This is the second article after an Introduction on Split Personality using Shamen to illustrate the concept as well as a few works in the Psychological sphere.
Later I hope to complete the work in the concept of Dissociation, Multiple personalities, Causes of Dissociative Identity Disorder and The Soul Personality.
This is a description of Multiple Personalities, DID + MPD as the cause of all suffering in the world, how to spot them and the neccessity for their cure through EE meditation.
Most people are split personalities. However the symptoms of this splitness differ depending upon the severity of the painful traumatic experiences which split the person and the degree of evolution of the person which increasingly helps the person to manage more trauma and more splits without giving the game away to others.
Splitness, DID and MPD as a cause of the selfish competitive ego is an explanation for the world as it is and the suffering of everyone in society. Integration of the splitness is the cure for the world as it is and the end of suffering of everyone in society.
However, severely damaged people and evolved people on the verge of integration have been studied by psychologists...
The splits are sometimes called alter personalities which have types which are common across Split people. Putnam has created a set of such types from many years of experience of therapy (Putnam 1986)
The Host Personality-- Usually defined as the alter who has executive control of the body most of the time. This personality is typically depressed, compulsively good, conscience-stricken, and feels overwhelmed by circumstances.
A normal person in other words, however the strength of the symptoms of splitness differ so that only those with strong symptoms get caught, anaesthetised with drugs by psychiatrists or put into therapy by psychologists.
The normal person exhibits symptoms of splitness which can be spotted in others and then in ourselves.
Quite often, the host personality is completely unaware of the existence of other alters until presented with them during meditation. Hosts may sometimes be facades put up by a group of cooperating alters.
Inner Children Personalities-- These are found in every Split person. They are frozen in time and do not age. Such personalities often serve the function of holding traumatic memories of childhood abuse or other painful memories; they are frequently counterbalanced by other child alters who embody pure childhood innocence.
Inner children always want and compete for attention, sympathy, love, energy from everyone around them. They develop talents, personalities, alters and strategies to get this. This is the selfish competitive ego, red in tooth and claw, the cause of all suffering in the world.
The Star Personality - Symptoms.. these develop talents in order to compete for power, money, attention and love from everyone around them. Typically they try to destroy the livelihoods and reputations of every competing star. They surround themselves with "yes men" who provide no competition to them, are extremely loyal and thus will do anything they are told to do, who confirm the star in their place by massaging their egos, and to whom they are extremely generous in wages and bonuses.
Persecutor Personalities-- The Self Destructor. These personalities will try to sabotage the person's life and even inflict bodily harm on the host. They are sometimes responsible for "suicide" attempts which are really cases of "internal homicide", where a persecutor personality attempts to kill the host, like "cutting off the nose to spite the face".
The Violator Personality is professionally angry with everyone around them as a means of gaining attention and energy from them.
Suicidal Personalities -- As distinct from above, these are personalities driven to kill themselves, as opposed to other alters. They may be unaware of the existence of the host, or other alters.
The Poor Me Personality moans complains and even hurts itself through accidents, substance abuse and suicide attempts simply to gain sympathy and energy from everyone around them. They tend to flip into Violators when the Poor Me ceases to work.
Protector and Helper Personalities-- These personalities serve as a counterbalance to the destructive and suicidal alters. They come in a number of forms, depending on what the multiple requires protection from. In female multiples, they are often male alters of great physical strength.
The Internal Self-Helper--A relatively emotionless personality, who provides information about the internal workings of the personality system. Very useful allies for therapy as you can talk sensibly to them.
Memory Trace Personality-- A passive personality who usually has a more or less complete memory of the Split person's life. Most alters have access to only a severely limited range of memories.
Cross-Gender Personalities-- It is very common for multiples to have alters of opposite sex. In females, male alters tend to serve in such masculine roles as physical protection and operation of machinery. In some male Split persons, female personalities are older "good-mother" figures who provide counsel, and tend to be active in the person's internal dynamics more than manifesting outwardly.
Promiscuous Personalities--The Don Juan strategy. These alters exist to express forbidden impulses, often sexual in nature and to gain attention and love from others.
Administrators and Obsessive-Compulsive Personalities-- These personalities frequently emerge in the workplace, where they may be quite competent professionally, although seen by fellow workers as distant and authoritarian. They may also function to manage the internal organization of the Split person's fragmented personality.
Substance Abusers-- Drug abuse in Split persons is frequently limited to one alter, and this alter may be the only one to suffer withdrawal symptoms as a means of gaining sympathy.
Autistic and Handicapped Personalities-- Autistic personalities are often sent "out" during periods when no other alter is interested in executive control, or especially during situations of confinement or control.
Personalities with Special Talents or Skills-- Alters displaying great skill in work-related, artistic or athletic fields are common, and often tend to be more like fragments than complete alter personalities.
Anesthetic or Analgesic Personalities-- These alters seem to be formed during initial episodes of abuse, and deny feelings of pain. They are activated when the body is injured by self or others.
Imitators and Impostors-- Some multiples have alters who imitate the functions of other alters. In some instances, the impostor will handle situations the personality they are mimicking cannot.
Demons and Spirits-- These alters sometimes manifest, especially in persons from rural areas or with fundamentalist religious beliefs. Spirit alters are the same as Internal Self-Helpers and demon alters are the same as Persecutors.
The Original Core Personality-- Many multiples have a "core" personality from which the others are derived. Typically this alter is not active, and is described by others in the system of alters as having been "put to sleep" to protect it from remembering traumatic experiences. The negative karmic mass created by such experiences is that which creates and sustains the split alters. Only by grounding that pain, can the person become integrated.
The Soul Infused Personality - This personality only starts to appear when there has been a period of grounding of negative energies and integration of the alters. We say that the normal person is split and in in various stages and states of splitness. Gurdjieff said that normal people only had the possibility of a Soul Infused Personality, which could only be accessed through meditative work. It is typically pure, strong, solid and integrated. It contains no splits. It is the personality of the trained Shaman and Guru, Chiron, the Wounded Healer who through healing himself has the ability to integrate the split personalities of others.
As can be seen from the above list, alter personalities tend to help a traumatized person assume some sort of functional role, either in the external life of the multiple, or in the complex internal dynamics of the system of alters. Such diversification according to functionality will be very useful in developing a model of distributed agency in the cyberspace domain for the average, unintegrated "normal" person.
The discussion of the ubiquity of the Split Personality or Dissociative Identity Disorder or DID as related to non-pathological functioning is important, as it will serve to ground our perceptions of this phenomenon while we tread the increasingly exotic terrain covered by the manifestation of Splits usually called Multiple Personalities. The DSM-IV (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, Fourth Edition, of the American Psychiatric Association) category of Splitting or DID was in fact called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) in the DSM-III, and so quotes from some materials will refer to the syndrome by that name.
According to Putnam, "The core feature of MPD (Splitting - auth) is the existence of alter personalities who exchange control over an individual's behavior. it is important to state from the outset that whatever an alter personality is, it is not a separate person." (Putnam, 1986, p 103, italics the author's).
Putnam goes on to quote the definition of an alter personality given by Braun and Kluft as "an entity with a firm, persistent, and well-founded sense of self and a characteristic and consistent pattern of behavior and feelings in response to given stimuli. It must have a range of functions, a range of emotional responses, and a significant life history (of its own existence)." (Kluft 1984, p 23).
Usually these alters seamlessly takeover the outer personality as external circumstances need their different talents. As Gurdjieff said, "The alter who says he will get up at 5 in the morning to meditate, is not the same alter who throws the alarm clock out of the window. Or shall we say that he just, "Changed his mind."
The sense of a seamless self maintained by alter personalities is solid enough that even though they are very different, physically, emotionally and psychologically, they often claim vociferously to be the same independent person, in the face of all evidence to the contrary. This is the normal and average person.
But as the degree trauma increases and the degree of splitness pathologically increases, one alter might insist that another's clothes are not just in bad taste, but are of the wrong size, or even appropriate for the wrong sex. Sometimes alters even see other alters as being differently located physically, as sitting in a different chair or being in a different room. In really extreme cases, one alter might wish to kill another, adamantly denying any connection whatsoever with that alter.
In addition to such well formed alter personalities, it is typical to find a number of personality fragments-- smaller units of personality of limited scope and ability. Typically a personality fragment will be limited to one symptom of splitness, such as anger, depression or manicism, or one functionality, such as driving a car or absorbing pain. This sort of fracturing can yield fragments so specific that it is ultimately useless to consider them as personalities, just talents.
Alter personalities can be thought of as units of functionality which enable the Split person to function in the external world, or cope with the complex demands of the inner world such people inhabit. External duties include holding a job, managing relationships with other people, taking care of bodily needs, etc. Internal duties include such activities as managing which alter is "out" (in control of the physical body) at any time, holding and managing traumatic memories, and settling internal squabbles between alters. A complicated set of personalities often arises to accomplish these tasks, frequently numbering a few tens or scores of distinct alters.
However, the cure to all the above is integration of the splits by grounding all the negative energy created by traumatic experiences which sustains the splits. As we ground all the negative energy through meditation, so the splits disappear..
Start your integrative Process by learning how to meditate and then speed it up with the advanced techniques of Energy Enhancement based upon the thousands of years old ancient effective techniques of Taoism, The Kundalini Kriyas, The five elemental circulations of the Qi of Chinese Alchemical Taoism, The Guided Meditation of the Emerald tablet of Hermes Trismegistus encapsulated in VITRIOL and The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali.
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