This blog entry will be focused on this book, lent to me by my therapist, that focuses on identity and the sense of self. My therapist explained it as a "neurotypical explanation of identity", which is a bit obvious, as the author describes multiplicity as "crazy". Statements like these could be to attach better to the audience, using judgemental terms to try and reel you in only to state that it is quite the opposite. I am hoping for the later. Judgements aside, Rita Carter is making some EXCELLENT points. I am only pages into the first chapter, but I am already making this page, as I want to explore and offer her insights to others in a digestible (or... however I tend to write) manner. Point blank: I want her theories of self to be more accessible, as I find this book to be an amazing resource. Written like a lecture, I both want to be able to look back upon favorite passages, my thoughts, and be able to share those for others. This blog is the perfect place to do so.
"Most of our greatest philosophers, psychologists and therapists have recognized the essential multiplicity of the human mind. In ancient Greece, Plato saw the psyche as a three-part affair consisting of a charioteer (the rational self) and two horses (one the spirit and one the "appetite"). In the fourth century St, Augustine wrote of his "old pagan self" popping up at night to torment him. Shakespeare's characters endlessly morph from one identity to another. Serious cases have been made to attach the label of Multiple Personality Disorder to Hamlet, Othello, Macbeth and several others.
In the twentieth century, Freud;s enduring id, ego and superego model introduced the idea of a horizontal split between the conscious and unconscious mind, and Jung's theory of archetypes held that there are separate powerful entities within the unconscious. The influential "object-realizations" school of psychiatry taught that external "objects" could be internalized and become personalities of a sort, and Transactional Analysis, developed in the 1950s by Eric Berne, was based on the concept of three inner beings: child, adult and parent.
The idea that each of us is made up of often conflicting multiple personalities was stated most clearly, perhaps, by the Italian psychologist Roberto Assagioli . . . "we are not unified" he wrote. "We often feel we are because we do not have many bodise and many limbs, and because one hand doesn't usually hit the other. But, metaphorically, that is exactly what does happen within us. Several subpersonalities are continually scuffling: impulses, desires, principles, aspirations are engaged in an unceasing struggle.""
Chapter 1, Page 3 & 4.
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