This is a good shower thought. Probably a good idea to call a psychiatrist rather than a cop tho
Also I want to mention that “multiple personality disorder” is now called Dissociative Identity Disorder and there’s no real consensus that truly having multiple separate identities in the same brain is even possible.
Lost time (gaps in memory) and significant changes in personality over time are a thing, but the existence of separate identities seems most likely to be societal response, as in people just acting out the fantasy that they have different identities.
Acting like you have multiple personalities, especially using that kind of fantasy to deal with trauma or life, is still a real mental illness. It’s just not really “multiple personalities” as portrayed in media or pop culture
Maybe too philosophical to be answered but I wonder if it matters if it’s real? If someone is so convinced and acts as if there were multiple identities could that ever be measured or quantified?
While I’m a big fan of philosophical pragmatism, I don’t think it applies here because if the identities are truly separate, it seems less likely you’d be able to treat this kind of mental illness.
It’s much easier to teach people better coping methods than it would be to go about trying to reunify identities since… well where would you even start?
As a testable hypothesis, truly separate personalities would not share all memories but a person presenting them as facades wouldn’t be able to keep the information separate perfectly. Chances are you would be able to design an experiment to trip them up.
Its been done - link goes to a PDF of the study:
Patients with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) frequently report episodes of interidentity amnesia, that is amnesia for events experienced by other identities. The goal of the present experiment was to test the implicit transfer of trauma-related information between identities in DID. We hypothesized that whereas declarative information may transfer from one identity to another, the emotional connotation of the memory may be dissociated, especially in the case of negative, trauma-related emotional valence. An evaluative conditioning procedure was combined with an affective priming procedure, both performed by different identities. In the evaluative conditioning procedure, previously neutral stimuli come to refer to a negative or positive connotation. The affective priming procedure was used to test the transfer of this acquired valence to an identity reporting interidentity amnesia. Results indicated activation of stimulus valence in the affective priming task, that is transfer of emotional material between identities. r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
It’s called dissociate identity disorder and as someone who has it, it would depend if your talking metaphorically, or society, as society would could consider one body means it would be a suicide, however metaphysical and philosophy it would would depend on the system and how they are.
Just know, most people with d.i.d. are not “making people up” and identities in there systems are very real.
Me trying to convince myself to pls not kms
Frantically calls a swat team
What if the aggressor misses, and stabs the wrong one?
Autoserialkiller?
If one of the personalities is a hostage negotiator you got yourself a —fuckme… that terrible director with a collection of goth girls at his gate — M. Night Shyamalan movie 🍿
I’d watch the shit out of that!
I’d watch it ironically… is it to soon to watch a Nazi fighting an alien?
I think this is called “punching down” and is no longer an acceptable form of humor.
Although, to be fair, they do actually outnumber us in a 1v1 situation.
I think you need to lighten up. It’s not punching anywhere.
I can’t tell if the downvotes are against my punching down statement or my follow-up joke about being outnumbered.
Good post!
No. Alternate identities in people with DID (dissociative identity disorder) are not literally other people; they’re different identity complexes within the same person. Such a person would need a good therapist/psychiatrist, not a hostage negotiator.
