h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Deidzoeb wrote:

"When you understand that they are metaphorical constructs, it seems to show you are still in touch with reality. When you treat them as real, viable entities, it seems difficult to distinguish from other kinds of psychotic delusions."

What if, like LeKZ, you do both? (*understand* that they're metaphorical constucts, and *treat them* as real, viable entities) (How does one treat a metaphorical construct? With something less than respect?)

Since we're recommending books here anyway (BTW, Dastardly, I tried the soup... Illuminating! ), uh... where was I? Since we're recommending books here anyway, I'll toss out "Metaphors We Live By" by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. Read that book, and then explain to me the difference between a metaphorical construct and a real, viable entity.

Well, for whatever it's worth: I don't think there's anything wrong with being multiple. Speaking for myself/ves, it's something that makes my/our life easier and more fun for me/us. I gather LeKZ feel the same way, and so too the other people I know of who have some manifestation of multiplicity.

Tony, did you read the long piece LeKZ wrote to the subcom, and copied to many other folks, on DID? Did you see the entry I'm busy with, yet? I've started entries on DID and also on Paranoid Schizophrenia. So far there are only some links, but those links contain fairly good info.

Willem, no, I don't remember reading that. I've checked out your entries, and I'll follow the links soon. I can't right now, because my time at this cyber-cafe runs out in a couple of minutes.

Gotta run!

see, I was right. clay-toy could no more hide here than I could.

Try to imagine red all by itself. Not a red thing like a red ball but just red. Try to separate it from being attached to something.

Now try to imagine a person separate from a body. Don't give it a shape. Don't imagine some wraith.

Try to imagine a body separate from a place. Floating in space is still a place.

In the same way that red is a quality of things and cannot be divorced from them (even though we have the concept of red independent of things colored red), being a person is a quality we have to associate with a body, a human body. That body must exist somewhere.

For an mp there are several people sharing one body. Each of those people know who they are and what they look like even though that image may have nothing to do with the body they share. It stands to reason then that each of those people must also, conceptually, have a place where that, conceptual, body exists.

The place where the individual alter's body exists, like the body itself, has only a metaphoric existence, but it is a necessary and important existence.

Perhaps it would help to think of many people living together in one house. The house is not real, it is simply an understandable metaphor for a place where the bodies of the people can have some kind of existence.

When one of these people is 'out' -- controling the shared external body -- the other people do not go away. Some of them may be watching, commenting on what the shared body experiences. Others may be involved in entirely different 'internal' activities. That you can't directly interact with them doesn't deny their existence.

LeKZ has described an internal world with thousands of inhabitants. If that world is metaphoric, relative to the outside world, it is nonetheless a place where those people can meet and interact and live lives that may have nothing to do with the external world and in which things can and do happen differently from how things in the external world must happen. It's not self-delusion. It is creating a metaphorical framework for sanity.

If you have been visualizing personalities that simply turn off and on and have no reality except when they are controlling the body then you have missed the point. These are people and people aren't shut off.

If you have been visualizing these people as merely strange behavior patterns that are overlaid on some basic neutral personality then you have been visualizing what we all do when we need to shield our inner being from others and present ourselves in suitable ways under suitable circumstance. (Imagine yourself playing with a three year old child. Now imagine using that same behavior when being called into your boss' office.) That sort of self-presentation and self-editing is perfectly normal to any person. It has nothing to do with alters.

If you have been thinking of alters as some form of role playing then you should recognize that alters live from moment to moment whether there is a 'game' to play or not, that no other personality 'decides' how they would react, that no other personality writes their 'lines.'

If you are asking why such a situation should have come to be, consider that each of these people has at one time or another saved the lives of the others. Not figuratively but literally, by being able to do something or withstand something that the others could not do. Maybe it was as simple as not being too emotionally exhausted to breathe. Maybe it was being able to force hirself to eat filth and not gag. Maybe it was just being someone who knew how to sing.

Certainly, I cannot imagine having an entire community sharing my body. But, anyone who has ever had to depend on someone else to survive (and we all have been dependent on parents or guardians) can wonder what we would have done had we been alone at a crucial time. From depending on one other person to depending on a team of other people is no great leap. Living in a barracks or a foxhole as a 'body of men' is not so much more strange than sharing a body among such folks. At least, not to me.

Is it healthy? Come on! Is the mp alive?

Now that there's no danger, shouldn't they all go away? Which ones would you choose to kill? The war is over. You don't need your buddies anymore. Will you kill them?

Try to find a way to think about an mp so that shi doesn't seem strange and dangerous. Put yourself in hir place.

I have heard blacks talking about finding themselves alone in a room filled with whites, seeing all the eyes turned on them. *I* can recall being the only white in a large room full of blacks, in Detroit, shortly after the Detroit riots. For some reason, I can't recall anyone suggesting that I needed to be cured of being white, and at that time, for no other reason than my own fear, had it been possible, I might have opted to be cured.

I'm Jewish. I've seen the films of the ovens. I know death camp survivors. I don't want to be cured even though I know I'm different and it might get me locked up or killed.

I am not suggesting that anyone in this discussion is hatefilled or evil. I am simply saying that being different is not wrong or cause for a cure. I am saying that not knowing is not grounds for not believing, it's grounds for finding out.

Barton

For anyone interested in the topic of DID, I've put some links in my space.

To be tolerant does not mean to accept everything imaginable.

"I am simply saying that being different is not wrong or cause for a cure."

Thank you Barton. I think that's something I've been saying for a while here on h2g2.

Editorial Note: This conversation has been moved from 'h2g2 Feedback - Community Soapbox' to 'Discussions Relating to the Lifetime Ban of Arpeggio'.

We've moved this Conversation because LeKZ has contacted us to say she would like discussion about her, and the closure of the Arpeggio, Mourning Becomes Electra and Silent Lucidity accounts, to stop, and moving this Conversation out of the Community Soapbox will aid this.

The Eds

How many strong men did it take to move it? (big thread, y'know)

Y'know, in these horror movies you have to dismember the things that won't die ....

Ok, I'll take the first hundred posts and bury them at a crossroads, someone else grab the second hundred, tie a rock to them and find a convenient ocean... (this could take a while!)

it might take a while to die, as it keeps getting more fuel from slightly ill advised editorial decisions all over the site.

note to editors: this is not meant as a personal insult, just as a comment that you have not sufficiently understood yet how to manage this sort of community.

Shhh...

Let's let this thread subside gently, and take our criticism of editorial decisions elsewhere. Your place or mine?

Right now, I'm more interested in what THE HECK am I going to get for my sweetie pie hubby... Dang Xmas.

pity I don't get more offers like that (but don't tell your husband).

how about putting the dubious decisions off my page.

I don't mind hosting them.

In honor of LeKZ request...

Hmm. Well I now can see where Barton and Tony are coming from and I think they see where I'm coming from.

The crux of the argument is really whether some objective, non ambiguous method of defining a 'personality fragment' can be determined. Then the arguments of Barton and Tony would have some force and I might be prepared to concede.

But as far as I've been able to find out so far from my reading, DID is really all a matter of 'perception' on the part of sufferer. That being the case one can argue that it's not really a genuine unique condition at all, but simply a variant of schizophrenia. If it really is all a matter of 'perception' then with sufficient effort you should be able to alter whether you percieved yourself as a multiple or as a singular entity. But if that is so then in what sense can you be said to have a 'multiple personality' at all?

If it all comes down to perception then we need to ask whether it is better to perceive oneself as a multiple or to perceive oneself as a singular entity. In my opinion, it is far better to perceive oneself as singular! That being the case, we should not 'buy into' the reality of a person who perceives themselves as a multiple. Why not? Well, if DID is just perception (ie metaphorical construct) would not the very act of 'playing along' with the DID sufferer only continue to distort their perception?

Point in previous post taken, just because someone is different, doesn't mean they need to be cured. For instance I have no problem with homosexually. There is nothing 'wrong' with being homosexual. There is nothing wrong with being 'black' The people who claim that whites are better than blacks or that homosexuals need to be cured are of course bigots.

But at least SOME differences ARE clearly better than others. For instance would you not agree that it is better to hear than to be deaf? Would you not agree that it is better to see than to be blind?

So I must dis agree when Tony says that there is a analogy between the debate about homosexually and the debate about DID. I do not see any analogy. For a person's sexual orientation and race are real, objectively verifiable facts, where as the concept of 'personality fragments' is not. (See my second sentance above). And I DO think that there is something wrong with perceiving oneself as a multiple.

Clay_Toy, letting it drop now, and changing my identity yet again

Perhaps to something that doesn't rhyme with Playboy, eh?

We all have various perceptions that allow us to function in society. I posit to you that DID is a perception that allows victims of trauma to function as normally as they possibly can.

Did he really just do that? Did he really just say something and then run away and slam the door before anyone could answer?

Wow, some things never change.

I'm gonna reply to him anyway, because nobody's come around *this time* to say that I can't.



>>Well I now can see where Barton and Tony are coming from and I think they see where I'm coming from.

I'd just like to say, "No comment."



>>The crux of the argument is really whether some objective, non ambiguous method of defining a 'personality fragment' can be determined. Then the arguments of Barton and Tony would have some force and I might be prepared to concede.

Is this the crux of the argument? I've seen that critics of MPD have a field day with the fact that the concept of "a personality" isn't well defined (unlike say, the concept of, what?, an electron?). I'm not convinced that the "reality" of the condition hinges on this definition existing. Try to define "a species". There's grey area around the edges of speciation. Try to define "an organism" in a way that you can tell me exactly where one begins and ends: A) as far as when a community of single-celled orgainisms becomes a multi-cellular organism, B) as far as when life begins and ends temporally, in other words, resolve the abortion and euthanasia issues. Again, grey area.

It should not be surprising, when the objects of study are emergent phenomena of complex systems, that definitions are not going to be as precise as they are in mathematics. Fer Chrissake.



>>But as far as I've been able to find out so far from my reading, DID is really all a matter of 'perception' on the part of sufferer. That being the case one can argue that it's not really a genuine unique condition at all, but simply a variant of schizophrenia. If it really is all a matter of 'perception' then with sufficient effort you should be able to alter whether you percieved yourself as a multiple or as a singular entity. But if that is so then in what sense can you be said to have a 'multiple personality' at all?

Again, I would ask, what is the difference between perceiving oneself as having multiple personalities, and actually having multiple personalities? Can anyone answer this quesiton? I am confident that this argument is not as specious as Playboy Reporter's presentation makes it seem. Please, someone, do the case some justice!

Also, does the fact that something is a perception mean that it can and should be changed? (that's two questions, right there: can? and should?)



>>Point in previous post taken, just because someone is different, doesn't mean they need to be cured. For instance I have no problem with homosexually. There is nothing 'wrong' with being homosexual. There is nothing wrong with being 'black' The people who claim that whites are better than blacks or that homosexuals need to be cured are of course bigots.

Agreed. Savor it. It won't last.



>>But at least SOME differences ARE clearly better than others. For instance would you not agree that it is better to hear than to be deaf? Would you not agree that it is better to see than to be blind?

Irrelevant, as far as I can tell. Unless the claim is being made that a "sense of self", what Kant might have called a "unity of apperception" (IIRC, probably not), is a sense like sight or hearing, and that MPs are lacking this sense. Anyone have any idea if that's what the guy was saying?



>>So I must dis agree when Tony says that there is a analogy between the debate about homosexually and the debate about DID. I do not see any analogy. For a person's sexual orientation and race are real, objectively verifiable facts, where as the concept of 'personality fragments' is not. (See my second sentance above). And I DO think that there is something wrong with perceiving oneself as a multiple.

Ok, now here we seem to have a problem with what an analogy is. I made an analogy, which was quite clear I thought: Homosexuality is a condition that *some* people say is curable, while others think it should rather be accepted. MPD is a condition that *some* people say is curable, while others think it should rather be accepted. That *is* an analogy, and anyone who thinks it isn't, is wrong. Whether it can be carried a step further to say that the corresponding sides are "right" in both controversies is a different question, but not one on which the reality of the analogy hinges. Fer Chrissake.

How is sexual orientation not a matter of "perception"? What is there besides *my perception* of sexual attraction determining my orientation? But this perception is "objectively verifiable" and MPD isn't? What, you can verify my orientation by watching me have sex? What the hell does that prove? Get outta my bedroom!

Now, the last sentence, that Playboy Reporter *thinks* there is something wrong with perceiving oneself as a multiple, seems to me to be the crux of the matter, and the semantic dingos kidneys about definitions are just that. This statement, that he *thinks* there's something wrong with MPD, is just dropped onto the page like a turd, and the door slammed behind it.

Goodbye again, Playboy Reporter. Maybe someday you'll come back and do it all again. Shall we save a seat for you around post #2000 or so?