Compartmentalized

[Captain Arrrgh!]

Friends,
How many here believe their minds, thoughts or personalities are fragmented or compartmentaliezed, that they are different characters to different people, and that if they were able to break down the walls of these compartments and bring their 'selves' together they would be more whole?
As ususal with my threads, feel free to branch out if it helps us all.

[imb39]

I think I tnd to be the same no matter where I am. However I do prefer to keep the variosu aspects of my life totally separate.

[Kythras]

For sure, I'm a really different person depending on where I am and who I'm with. With my close friends I'm a bad joke making jerk, with people I don't know too well I'm fairly shy and polite but still a bit outgoing, with girls I'm a comic, with a significant other (if I'm lucky enough to have one) I'm a total gentleman, with my parents I'm quietly rebelious. I think the idea of being the same person all the time is next to impossible, and that if we broke down all the walls, and were the same person all the time, with everyone, no one would ever be happy, there would be no relationships, no friendships, nothing, IMO "Deception makes the world go 'round".

Call me cynical if you want, but at the mo. it's what I think...

EDIT: Think of a person being "coffee", there's capucino(sp), cafe latte, mocha, short black, flat white, frappe, iced coffee, fruit blend coffees, liquer coffees, the list goes on. Sure, they're all coffee, but not everyone likes the same kinds of coffee, and if you tried to serve everyone the same kind of coffee it won't go down too well...

That was the coolest analogy ever...

[Darkragnar]

well im Me and i do compartmentalize things , i store them up into neat little compartments and dont think about them , and when a particular issue comes up i just take it out of its respective compartment and deal with it ,after the deed is done back again it goes into its space.

This way is best i think, or atleast best for me, because you dont simulaniously deal with many issues instead u deal with one thing and the next ,much easier that way.

Hope you were talking about this kind of compartmentalization or are you talking about something else ?

[Captain Arrrgh!]

i store them up into neat little compartments and when a particular issue comes up i just take it out of its respective compartment and deal with it ,after the deed is done back again it goes into its space.

You ninjas are so neat and tidy! .
I was thinking more along the line of various personalities in compartments, but as always, I love hearing peoples' ideas and interpretations of ideas.
Everyone so far: is it a 'good' thing or 'bad' to have your personalities compartmentalized/united?

[William the Bastard]

.I was thinking more along the line of various personalities in compartments

Sort of like how every second you are a changing being so therefore you are a different person?

[Darkragnar]

You ninjas are so neat and tidy! .
I was thinking more along the line of various personalities in compartments, but as always, I love hearing peoples' ideas and interpretations of ideas.

ah ahem....well no, i am me with everyone else too :hmmm:

[Captain Arrrgh!]

I see this in your writing style, Darkragnar, and imb39. That is why I lean towards healthier people not having compartmentalized personalities. A specific goal of the (ostensably) discontinued projects MKUltra and Monarch were to fragment test subjects' personalites via trauma based stimuli, resulting in personality disorders, or compartmentalization, if you will. Therapy with such individuals includes breaking the walls of these compartments and bringing these personalities back together, forming a healthy, multi-faceted human being. Not that I know anyting about the above, just following my thoughts, as ususal.
Either Seneca or Nihil (Sorry, I'll have to go back and check who) wrote in the Altered Streams thread about how they were scattered earlier in life and have reconciled, or centered, themeselves, and are now relatively healthy. Even though the thread dealt heavily with meditation, could this have been a reconciliation of compartments, also?

[Nihil]

Everyone so far: is it a 'good' thing or 'bad' to have your personalities compartmentalized/united?

It's undoubtedly a bad thing to be compartmentalised. It's a way we have of deceiving ourselves, which is always bad. Any kind of self-deception just leads to trouble in the long term, even though it seems like the easy way out at the time. The goal is to integrate everything together into one contiguous whole. You can't be happy without expressing all of the aspects of your personality, and failure to do so leads to varying degrees of neurosis.

In severe cases of "multiple personality disorder" it is possible for the personality to become so fragmented that it is effectively split into a number of autonomous personas. There are cases where it has been found that extreme childhood trauma and the need to bury it away has caused the development of a complex system of multiple personalities whereby each personality takes turns to control the individual. See for example the case of Billy Milligan (and have a look at the book the Minds of Billy Milligan if you get the chance - not very well written, but fascinating).

Milligan's psyche was fragmented into several characters, including:

William Stanley Milligan "Billy", age 26, the core personality.
Arthur, 22. The Englishman
Ragen Vadascovinich, 23. The keeper of hate.
Allen, 18. The con man.
Tommy, 16. The escape artist.
Danny, 14. The frightened one.
David, 8. The keeper of pain.
Christene, 3. The corner child
Christopher, 13. Obedient but troubled
Adalana, 19. The lesbian

Several more personalities were later found, each with their own unique skillset and temperment!

He was sent to a series of state-run mental hospitals, such as the Athens Lunatic Asylum, where, by his report, he received very little help. While he was in these hospitals, Milligan displayed 10 selves. Among these were Arthur, a prim and proper Englishman, Allen, a con man and manipulator, Ragen Vadascovinich, a Yugoslavian communist who had committed the robberies in a kind of Robin Hood spirit, and Adalana, a nineteen-year-old lesbian who craved affection and who had supposedly committed the rapes.

Finally Milligan received treatment from psychiatrist David Caul, who identified an additional 14 selves and helped him and the other "selves" to communicate with each other, and to work out a method by which he could voluntarily integrate all of his selves. However, when Milligan maintained this mindset for any protracted length of time, he reported that the talents his selves possessed as individuals were diminished. In interviews, Milligan still refers to this situation with the words "The whole was less than the sum of the parts."

Of course this is a pretty unique case, but it does illustrate that we have the capacity to hide things inside our own personalities, even from ourselves. According to some schools of thought, it may even be possible for the estranged parts of our psyche to be "out to get us" and to become our enemies. The thinking behind this being that if we are in some sense inherently "who we are", then to deny or suppress certain aspects of our innate selfhood is a path towards mental health problems. Even in mild cases, people in denial are often transprently fake to everybody else even though they succeed in fooling themselves. An obvious, cliched example is the raging homophobe whose prejudice against "deviants" stems from his own suppressed guilt about his homosexual tendencies, and his need to emphatically deny his own nature as strongly as possible. This is always blatantly obvious to everybody else. This all relates to the Jungian concept of the Shadow archetype and the concept of integration.

[zznɟ ǝɥʇ]

Hmm good thread Cap'n, have a rep from me!

I can't decide about this, I feel I need more time to think, good thing I have class soon! That said, I'm leaning towards it's good to be compartmentalized. Why? I'll have to be back to you on that one...

[Hookah Smoking Caterpiller]

I am very compartmentalized, but two heads are better than one.

[Amorphos]

yes and no
my personality can be attributed parts, but i can’t even understand what it means to not be whole and one.

[Real.]

Dear Friends,

I believe I have two different attitudes in two different occasions and with different persons, for example, I don't talk to the girl I love the same way I do with my best friend, just like I behave differently while I’m at home (I sit in front of the computer and spend all afternoon there) and while I’m at my riding school (I’m kinda hyperactive, I’m never in the same place: I’m feeding a horse, I’m cleaning another, I’m riding another,…). I hope I made my point here, if I didn’t, please say so.

Forever ashamed of our human society,
Real

[boofhead]

I think it is a psychological necessity, like telling lies. I recently heard psychologists discussing lies and it is quite apparent that they are extremely necessary in keeping humans as successful social beings. An inability to lie (like little white lies - "You aren't ugly", "You look fine in that", "I wasn't thinking that", "I never thought of having sex with that hot woman ever") would cause great distress and even violence between individuals who would otherwise get on perfectly well.

I see compartmentalization of the personality as a similar thing, not quite honest and yet entirely necessary for our mutual survival.

My ideal for myself would be to be myself at all times and in all situations, and to be always honest, and never offend anybody. Unfortunately...not possible. I think you can strive to get as close to such an 'awakening' as possible....but never quite attain it.

[Silver Guard]

I think comparmentalism is a step in the right direction in terms of psychoanalys but is slightly off-tangent. In the rejection of the ego the constant personality preaced by Plato was rejected, to be replaced with a constantly changed frame of mind, bound to a body. I will not be the same person after reading some great text as I am now, however, I will be more like my former self then any other person, andthe difference is rather negligable.

However, chance decades and the difference is more noticable. In some the only similarity is the body the mind is seated in. The permanent ego is non-existant (so leading to the pointlessness of being egotistic), however, complete rejection of the non-regid ego is also irrational. As you are still yourself two decades in the future, if a very changed or even dead self.

Sorry, this may all be gobbledegook, 3am and all that

[Captain Arrrgh!]

Not at all, great introduction to the ego. Now what do you think about the ancient Greek concept of Daemon? Now, in our times, could one say they are one and the same?

[Søren]

Friends,
How many here believe their minds, thoughts or personalities are fragmented or compartmentaliezed, that they are different characters to different people, and that if they were able to break down the walls of these compartments and bring their 'selves' together they would be more whole?
As ususal with my threads, feel free to branch out if it helps us all.

I would not say my behaviour is fragmented, but it is compartmentalized, to a certain extent. What I mean by this, is my behaviour is (perhaps dramatically) adjusted to the situation, while the thought patterns that provoke it are still in character.

Such is, however, just a normal part of intelligent and adaptive social intercourse, and by no means harmful. What is harmful, is when one (perhaps alternatly) self-identifies as being of a certain temprament, for other reasons than a logical (or at least reasonable) response to external events.

Probably the most crucial part of a correct approach to the issue, is the realisation that these are merely parts of a whole, rather than fragments - not so much different personas as different aspects of a persona.

While obviously this is prominent in more 'advanced' cases, it's interesting to note how it also extends to more mundane things - the current 'emo' trend for instance: which frequently (if serious) starts due to people feeling that them-in-a-state-of-depression, is their definitive personality. That's my experience of it, anyway, doubtless it's not always.

Anyway, I'm going off at rather a tangent here....

Very good thread, btw.

[Kythras]

Some very interesting replied - glad I posted in this thread.

@ Søren
Very nice post, and a very interesting point about the emo subculture. You stated it represents compartmentalisation on a very large scale (in that it effects lots of people the, debatably, same way)...

Please correct me if I'm wrong here

I see it very differently... if one were to liken the whole "compartmentalisation" thing to a very, very mild kind of MPD (which a lot of people here seem to be doing) it could be said that emos (according to stereotype) are, in fact, achieving that un-compartmentalised, single-self kind of state, choose thier "depression" as that some identity, abolishing all other approaches to life (at least for as long as they identify themselves as "emo".

I'll try and be a little clearer...

I believe 1/2 people experience depression at some stage of their life, and, for the most part, they hide it behind closed door, an example of compartmentalisation (they might go to work/school and be totally fine, smiling, talking, laughing, then go home and throw up the pros and cons of suicide) whereas emos, it could be said, prsent their "Depression Compartment" to everyone (or a lot of people), one of the core tenets, as I am lead to believe of the emotional hardcore movement

I'd be very interested in what other people have to say about more common examples of ritualised de-compartmentalisation (as opposed to the quasi-/religious ones that leap to peoples minds)


@ the Cap'n
The Greek concept of the daemon is, coincidentally, something I've been reading up on lately (I've been doing an elective task on His Dark Materials). I think it is an excellent point to bring up. People have mentioned only a decompartmentalising practice (meditation, oneness and the like) where as the concept of the daemon is a complete conradiction of that, it, in my opinion, is a glorification of being compartmentalised, to the extent where one aspect of a person helps them in a very real way. Look at Socrates, one of the ancient world's most recognisable names, he claimed to have a daemon that warned him against making mistakes. It is an idea uncannily similar to the "guardian angel" belief, though instead of the guardian being sent from some divine overlord, the daemon is an extension of one's self.

Not sure how helpful that ramble actually was, but it seems to be the way these kinds of threads work (and I love it)

If anyone is interested, the word daemon comes from Greek and has meanings like "replete with knowledge", "divine power", "fate" or "god"... (gotta love Wikipedia...)

[Søren]

Some very interesting replied - glad I posted in this thread.

@ Søren
Very nice post, and a very interesting point about the emo subculture. You stated it represents compartmentalisation on a very large scale (in that it effects lots of people the, debatably, same way)...

Please correct me if I'm wrong here

I see it very differently... if one were to liken the whole "compartmentalisation" thing to a very, very mild kind of MPD (which a lot of people here seem to be doing) it could be said that emos (according to stereotype) are, in fact, achieving that un-compartmentalised, single-self kind of state, choose thier "depression" as that some identity, abolishing all other approaches to life (at least for as long as they identify themselves as "emo".

I'll try and be a little clearer...

I believe 1/2 people experience depression at some stage of their life, and, for the most part, they hide it behind closed door, an example of compartmentalisation (they might go to work/school and be totally fine, smiling, talking, laughing, then go home and throw up the pros and cons of suicide) whereas emos, it could be said, prsent their "Depression Compartment" to everyone (or a lot of people), one of the core tenets, as I am lead to believe of the emotional hardcore movement

I'd be very interested in what other people have to say about more common examples of ritualised de-compartmentalisation (as opposed to the quasi-/religious ones that leap to peoples minds)

That was actually what I was saying: the 'emo' trend as being an example of compartmentalization which is then fragmented - and then one fragment becomes percieved (by them, and indeed others) as the whole.

What I was trying to point out is the danger of rejecting compartmentalization completely - i.e. it's place in social relationships. It is often best to act in a compartmentalised manner, as otherwise you are likely to become inflexible and imperceptive - reacting in only one type of manner (obviously with various emotions attached).

Multiple personality disorder is when these parts become fragmented, and not part of a whole decision making/emotional process - when thought patterns become different as one changes character. IMO, it's therefore important to make the distinction between compartments and fragments, the former being good, the latter destructive.

Not sure how helpful that ramble actually was, but it seems to be the way these kinds of threads work (and I love it)

This is a particually good thread, isn't it.

[Kythras]

This is a particually good thread, isn't it.

That it most certainly is!