How many 'you's do you know?

[CodeOmega0]

My sister-in-law has done a lot of studies on multiple personality disorder [having known someone with it] and has told me all about how everyone HAS different 'selves' within themselves. [Oh god, this is getting confusing already.]

Let me explain by telling you of all of the selves I know. [and yes, they have names]

Steven: The Naive One. My parents named me Steven because of the first martyr in the bible. He is usually the one who is 'out' when talking to them. He is a good Christian little boy. Never does anything wrong, and will get QUITE offended if you call him out on something that another 'self' did.

Axel: The asshole. This is the self that comes out with my closest friends, and who I think I am most like as a whole. He is sarcastic as FUCK. He will step on toes to get something done, and he has to come 'out' whenever shit hits the fan. Usually a bad idea to have him work at my job. Steven doesn't want to get fired.

Alex: The hard worker. Alex usually works well with others. Can keep his mouth shut when needed, and has a good eye for what needs to be done. This is my generic go-to self when I'm in a work-environment and just have to go with the flow.

Jacob: The gay one. Jacob is the only one who identifies himself with a sexuality, and it's gay. Obsessed with personal appearance, and has a good eye for decorating. [Yeah, when he's gay, he's GAY. -Axel] Usually won't come out with other people, except online.

These are the main ones that I know of. As you can see even there, Axel has a hard time with Jacob because Axel thinks he's too manly to be gay, but doesn't have any interest in girls himself, so must resort to poking fun at Jacob. I realize that this is self loathing and whatever, but it does help me to start separating them mentally so that they can talk to each other.

Uses:
Once you realize some different personalities within yourself, you can start to use them more properly. Certain situations call for certain personalities and while others COULD fill in, it's probably not for the best. I.E. Don't have your douche bag personality talk to your girlfriends parents the first time you meet them. Let your suck-up personality do that. It's not lying if that's what that one specific personality believes....

At least, that's what Axel tells me.

 

[ProxyAmenRa]

I can tell you my mood alters but that is about it.

 

[Jean Paul]

^

 

[Yet]

I thought MPD is no more, just like 'hysteria' it is an 'old fashioned' diagnose, past century stuff.

http://www.skepdic.com/mpd.html

what is very likely though is that some people are more adaptive/sensitive to environmental cues (or brain-chemical cues) and that has an impact on their personality (and vivid imagination)

 

[socialexpat]

Your id card must be big, with all those names ahah.
You should become an actor and i think you wouldn't be doing bad at all...
As for multiple personalities .. Don't have a lot of knowledge about it and can't say i have them, but it is pretty normal to find yourself a bit diffirent in diffirent situations as a situation can't be the same.

 

[shoeless]

um, well of course i have different personality "manifestations" (for lack of a better word) when i'm around certain people (ie, my boyfriend as opposed to my brother) but i wouldn't go as far as to call them different mes or name them or anything.

i think most people experience what you're talking about to some degree (a "work" personality, an "authority/person of respect" personality, a "friends" personality, etc) but yeah. it's just the same person in different social situations.

at least that's how i see it.

 

[Trebuchet]

I thought MPD is no more, just like 'hysteria' it is an 'old fashioned' diagnose, past century stuff.

Check out this website, which has a bunch of articles (including on multiplicity) by a group that calls themselves Astraea. They did not suffer any kind of childhood tragedy, they are just that way naturally. They argue that psychologists have it all wrong, but multiplicity is real.

I approve of your skepticism, though in cases where I have no way to test someone else's experience, I default to taking people at their word. I can always change my mind later if more evidence appears. So for now, I use the assumption that multiplicity is a real thing.

Like most of the others, here, for me it is just mood changing. I shift to a new persona, but not a new person.

 

[Dr. Freeman]

I know "me" and ANGRY ME!

 

[Zionoxis]

Wouldn't those multiple personalities you speak of be referred to as emotions? Of course when you are pissed off, you act like a different person. We subconsciously try to mold ourselves to look better to our peers. It is a natural tendency, but I would not go so far as to state that everyone has different 'selves'. The examples you stated above are two dimensional characteristics having one emotion. If you are to truly have different selves, each 'self' much have its own unique method of dealing with ALL of the emotions.

Also, these selves must be ready to come out completely independent of the person you are with. Otherwise, the personality is dependent on your company and therefore was picked by your subconscious. If it was picked by your subconscious, it is still an extension of you.

My other theory is pure insanity.

P.S. The 'uses' you are mentioning could be used in another fashion. You could pretend to be a different person in front of your girlfriend's parents, or you could just not ACT like a douche bag.

 

[Stoic Beverage]

I act extremely differently based on who I'm around, but I wouldn't call "them" separate names. "We" all share ideas and opinions, and the lines between "them" can be very blurred at times.
Because of this, I've given all of my personalities the same name.

I was being Stoic Beverage when typing this, by the way.

 

[xbox]

Haha there's:

1. the quiet me in social situations who doesn't open my mouth to engage in petty and useless small talk, and doesnt understand why petty and useless small talk isn't considered rude, when it makes complete sense in my mind.


2. then there's the slightly talkative me only when I feel like it when the subject appeals to me, and after careful consideration of who the people surrounding me are, and assessment of the situation, and debating in my mind whether or not I should even contribute to the conversation.


3. then there's the sarcastic me who deliberately pisses people off with random offensive comments, for the sake of my own entertainment, where the result is people hating me because I'm so 'intimidating' or people love me for my 'blunt honesty'.

 

[s0nystyle]

It is more or less "a mask for every occasion"? A somewhat unique facade for varying situations, but i think they all share a common attributes, "cracks within the facade" if you will that reveal one's true inner persona. I think this would be true for a most individuals since different situations require different sets of skills and if one is not inherently good at something, why not creating a new "you" who is?

 

[WSidis]

To the OP: I like your ideas. I'm going to need to take a while to observe myself and account for all my personalities. How long did it take you to define each of yours?

 

[Doodle]

My sister-in-law has done a lot of studies on multiple personality disorder [having known someone with it] and has told me all about how everyone HAS different 'selves' within themselves. [Oh god, this is getting confusing already.]

Let me explain by telling you of all of the selves I know. [and yes, they have names]

Steven: The Naive One. My parents named me Steven because of the first martyr in the bible. He is usually the one who is 'out' when talking to them. He is a good Christian little boy. Never does anything wrong, and will get QUITE offended if you call him out on something that another 'self' did.

Axel: The asshole. This is the self that comes out with my closest friends, and who I think I am most like as a whole. He is sarcastic as FUCK. He will step on toes to get something done, and he has to come 'out' whenever shit hits the fan. Usually a bad idea to have him work at my job. Steven doesn't want to get fired.

Alex: The hard worker. Alex usually works well with others. Can keep his mouth shut when needed, and has a good eye for what needs to be done. This is my generic go-to self when I'm in a work-environment and just have to go with the flow.

Jacob: The gay one. Jacob is the only one who identifies himself with a sexuality, and it's gay. Obsessed with personal appearance, and has a good eye for decorating. [Yeah, when he's gay, he's GAY. -Axel] Usually won't come out with other people, except online.

These are the main ones that I know of. As you can see even there, Axel has a hard time with Jacob because Axel thinks he's too manly to be gay, but doesn't have any interest in girls himself, so must resort to poking fun at Jacob. I realize that this is self loathing and whatever, but it does help me to start separating them mentally so that they can talk to each other.

Uses:
Once you realize some different personalities within yourself, you can start to use them more properly. Certain situations call for certain personalities and while others COULD fill in, it's probably not for the best. I.E. Don't have your douche bag personality talk to your girlfriends parents the first time you meet them. Let your suck-up personality do that. It's not lying if that's what that one specific personality believes....

At least, that's what Axel tells me.

Dude it sounds like your schizophrenic

 

[nanook]

i did that for a while, 2002-2003. giving them names. it was an important step in my development. i went as far as openly expressing myself like that in the social phobics self help group i went to, at the time - and on the internet. not sure, if it was a necessary thing to do [just for me, its not in general for sure], to achieve this step or if it was simply a manifestation of the step. both i guess. necessary in the sense that repressing the impulse to do it, since it had came up for me, might have meant a repression of the step. the result or what came after the step was not only some new degree of integration (of specific traits, of becoming all of what seemed contradictory before) but a new level of integrative awareness of my internal structure, called vision logic, in which seeming contradictions are understood in a meaningful way and the parts are understood in terms of an internal hierarchy, so they don't just appear to belong to external situations but instead both, those situations and the parts, become graded parts in a bigger self, meaning you can consciously and meaningfully navigate your self and choose according situations, instead of stumbling randomly into situations and being caught by surprise about how the situations would throw you into random parts of yourself. its no longer like the situation makes you into all sorts of things, but you exist independently and control if or how much and how you enter a possible situation, you have a new reference of judgement about all situations. the reference is insight into structure. which situations brings about the deepest most integrated most complete structure in me, and which situation is only asking me for a response from pathological/partial/dissociative configurations in me. that's a big difference compared to the previous way of choosing situations which was based on how good they felt (pathological situations can feel rewarding in the short term) or whether they are rated as "morally good". it allows to navigate life in a meaningful way, that is empowering in the long term, rather than navigating life as a slave of adapting to other people's reactions (judgements) and a slave to seeking or avoiding the good/bad feelings (which come from/with conformist judgements).


however i did not even notice that right away. what this step was about (structurally) became obvious to me no earlier than late 2004. inbetween i had allready felt that using names has become redundant. i could just see the parts as part of a whole for a while, then i became aware of how this seeing works, what it is that sees that way.

development is about differentiation in the first step and integration in the second. naming "them" should be about differentiation. it's subjective. for me it felt like method acting. i had an integrative goal in mind. in personas, who are hell bent serious about the believe that "they ARE multiple personalities" (often reffering to themselves as "WE, the System", as if that is some kind of typological species besides "normal people") the concept is apparently sometimes used to reinforce dissociation/to prevent integration.