner conflicts to resolve.

[hexpiritus.livejournal.com]

The paragraph also suggests that even the various people in a system can also have their own inner conflicts, which may or may not split them, and divide they themselves into multiplies-- at least, that's how I interpreted. If I'm sincerely wrong and have read too much into this paragraph, then I can simply delete it.

You're missing the import of what he's saying

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

He saying he isn't split off, or a part of a gestalt whole. He's saying he is his own gestalt whole. He's saying he isn't a subperson to a person, but a person himself.

You don't have to believe him, or delete anything, but try to understand what he and others have been communicating. This paragraph works for you, great. It doesn't work for him, or others, also great. You thought some people might find it relevant, and some might. It looks like at least one median has found it semi-relevant. There's no need to delete it.

--Me

Re: You're missing the import of what he's saying

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Kír says thank you; that that's exactly what he meant.

I can say this: there's many times when all three of us are solidly in agreement, and at such times we're still three distinct persons - as much as any three people in separate bodies would be. There's times we have to work out a compromise, like any three people in separate bodies. And there's times when compromise doesn't happen, so one, two, or all three of us don't get what we want, and we have to hash it out and make up later.... like any three people in separate bodies.

Yeah, I've got subroutines, subpersons, the traditional Id/Ego/Superego thing or the Transactional Analysis Child/Parent/Adult thing, or the Jungian Anima/Animus thing, and archetypes, literary muses, fictional characters of my own devising that sometimes do things I didn't expect... all that. But none of that has anything to do with my 'brothers', who've got 'all that' of their own.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Remind me one of these days to write up my rantlet on my personal experience being a very complex singlet and being misinterpreted (miscast?) as multiple.

[hexpiritus.livejournal.com]

Hrmm, I didn't get that from that paragraph. He didn't say anything about "aspects" of personality, he specifically referred to "people" with "wills of their own".

Though I disagree with his generalization that ALL people work in this gestalt formation, I do believe there's more than one type of multiple system out there, just like there are various type of unitary personalities. Or are you suggesting perhaps there is only one true form of multiplicity? If so, what is it?

[kiya]

For what it's worth, we'd consider the quoted bit a decent, if a touch pejorative, description of our (median-type) system. We're probably a touch more distinct, complex, and individual than Hofstadter would expect, but as a model it's not wrong, just a touch on the "insufficiently correct" side.

I strongly suspect that each of us is slightly more . . . focused? than we'd be independently; whether this is our nature or simply because others handle things we'd otherwise have to do individually I don't know. I suspect some of both; I mean, if Silver didn't have the rest of us she'd need to learn to talk.

I thought as much

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

However, I didn't want to say, because I'm far from an expert. It did seem to have a similar gist to it, as the experience medians have described.

--Me

[pengke.livejournal.com]

He's quite clearly talking about subsets of a whole person. He's not talking about actual people. The wills of their own is not referring to people with a consciousness of their own but instead is referring back to his comment about conflict. It is similar to the idea of the subconscious mind being able to act and coordinate complex behavior without involving conscious thought.