User:Themsen/RW2

Synopsis 'First Person Plural: Multiple Personality and the Philosophy of Mind' by Stephen E. Braude

Chapters:

• 3.2 The Distinctness of Alternate Personalities (p. 67)
• 4.5 How not to define 'dissociation' (p. 116) x
• 7.3 The Indispensibility of Synthetic Unity (p. 170) x
• 8.5 The Concept of a Personality (p. 212)

Notes:

• 3.2 The Distinctness of Alternate Personalities

|p.67| Multiples contain distinct senses of themselves, or centers of self-consciousness

distinct: -memories -psychlogical traits -abilities -body images -own agendas, disavow interests of other personalities

awareness of other 'alters', [trans-communication]

struggle for executive control of body, physical manifestation (speech, facial characteristics)

|p.68| alters connects to traumas and other events in the past + triggering events

alters reflect distinctive behavioural histories

'internal homicide' -> "(I.M. Prince, 1905/1978), Sally would destroy the schoolwork of miss B [Beauchamp], spend her money, or hide valuables" (Braude, 68)

"or [alters] try to kill their alters, although an action would succeed in destroying a common body"

[conflict-based progression]

"[although] homicidal alters have a strong will to live"

|p.69| "while it might be correct to describe the patient as a whole as suicidal in those cases (though even that is questionable) it seems false to claim that the homicidal personality is suicidal."

|p.70| different ways in which one alter can come to know the mental states of others.

"alters have quite distinct centers, not just of consciousness, but of self-awareness."

"[...] are alters self-aware? And to what extent does that type of awareness distinguish multiple personality from other forms of dissociation?"

• 4.5 How Not to Define Dissociation

|p.119| "In cases of MPD, the states of alternate personalities A can be dissociated from those of B even when A and B simultaneously have the same beliefs, perceptions, or feelings. There need be no conflict or inconsistency in content between dissociated states."

• 7.3 The Indispensibility of Synthetic Unity

|p.172| "a single unifying intelligence or subject of experiences, dispositions, and other attributes, from which even autobiographically and indexically discontinuous alter personalities originate and from which they continue to draw when they develop their own idiosyncratic personalities"

[dissociation:]"distance oneself from one's sexuality[painful memories] generally"[...] formed to minimize one's horror of sexual encounters [painful encounters]"

|p.176| "particular experience of conflicting needs, interests, etc.,"[...]"seems to make sense only with respect to a single subject who synthesizes those conflicting needs, etc., syncronically"[...]"in that case it seems plausible (if not obvious) that alters would be created- and, moreover, created by that single subject to deal with the trauma"

|p.177| "Moreover, alter-formation is often maladaptive in some respects, in the way many of our life decisions are: When the decisions fail they may fail miserably, or they may help in some ways while creating new problems."

|p.178| "I have begun by granting a kind of parthood or disunity - the existence of distinct aperceptive centers within multiples and the existence of at least logically distinct subjects within non-multiples[...]"

• 8.5 The Concept of a Personality

|p.213| What is a complete personality? Like alters, ordinary bodies have a spectrum of robust and less robust personalities |p.214| "non-multiples might not even be 'almost complete' in the sense intended by Braun. Many people have quite severely truncated or relatively one-dimensional personalities, and nearly always lacking in depth or breadth."

"the absence of a personality (however complex a set of attributes that that turns out to be) is a barrier, not to personhood in general, but only to some kinds of personhood."