THE PHENOMENOLOGYOF MULTIPLE PERSONALITY

AND POSSESSION-TYPE EXPERIENCES:

STARTING POINT FOR A REASSESSMENT OF HUMAN PERSONALITY

By Adam Crabtree

Address to the Transpersonal Psychology Interest Group at the meeting of the

American Psychological Association Meeting, Toronto, Ontario, August 25, 1984

I recently had the opportunity to interview Billy Milligan, one of the most remarkable
examples of multiple personality disorder to come to light in recent times.1 When you
talk with a man like Milligan, you cannot help being struck by the astounding versatility
– even creativity – displayed by the unconscious psyche of people who suffer from this
condition.2 The facile way personalities have been formed to cope with various kinds of
stress gives one a great deal of food for thought.

In my own clinical work I have come across another type of multiplicity disorder – that
called the possession syndrome. This condition also embodies a striking inner versatility
and malleability in which the individual feels the controlling influence of another within
and can often allow that's "other" to speak and express itself, sometimes with great
therapeutic benefit.3 I have written about this matter in a book called Multiple Man
which will appear next spring.4

When encountering these two multiplicity conditions – multiple personality and

possession – we are confronted with infringements of the conventions we ordinarily
take for granted in daily life. We tend to make certain assumptions about one another.
When I meet John or Martha, I perceive each as a single organism and expect to be
dealing with one individual. What that individual consciously thinks, feels, or does at
one moment, I expect him or her to remember and own up to it at a later moment. But
if I encounter John the one day and he assures me that he is not John, but rather Larry, a
very different kind of personality who claims to share the body with John, I may be
somewhat taken aback. Or if I'm talking to Martha and her voice changes and she insists
that she is Aunt Elizabeth who died when Martha was three years old, I might find that
more than a bit odd. For these kinds of behavior violate the accepted conventions of
social interaction – conventions of unity and continuity. This causes confusion, and we
tend to feel there is something terribly wrong.

Reflecting upon these multiplicity states which produce an obvious disturbance in

functioning has led me to look more closely at other states of human multiplicity which

1
are more common, and more subtle – states which in fact we all experience to some
degree or other. I've come to the conclusion that the multiplicity of normal people can
only be distinguished from that of the obviously disturbed in terms of how it affects
functioning, not in terms of any constitutional difference.

Personality Tools

This has led me to redefine the notion of "personality." Conventionally, the word
"person" simply refers to an individual human being and "personality" correspondingly
means a complex of characteristics that distinguishes that human being from others. I
would like to reformulate the notion of personality along more dynamic lines and in a
way that harks back to the original root of the term.

The Latin word from which "personality" derives is, of course, "persona." The first and
original definition of this term is "a mask worn by actors." Now the interesting thing
about the actor’s mask of ancient times was that it was used not to conceal, but to
reveal. Placed over the face of the actor, if allowed him to put aside his own identity and
give expression to the character of the play. For that reason, the second meaning of
persona was "a character in a play, a dramatic role," and the third meaning was "the
parts played by a person in life." None of these original meanings carried any
connotation of hiding or deception. The notion of concealing oneself behind the
persona-mask was a later, transferred meaning.

In line with the original usage of the word, I propose that "personality" be understood
as a vehicle for self-expression, something that gives an individual an opportunity to
carry out this or that creative role in life. In other words, let us look at personality as an
instrument for action and interaction.

To take this notion further, we can consider personalities as tools. Human beings are
often characterized as tool-making animals although many examples can be found of
lower animals using simple devices to accomplish something (such as the ape that
reaches food with a stick or the bird that breaks a clamshell with a stone), human beings
are different in that the whole of their practical lives seem to be centered around the
invention and utilization of tools, a fact which has at no time been more true than in our
technological age. I would like to take this one step further and say that I believe the
whole of our social and emotional lives are also centered around the invention and
utilization of tools: the tools we call "personalities." And I believe we have a remarkable
ability to create these personality-tools as the need arises.

2
What this implies, of course, is that we are all multiple, that we all can and do create
various personalities to accomplish life's tasks. In this framework, the individual
suffering from multiple personality does not appear to differ in any essential way from
the rest of us. That person has simply taken the business of personality-tool-making to
its extreme and has lost touch with his or her central identity. Such an individual
exemplifies in exaggerated form an ability which we all have to fashion personality-tools
as the demands of personal interaction require. The tool must be made to fit the task.
And so it is with personality-tools. We often speak of people is having a "telephone
personality," the "work personality," a "party personality." These are instruments
constructed for well-defined situations and specific tasks. How well the personality-tool
serves the individual depends on how well it is fashioned and the nature of its task. If
the task is a constructive one and the tool is well made, the result will be positive. If the
task is destructive or the tool is not appropriate, (e.g., in psychosis or sometimes in
neurosis), the results can be disaster. As I mentioned, an individual suffering from
multiple personality disorder is a master tool-maker. When confronted with a problem,
conflict, or feeling he or she cannot handle, the difficulty is solved by creating a
personality to deal with the troublesome situation. For example, when the multiple Billy
Milligan was confronted with a situation which threatened him, he formed the
personality "Ragen," the keeper of hate. Ragen was capable of defending him against
any danger, having developed the ability to stimulate at will the flow of adrenaline and
summon extraordinary physical strength. On the other hand, when confronted with
suffering, Milligan formed a personality named "David" who was the keeper of pain. He
absorbed the hurt of the other personalities.

The solution of the multiple personality is certainly preferable to psychosis – for

example, schizophrenic withdrawal, paranoid projection or manic flight – for these
conditions prevent the person from functioning. Instead of relying on such escapes, the
multiple personality individual creates a personality-tool designed precisely for the need
confronting him or her and is thereby able to continue functioning in the situation. And
the personality fashioned is sometimes so well constructed that it is considered by those
around to be superior to the primary personality.

The healthy individual too constructs personality-tools to accomplish the specialized

tasks confronting him. As a matter of fact, there is evidence that the ability to flexibly
create such personality-tools is an indication of the degree of creativity of an individual.
A study by Reima Kampman5 concludes that subjects capable of producing secondary
personalities are clinically healthier and more adaptive than those who cannot. And she
further indicates that responding to suggestions to develop multiple personalities is a
creative activity of the ego. Looked at from this point of view, the human ability to make

3
personality-tools to deal with the challenges of life is a great strength, for it allows a
versatility in coping effectively with the many facets of human existence.

Human Multiplicity

The view of human personality I am proposing here holds multiplicity to be normal for
human beings. From some central place in us which constitutes or basic unity, we
produce personality-tools to carry on our interactive life.

Although this multiplicity is an essential characteristic of human life, its manifestations

vary greatly. In the remainder of this paper I would like to give a presentation of the rich
variety of personality-tools that human beings construct. I must point out that in
speaking here of a multiplicity of "personalities" I am using that term in the redefined
sense mentioned before: a part played by a person in life. So this is not an attempt to
delineate a multitude of things existing in an individual, but to give a phenomenological
description of distinct states. However, to make this more dynamic usage of the term
intelligible, one further thing should be clarified: the matter of amnesia.

A client of mine who was not a multiple personality once told me that he sometimes felt
he was a collection of selves. He said that these selves were like straws loosely bundled
together within him. As different straws were drawn out, used, and put back, he would
be now one self, now another. He never knew which self he would be at any moment.
Neither did he know who or what it was that determined which straw would be chosen,
though he knew the selves were all his. He was aware of what his different selves were
doing as they were doing it, and he could remember afterwards all had happened
perfectly well. But when thinking back he found it hard to identify with those other
selves. He had great difficulty in claiming their feelings and actions as his own when he
was not actually "being" them.

This client was suffering from a kind of amnesia, but of a very different sort from that
ordinarily recognized. The term "amnesia" has long been used in a rather uncritical
fashion in connection with multiplicity of consciousnesses. Its basic meaning is "lack of
memory" and underlying that meaning is the assumption that there is one
consciousness, which first knew and then forgot something. However, we recognize that
since often we are dealing with more than one consciousness, a different understanding
of amnesia needs to be developed.

In my client's case, it is clear that he did not lack knowledge of an event; rather, he
lacked connection with an identity. He knew what he had done or undergone – the

4
events – but did not feel that it was he that experienced them. He did not feel that other
"personality" to be himself as he now experienced himself to be.

For that reason, it seems appropriate to speak of two kinds of amnesia:6 event amnesia
and identity amnesia. With event amnesia, the individual lacks knowledge of an
experience; with identity amnesia, he lacks connection with the subject who had the
experience. My client was describing lack of connection with an identity, not with an
event, and so was suffering from identity amnesia only.

Identity amnesia exists in its extreme form in cases of multiple personality. In fact, it is
the distinguishing mark of that condition. The assertion, "I am not he and he is not me"
is always present when one personality of a multiple becomes aware of another. Event
amnesia may or may not be present among personalities of the multiple, and therefore
cannot be considered an essential mark of that condition, although it is frequently
present in some form or other.

Now most of us experience mild forms of both kinds of amnesia as we go through life.
We will have episodes which, try as we might, we cannot recall: this is event amnesia.
Also, we will do things which later on we find it hard to connect with or own up to,
when we are likely to say "I was just not myself when I did that": this is identity amnesia.
In the description of multiplicity states to follow, the whole range of identity amnesia
will be involved, from the very mild everyday form to the extreme discontinuity of full-
blown multiple personalities. It is the presence of some form of identity amnesia that
signals a change in personality (as I use the term). When there is also some event
amnesia, that simply makes more dramatic the shift from one personality-tool to
another

To simplify this description of human multiplicity, I would like to divide experiences of

personality multiplicity into four categories:

1. Social multiplicity: interactive personalities that manifest in daily life and which for
the most part enhance functioning.

2. Inner multiplicity: personalities that are discovered through an inner search process
and which may enhance or inhibit functioning.

3. Pathological multiplicity: personalities that manifest in daily life, but which (although
they may have been fashioned to aid functioning) for the most part interfere with it.

4. Expressive multiplicity: personalities formed to give expression to creative drives.

5
 SOCIAL MULTIPLICITY

In the first group, social multiplicity, we find those types of personality with which we
are most familiar.

The simplest and most common of this type of personality-tool is that formed in
response to social expectations and the need to communicate effectively with others. In
many ways a personality-tool of this type corresponds to the "persona" of Carl Jung’s
psychology,7 which he defined as "the individuals system of adaptation to, or the
manner he assumes in dealing with, the world." Jung strongly connected personas with
professions, saying that "each calling or profession… Has its own characteristic persona,"
pointing out that a certain kind of behavior is forced on professionals and that there is a
danger that individuals may become identified with their personas as they endeavor to
live up to those expectations.

The concept of personas formed to meet social expectations certainly goes much
further than the role of professional life. In both public and private life we automatically
form personality-tools to perform our social tasks. For instance, a man operates as a
"professor" in the academic context of his career. His "professor" personality conveys a
sense of self assurance and wisdom, and he is accustomed to respect and a certain
amount of adulation. Then he goes home to become the "husband" whose role and
position may not be nearly as exalted. He may, as a matter of fact, find himself quite
subordinated to his wife's superior wisdom in that context. Our same man may also be
the "coach" for a Little League team, the "loyal member" of the service club, and the
"social conversationalist" at a cocktail party.

These are examples of simple but distinctly identifiable modes of being into which one
individual may shift as contexts change and needs arise. They are personality-tools,
offering a structure for self-expression that is useful in the contexts in which they arise
and usually quite useless in other contexts. When a personality-tool is employed in the
wrong context, the result can be disaster.

Shifts from personality to personality usually occur fairly automatically. There are,
however, many people who deliberately psych themselves into a personality that they
believe will help them meet some special challenge. The personality may be of a general
type (for example, the "self-confident speaker" for a public engagement), or it may be
modeled on a specific individual that they admire and would handle the situation they
expect to face well (for example, a "Barbara Walters" personality for a discussion of

6
politics). There are in fact people who begin each day with such conscious personality-
tool creation.

By and large, personalities in the category "social multiplicity" enhance the individual’s
functioning in the world. They are vehicles for interaction that provide security and help
bring out those qualities needed for the social task. It is only when, as Jung said, the
individual completely identifies himself with one social personality-tool that he is in
danger. Jung called this condition "possession" by the persona; it produces a kind of
inflexibility that allows little room for creative or spontaneous personal interaction.

INNER MULTIPLICITY

The second grouping of personality-tools comes under the heading of "inner

multiplicity." This is the arena of inner personalities which are discovered through some
kind of search process. The operation of these personalities in the life of the individual is
often quite unknown to those around. The effects of these personalities may be either
positive or negative, that is, either enhance or inhibit functioning.

Descriptions of each of these kinds of inner personalities may be found in available

literature, both psychological and otherwise. For that reason, I will simply mention the
specific types and references for further inquiry.

The first type of personality-tool in this group is that formed to handle some inner need
or crisis. Some people have discovered these special creations in themselves through a
kind of introspective personal search. A good example of this is the description given by
Colin Wilson in his book Mysteries8 where he recounts his experience of a particularly
disturbing crisis. He was working under tremendous pressure, needing to meet a
number of writing deadlines in a very short period of time. He found himself subject to
dangerous attacks of panic which he feared could lead to physical collapse, or even
cardiac arrest. Desperate to find a solution, Wilson summoned up what he called a
"more purposive me," which could bring order and come out of the chaos and panic
that had been reigning within. This calming self was, he says, "like a schoolmistress
walking into a room full of squabbling children and clapping her hands. The chaos would
subside instantly, to be succeeded by a sheepish silence." Wilson considered this
schoolmistress self to be one of an inner "the ladder of selves," hierarchically arranged
from the robot-type self to the highly focused creative self. The schoolmistress self was
in the medium range, with the capacity to bring order to the more childish selves which
had been mobilized as a result of Wilson's writing pressure.

7
The second type of personality-tool to be mentioned under inner multiplicity is that
discovered by therapeutic search. This type is well illustrated in the writings of Ralph
Allison, well-known for his work with multiple personalities. He describes two types of
inner personality which can reveal themselves through the therapeutic process, and
which serve a positive function in the clients psyche. The first is the "rescuer
personality," which is formed by the individual to counter the influence of destructive
personalities within a multiple. The second is a personality which phenomenological ly
does not present itself as the individuals own creation, but rather as an independently
existing being. This is the Inner Self Helper (ISH) – the name was coined by Allison –
which exists within the individual and has the task of promoting the aims and interests
of the Inner Self (the part of the person which is characterized by qualities of love,
knowledge, and strength). The Inner Self Helper is present in both multiple personality
subjects and in normal people. It uses good judgment and has a deep understanding of
the individual's emotional life. For that reason it can be called upon to aid in the
person's therapy, or to advise about life decisions in a rational and objective way.9

The Inner Self Helper calls to mind the inner "guides" or "teachers" written about in the
literature of mysticism and spiritualism. This third type of inner personality is
traditionally discovered through a spiritual search. As with the Inner Self Helper, the
spiritual guide personality presents itself as an independently existing being who is
present within the person to aid with the search for that individual's path in life.

The fourth category of personality-tool to be found under the heading of inner

multiplicity is the past-life personality. This reincarnation-type personality is usually
discovered through some sort of meditative search. The therapeutic possibilities of
discovering past life personalities is becoming more widely recognized today, although
interpretations of their metaphysical status vary greatly.10 But regardless of how they
may be evaluated metaphysically, they are for some people very real and present
themselves phenomenologically as the repository of experiences not undergone in the
present life of the subject.

Ernest Hilgard has brought to our attention yet another kind of inner personality with
his discovery of what he calls the "hidden observer." This type has been discovered
through an experimental search, that is, research into the hypnotic state. In Divided
Consciousness11 Hilgard tells us how, through his research on the experience of pain in
the hypnotic trance, he discovered an "observer" which is neither the waking self nor
the hypnotized self, and which is aware of the experiences of both. This original
discovery12 was further elaborated in the work of John and Helen Watkins of the
University of Montana, who say that there are indications that we can have more than
one hidden observer, each with its own personality traits.13Oregon psychiatrist John

8
Beahrs has gone so far as to speculate that there may be an unlimited number of hidden
observers or co-conscious selves residing within a single individual – and he is talking
about normal people.14

The sixth and final type of personality-tool falling within the category of inner
multiplicity is what may be called the "fictive personality." This kind of personality is
created by the "mythopoeic” faculty of the unconscious (referred to by Ellenberger and
Myers)15which seems to exhibit an almost unlimited capacity to spin stories and
fantastic romances populated by vivid personalities with which the individual may
identify. A famous detailed case study of personality creation by this part of the psyche
is Theodore Flournoy’s From India to the Planet Mars,16 which describes the
phenomenon of medium Helene Smith. In this case, the personalities manifested in the
context of spiritualist séances. but there is good evidence to believe that we all have this
penchant for spinning interesting tales in the unconscious, and that this activity is going
on in the background all the time.

Pathological Multiplicity

We now come to the third category: pathological multiplicity. This grouping includes
personality-tools that manifest in daily life, but which for the most part interfere with
functioning (although they may originally have been fashioned to assist the person). This
includes everything from momentary manifestations of split-off fragments of the psyche
to full-blown multiple personality disorder and the possession syndrome.

Split-off fragments or dissociated elements of the unconscious may occasionally break

through as personalities or partial personalities. I am speaking here of episodes of the
hysterical type which may be short or longer-lasting. Examples of the latter are the
dissociative phenomena called “fugues." Here the individual leaves his normal activities
and wanders off to some other location. The person is in a hypnoidal state and sports a
new identity. The episode may last a few hours or much longer, and it is generally
followed by amnesia for the events that took place during the duration of the fugue.

With multiple personality disorder, personality-tool formation is taken to an extreme.

Relatively well-developed personalities will manifest alternately in an individual, causing
great confusion for that person and for those around him or her. The alternate
personalities may be of either sex and any apparent age. For Billy Milligan, for instance,
who had twenty-four personalities, there were, among others, child personalities, a
lesbian, a sophisticated Englishman, a remarkably intelligent but dangerous Eastern
European, and "the Teacher," who was the other twenty-three personalities fused into
one.

9
Billy’s subjective experience of the state of multiplicity is interesting from a
phenomenological point of view and evokes a picture of the inner workings of the
human psyche that is useful for understanding of all multiplicity states. He depicts it in
this way. His various personalities are sitting around in a circle in a darkened room. In
the corner of the room a spotlight is shining down on the floor. Any of the personalities
may step forward into the spotlight (or "take the spot", as Billy puts it), and when he or
she does so, that personality is the one operating in the world and interacting with
those around Billly. In other words, the person that has taken the spot is the personality
people contact at that moment. Meanwhile, the other personalities are going about
their business, resting, conversing, studying, and so forth. Generally, two of the
personalities were in charge of deciding who could take "the spots" at any particular
moment. They were Arthur who dominated in "safe places," and Ragen, who dominated
in "dangerous places," that is, when Billy’s wellbeing was somehow threatened.

The notion of "the spot" that a personality steps into and is illuminated and thereby
exposed to the world, is most fascinating. The personality selected to be what may be
called Billy's consciousness-in-the-world changes according to the needs of the "family"
of personalities, which is the whole Billy. This description gives hints for the construction
of a model of human multiplicity which could apply to both the disturbed and the
healthy.

The final type of pathological multiplicity is that of the possession syndrome. Here the
individual has the experience of being multiple in a very specific way. He or she
experiences the presence within of a particular individual, who claims to have a
separate existence apart from the subject, a person who may or may not be known to
the subject, one who may be dead or alive, one who may or may not even be human.
The extent to which this interiorly present entity takes over the thoughts or actions of
the individual varies greatly, from mere influence to complete control of the organism.

In the possession syndrome, the individual experiences the interior personalities as

separate individuals. Without passing a final judgment on the metaphysical truth or
falsity of that experience, the very least we can say is that the possessing entities are
personality-tools, created by the individual for his or her own purposes.

As an example of an interesting, rather mild form of the possession syndrome, I would

like briefly to speak about a case from my own practice. The subject of this possession
was a young woman, whom I will call Virginia. She had been in psychotherapy for some
time when she began talking about an image of her father that kept repeating itself in
her mind. Hereis the way she described it while she was in a relaxed state:

10
 I see a little boy, sitting on the floor, he is playing. He seems to be about two
years old. I somehow know he is my father. He is two years old and I feel terribly
guilty towards him. I don't know why. I just do.

For some time neither Virginia or I could make out what this recurring image was about.
Why should she be seeing her father at age two, and why should she feel guilty about
him at that age?

Then one day, when she was again in the relaxed state, I asked Virginia to bring back the
recurring image and let her thoughts wander freely in any direction from it. Here's what
she said:

I am thinking now about my grandmother, my father's mother. Her name is Rose.

I am named after her – my middle name, that is. I never knew her, but my
mother told me about her. She was a very strange woman. She had a nervous
breakdown and then always kept to her room. Nobody at home hardly ever saw
her. It was a bad thing to have a nervous breakdown. Everybody was ashamed of
her.

I asked Virginia if she had any idea about how her grandmother felt about her father.
She replied:

No. I didn't know her. She died before I was born. But right now I have the feeling
that in that scene [where her father was two years old] I am looking through her
eyes.

As Virginia continued to speak, she had the strong impression that she was feeling the
way her grandmother Rose had felt. She believed that Rose was, in fact, with her, a
presence inside that influenced how she felt and thought.

Next Virginia began to allow her grandmother to speak through her. "Rose’s" tale is too
long to tell here. Let me just say that she confessed to sexual abuse her two-year-old
son, an act which led to her mental breakdown and her shutting herself away in her
room. Rose died seven years before Virginia was born. When Virginia was a toddler,
Rose or Rose’s spirit, it seems, somehow invaded her and from then on had a powerful
effect on her life.

In her adult life, Virginia experienced certain tendencies which she had never been able
to understand. She had lived in a number of communal situations, and had always felt

11
compelled to choose the smallest room in the house for herself. While living in that tiny
room, she experienced a great reluctance to leave it and join her companions, to such
an extent that she came to be considered a kind of "hermit,” always shut away in
isolation.

The second thing was Virginia's tendency to experience enormous frustration when
there was no adequate reason for it. Being unable to find any way to release it. Virginia
had lived her life in a state of continuous uncomfortable tension.

After working for some time with "Rose" and her feelings of guilt and confusion, Virginia
gave up her "recluse" compulsion and was able for the first time to deal realistically with
her feeling of frustration.

This rather mild form of the possession syndrome stands in sharp contrast to what most
people associate with the term "possession." It usually evokes scenes from the movie
The Exorcist or other equally grotesque portrayals. Though such cases, which might be
labeled "diabolical possession," do in fact occur, I believe they are quite different in
nature from the possession syndrome I've just described. There is not sufficient time
today to go into this subject in any detail, but I would like to briefly mention my view of
the phenomenon.

I believe the diabolical possession is the violent manifestation of a latent psychosis in a

form largely determined by the social context in which that manifestation takes place.
Let me explain.

Carl Jung said that psychosis is "possession by the archetype." This way of putting it is
very helpful for understanding diabolical possession, for I believe that this is precisely
what is happening to the victim of this affliction. The possessing "demon" has all of the
extreme qualities that one might expect an archetype in an undiluted form to exhibit if
it were to take over an individual human being. The unrelieved hatred and malice
characteristic of diabolical possession can, in my opinion, well be accounted for in
archetypal terms, since the archetype shows none of the balanced qualities that are
characteristic of human beings.

Furthermore, the form of the diabolical possession is socially determined. That is, it
takes the form expected by those involved in the situation. Thus the exorsist of Catholic
faith, for instance, is likely to find a perfectly "Catholic" devil, the evangelist will discover
evangelical demons, and so forth. This, it seems to me, indicates that the form in which
the archetype breaks through in the individual will be determined by the expectations of
both victim and social context.

12
Put another way, the diabolically possessed has an unusual ability to focus the energy
and expectations of those around, channeling them into the possession manifestation.
However, this "mediumistic" capacity opereates totally outside the conscious awareness
of both victim and participants. Looked at from this point of view, the diabolically
possessed may be considered psychic funnels for fundamental social and psychological
forces.

EXPRESSIVE MULTIPLICITY

The final category of personality-tool is what may be termed "expressive multiplicity."

I'm speaking here of personalities of the creative type, where the function is not so
much to respond to expectations from the social environment as to construct a useful
vehicle to carry out a personal inner drive to accomplish something.

As I mentioned before, Colin Wilson has helpfully pointed out that we tend to function
in daily life on a spectrum, which ranges from robotic action, almost devoid of mental
concentration or awareness, to highly focused periods of intense creative involvement.
He goes on to say that we form "selves " to carry out these various tasks and he pictures
them arranged in a kind of hierarchical ladder within us, with the robotic selves at the
bottom and the intensely focused selves at the top.17

We can view these personality-tools as being fashioned for action, providing the
individual with an outlet for inner drives to do and create. Our robotic personalities are
quite easy to identify. Take for example the secretary who has become so familiar with
her work that she performs most of her tasks mechanically, and perhaps experiences
boredom because so little of herself is involved in the job.

On the other end of the spectrum is the artistic worker. I've discovered that most highly
creative people have formed a kind of "artistic personality" ("artistic" in the broadest
sense of the term) which they switch into as they begin their work. Often this artist
personality is activated by the unconscious self-induction of an altered state of
consciousness, and it frequently is characterized by a palpable lack of continuity with
the person's ordinary state of mind.

As an example of this I will cite a young woman of my acquaintance named Sheila who
was unusually talented as a "body worker," using various techniques to help people get
in touch with their bodily feelings. Watching her work was a graphic education in this
kind of creative altered state. As soon as she began, Sheila automatically (although

13
unwittingly) switched into another personality. In this state she was wholly focused on
the client, receiving impressions about what the body was "saying" and using both
hands and voice to affect the person's physical-emotional condition. When Sheila
worked from this state, the effects were quite astounding. I have known people who
from a few light touches on their legs or back – touches barely detectable to the
onlooker – were so profoundly affected that it took them several days to recover from
the after-effects.

From the point of view of the therapeutic effects upon her clients, Sheila's impact was
nearly magical. But from Sheila's subjective point of view, there were certain aspects of
her work that were confusing to her, even disturbing. When she had finished her work
and returned to her "normal self," she would often feel a bit dazed, as though she had
been somewhere else. She also had a hard time explaining to anyone what she had just
done, and why she had done it. She suffered from a noticeable amount of identity
amnesia, finding it difficult to identify herself in the normal state with herself in the
creative state. In addition, she experienced some event amnesia, often being unable to
recall certain things she had done or said while working.

Sheila's experience illustrates something that is, I believe, fairly common to people who
are intensely creative. The impression of another personality being brought into play
with resulting identity amnesia and even event amnesia is a more frequent occurrence
than one might think.

There's a great need for a thorough study of this aspect of the creative experience, for
many artistic people suffer from the same confusion as Sheila about what happens
when they work, and they are needlessly concerned that something is wrong with them.
They must come to know that quite the contrary is true: the switching of personalities is
not a sign of pathology but an indication of a great gift.

In conclusion, I would like to make the same appeal more broadly. Human multiplicity is
a fact. It is a sign of the richness and versatility of the human psyche. We have need for
a far-reaching study of this phenomenon, a study which takes into account both
pathological and ordinary multiplicity states. In other words, we need to develop a
multiplicity psychology based on solid clinical and experimental work.

1Daniel Keyes, The Minds of Billy Milligan, (New York: Random House, 1981). See also the
updated edition (New York: Bantam Books, 1982).

14
2 See Psychiatric Annals, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Jan., 1984); the whole issue is devoted to multiple
personality; also George Greaves, “Multiple Personality 165 Years After Mary Reynolds,”
Journal of Mental Disease 169 (1980), 577-596.
3 Ralph Allison, Mind in Many Pieces (New York: Rawson, Wade, 1983) and John Beahrs, Unity

and Multiplicity (New York: Harper & Row, 1974). See also Wilson Van Dusen, The Natural
Depth in Man (New York: Harper and Row, 1972) and The Presence of Other Worlds (New York:
Harper and Row, 1974).
4 Adam Crabtree, Multiple Man (Toronto: Collins, 1985).
5 Reima Kampman, “Hypnotically Induced Multiple Personality: An Experimental Study,”

International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis, 24 (1976), 215-217.

6 There is a problem with the term "amnesia." "Amnesia" means loss of memory. This implies

that there is a single person or self who forgets. If the person now is sufficiently distinct from
the person before to say that the event was not experienced by him or the identity was not
experienced by him, there is actually no for getting involved at all. There is simply a change of
identity. In that case the distinction between the two amnesia is a simple: with identity amnesia
the facts of the experience become available to the new personality, whereas with event
amnesia they do not. The further question of whether there is one subject behind all the
personality-tools of an individual is beyond the scope of this paper.
7 Carl Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Princeton: Princeton University Press,

1980), pp. 122-123.

8 Colin Wilson, Mysteries (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1978).
9 Allison, op. cit., pp. 131-132.
10 For example: Morris Netherton and Nancy Shiffren, Past Lives Therapy (New York: Ace, 1979);

Thorwald Dethlefsen, Voices From Other Lives (New York: M. Evans, 1977); Robert Macreaty,
The Reincarnation of Robert Macreaty (New York: Zebra, 1980); Arthur Guirdham, The Psyche in
Medicine (Sudbury, Suffolk: Neville Spearman, 1978); Dick Sutphen, Past Life Therapy in Action
(Malibu: Valley of the Sun Publishing, 1983); Peter Moss, Encounters with the Past (London:
Sidgwick & Jackson, 1979).
11 Ernest Hilgard, Divided Consciousness: Multiple Controls in Human Thought and Action (New

York: John Wiley & Sons, 1977)

12 Hilgard's discovery was not, however, without its antecedents. To arrive at a history of the

phenomenon, one must consult early works which dealt with "negative hallucinations,"
particularly those of Pierre Janet and Alfred Binet. See Janet, L’automatisme psychologique
(Paris: Félix Alcan, 1889) and Binet, Alterations of Personality (New York: D. Appleton, 1896).
13 J. G. Watkins, “Ego States and the Problem of Responsibility: A Psychological Analysis of the

Patty Hearst Case,” Journal of Psychiatry and Law, 4 (1976), 471-489; J. G. Watkins and H. H.
Watkins, “Ego States and Hidden Observer,” Journal of Altered States of Consciousness,5 (1979),
3-18 and Ego States and Hidden Observers: The Woman in Black and the Lady in White (New
York: Norton, 1980).
14 Beahrs, op. cit., p. 185.
15 Henri Ellengerger, The Discovery of the Unconscious (New York: Basic Books, 1970), p. 318,

and Frederick Myers, Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death (London: Longmans,
Green & Co., 1903), Vol. II, p. 13.

15
16
Theodore Flournoy, From India to the Planet Mars (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1900).
17 Wilson, op. cit., pp. 23 ff.

16