Autumn Asphodel

Okay James, I will not presume. I must ask what you mean by the things you say. Let’s try it:

What do you mean by “ask”?

What do you mean by “another”?

What do you mean by “question”?

… etc, etc, etc.

^ No presumptions here. I’m done with that. I mean, I certainly can’t take your meaning at face value (like I can with everyone else for some reason); you obviously have very deep and profound meanings to the things you say. When you say “apple,” you might actually mean “orange”–so I’d better not presume to know what you mean. I must pause to ask before I come to you with a response.

This is starting to feel like a conversation with Magnus.

:laughing:

I saw how you enjoyed that one.
=D>

Meet Jessie:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_dRDqs2t2Y8[/youtube]

^ Here we have another interesting case of DID. Once again, by amazing coincidence, we have 5 personalities. This girl has four boys dwelling within her: Ed, Jamie, Jake, and Ollie.

Ollie, for some reason, did not make an appearance in the above video. I’ve not watched any of Jessie’s other videos, so I’m probably jumping to conclusions, but I’ll bet Ollie is the traumatized one who did not want to make an appearance in the video.

Things I find fascinating about the case of Jessie:

  • All boys. Why does Jessie consistently choose boys? Is it her choice? It’s also fascinating that only one of them (Ollie notwithstanding) appears to be gay (Ed), which means that not only is the gender consistently opposite of Jessie’s natural/original gender, but the sexual orientation is often opposite as well (though I’m really only speculating here since Jake and Jamie, even though they act straight, might in fact also be gay–which is really weird to say because you have a male oriented sexual preference dwelling inside a female body, yet this isn’t considered a straight female, but a gay male living inside a female body :confused: ). I’m also curious to know how Jessie’s husband feels about these boys and visa-versa. When Jessie’s husband makes love to Jessie, do the boys (at least the straight ones if they are straight) black out? And even if they do, they have to know that they are technically married to a man and that he occasionally makes love to them, or at least their bodies… awkward. This also makes me wonder: assuming at least Jake and Jamie are straight boys, do they miss the opportunity to make love to a woman? To have a girlfriend?

  • All different ages. We’re not told in this video how old Jessie is, but Jake is 24, Ed is 26, and Jamie is 28 (all 2 years apart). Is this indicative of how long they’ve been a part of the host? Depending on how old Jessie is, that means they entered into her life at an extremely young age.

  • Fully articulated American accent. I’m speaking of Jake here. Jake apparently is American! Or Canadian maybe (any other country speak with our accents?). Now, learning to speak with a different accent isn’t that hard. It most likely was an acquired skill that evolved over time. What would really surprise me is if Jessie acquired Jake at a very young and started speaking in a perfect American accent right from the get-go. ← This would really give the impression of being possession by a foreign spirit.

Now again, the question of spiritual possession comes up: in this case, the three alters being presented here seem rather innocuous–relatively good, or normal, spirits–and not only that but very human–that is, if we are to go with the interpretation of “spiritual possession,” I’d place my bets on human souls who have departed this life and have been given the opportunity to “possess” another person’s body for a while (as opposed to a non-human entity like an angel or a demon). There’s also the possibility of psychic connection which I’ve entertained: other human beings concurrently living somewhere else on this Earth forming a psychic connection to the host and speaking through here. Now, this is all notwithstanding Ollie, the fifth personality, whom we didn’t get to see. It’s quite possible that Ollie is the “demonic” personality (which would explain the lack of appearance, especially given Jessie’s desire to not portray DID in a bad light). And on this note, there is a readily available psychological explanation for why cases of DID so often feature a “demon” personality, thereby confounding it with cases of actual demonic possession. It’s because cases of DID are usually born from trauma, and the initial split is often one whereby one personality takes on the trauma and all the horrible memories while the other gets to live relatively trauma free with their own set of memories which aren’t nearly as horrible. The traumatized personality is “shut off” (i.e. repressed into the unconscious) so that the host or the person as a whole can go on living life without having to suffer or relive the trauma. This, however, means that the traumatized altered is, when expressed, going to come off as a possessing demon or at least haunted by demons–it is going to seem very dark, disturbed, very bitter and angry, spiteful, maybe full of hate, and quite possibly “evil”–and if not these, then certainly being the victim of these, thereby giving the impression of something very “demonic” in its midst.

One last thing to note about Jessie: in the intro to her video, she speaks as the host–the normal (original) person she thinks of herself as–and she decorates the video with a lot of innocent seeming, pleasant, happy themes–like something out of a medieval princess fairy tale:

I’m talking about the music and the superimposed banners and such. She sounds British from the accent, so this may be common among Brits given their long history, but it also seems to serve her purpose of trying to distance the reputation of DID away from the crazed, inner-psychopath, demonically possessed (gee, I’m helping a lot here, ain’t I :laughing:), stereotypical image, and closer to something you might find in a kids fairy tale book. ← I would expect this to come quite naturally to cases of DID.

UPDATE:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P_5Pi_-LboY[/youtube]

I just watched this video and have gotten a few questions answered.

  1. Jessie’s husband is bisexual… 'nough said.

  2. Ollie is not the demon–the reason why Ollie didn’t make an appearance in the first video is because Ed and Jamie didn’t want to subject their son to that kind of public exposure–that’s right, Ollie is Ed’s and Jamie’s SON!!!–don’t ask how it happened–the whole birds and bees theory flies right out the window with this one (maybe they weren’t wearing contraceptives that night)–but apparently, they had a kid together and named him “Ollie”.

  3. Jamie is gay… or at least bisexual.

A few more interesting tid bits:

  1. Jamie is a doctor.

  2. Jake is a rock star.

^ This reeeally is play acting, isn’t it?

But then again…

  1. Jamie really does need prescription spectacles, because his eye sight gets blurry, unlike any of the other alters.

So if Ollie isn’t the demon, then who is? Does there need to be a demon? I suppose not, but if cases of DID are really born out of childhood trauma, then there would have to be (I would think) at least a few personalities which are most strongly tied to the traumatic experience–and in that sense, closest to the “demon.” After watching the above video, I would have to nominate Ed–he seems the most troubled and aggressive, and the one whom it has been most difficult for Jessie to get along with.

^ All this coming from the point of view of a drug crazed, demon possessed, divorced 40 year old ADD kid–no biases here!!! Total, total, total impartial objectivity! ← Right here!

.
Since you seem to be fascinated by the new age gender bender trope industry:

^ Good work, James. Did you write that?

No. That’s industry standard.

I think that a demon in this case or a second or third or fifth personality is a set of terms to value oneself in.

Its just a standard of self-valuing that can cohabitate in the same body as 4 others. Pretty simple nothing to worry about any more than “normal” humans - who might in many cases even be more happy if they had several personalities too.

I find it healthy to wear masks from time to time, it offers pathways into experience, which is the real identity.

If you don’t find me convincing, listen to my alter-ego:

" As humans, most of our time we spend in avoiding experiences. In our seeking-out of what we aim to experience, we are shifting and sneaking along the invisible walls facing us from every direction but the one we seek to disclose - the walled off area of “the real” is however constantly accessible, these walls can be broken down with the force of intent. The lack of this intent is precisely what makes us effective as prolonged identities, which leads finally in complex beings to what we can begin to call experience.

The identity of experience is experience accepted into the being as its being. The same mechanisms that cause experience, also perform a lot of activity going on that is not ‘owned’ by the organism. Freud goes into this as a repressed - suggesting that the identity of this experience is already ‘the name of the subject’, but actively kept away from its consciousness. I would propose that we address this differently - as ‘untranslated affect’, affect not yet interpreted in terms of the particular self-valuing.

Psychoanalysis is not the art of retrieving experiences to consciousness, but to identify physical affect as experience. This is always done after the fact, also when there is no ‘repression’, or what I would call simply an insufficient power to identify in terms of self - the delicate dove-like beauty of the self to itself facing very dangerous and compromising affect, “raw” affect, which can not be specified, categorized in ‘true terms’ as Spinoza has it - pleasure or joy (laetitia), pain or sorrow (tristitia)and desire (cupiditas) or appetite. "

Since the belief in Ego is as hollow as belief in One God, it is only natural that people fall away from the illusion into a poly-egotism, to later on realize the plurality of being-as-such, and create new Pantheons of Pleasure.

Or pain and then they are condemned to suffer another illusion and find a way to return but then whoever opens that door must go down before another turn of the great wheel.

It would be interesting to see just how much an artifact of modern day civilization this one ego really is… how prevalent does DID become the further back in history, and into pre-history, we go. Would a single ego have been the exception rather than the rule in pre-historic times? If so, that would explain a great deal of the spiritual/religious orientation of early man–the belief in spiritual possession.

Well you can see it in politics. People have been possessed by Hillary Clinton, who in turn is evidently possessed -
there is no entity, no reality, no accountability - one facet kills, the other moralizes - both in her and her supporters.

I am not being annoying. I mean this 100%. Modern Liberal Ideology is a haunted house. Hollywood is a world of demonic possessions. Actors, in general, are schizoid and lack that singular moral accountability, as we have all been able to see recently.

I think that Trump is someone who is not possessed by spirits - and an exception in politics -
beautifully, this means he gets surrounded by spirits - like Kek, et all.

I mean this dead-seriously, Gib. I am sure our civilization has come to an end, Trump is a transition figure to prevent complete dissolution of life in the process.

Facebook makes schizoid, Snapchat guarantees complete insanity, complete detachment of ego forms from the classical notions of Apollonian unity.

(Apollo is the symbol designating one-ness of ego. Dionysos, his brother, signifies the reality underneath it - when its healthy. When its not, you get this.)

Jacob, stop tempting me to respect you.

Meet Mia:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qAD3xZAysRw[/youtube]

Again, we have a Big 5. And again, one of them obviously stands out as the demon.

Mia introduces us to the concept of “fictives”–she has two and a half–the two are Harley Quinn and Twila Sparkle, and the half is Jinx. It should be obvious why Harley and Twila are called fictives, and Jinx is a “half” fictive because, from what I gather, Jinx is not really based on the fictional character from League of Legends, she only borrows her name from the character.

This concept of fictives tells us that alternate personalities are not just born as blank slates but can be bootstrapped with a fully developed character, and if that character comes bootstrapped with a history (like being from Brooklyn), then the history comes too. I don’t know if those end up becoming false memories or just a set of “facts” that the personalities believe. Or perhaps just a narrative. Jinx seems to know that she’s from Mia’s brain.

One question I have is this: why, if these personalities are invented to somehow protect the host, do we get so many cases of one or more personalities wanting to hurt the host? We have Zoe in Mia’s case, the Controller in Autumn’s case, and again in Autumn’s case, we have the “unknown” personality. At least in the case of the Unknown, Autumn tells us that it was an internalization of the accusations of being fake that she was getting. Maybe it was a way for her to feel that she was on their side rather than being their victim. Still, I can’t imagine what she gets from the Controller, or what Mia gets from Zoe.

gib

I have been keeping an eye on this thread - I find it fascinating.

A split personality could be partially(even mostly) explained by some of the ground that we have already covered together - unfortunately the ground that we covered you seemed a little turned off by. I will try to think of a better explanation than the one I had before.

The memory queue is: memory optimization.

:smiley:

I was? I don’t remember being turned off; maybe lost interest at a certain point. Remind me again what it was?

gib

Sorry if I am confusing the matter.

It may be the wrong way of me to put it “being turned off”. It could be that I was not explaining my self in such a manner that would have led to a clear understanding of what I was trying to express. I will try to think of a better explanation than the one I had before.

I am also thinking that what I said before may even seem unrelated. This sort of thing is maybe what goes on with a split personality, I am not sure.

I myself have been diagnosed with schizophrenia co-morbid anxiety and have noticed that my own memory works in a peculiar way - that sometimes different points in reality(memories) become intermingled and still seem as real to me as if I was having a memory related to my current reality at any given moment.

I feel that my mind is trying to optimize in some fashion - hopefully I am starting to make a little more sense.

I’m not sure if it has anything to do with split personality, but whether we see things as related or not has a lot to do with how our neurons are wired. For you, two ideas might be closely related because they are neurally connected in your brain. For me, there may be little neural connection.

It’s a fact that memories get distorted over time.

That’s called adaptation. We all do that. :wink:

gib

You say in the original post: Now, for me, there’s a question of whether this is real or all just an act. Given that analyzing the act seems a little boring to me then that only leaves the situation as if it is a reality for these people - so I hypothesize on the case of it being a reality.

I feel the need to hypothesize on these things, even if somewhat briefly - then I feel the need to share even when it might sound strange. I am sure the beginnings of most breakthroughs would have sounded preposterous early in their development. I present only ideas for further analysis.

I am going to proceed here rather casually and not pay too much attention to grammar or structured propositions . . .
. . . and let my discourse be more suggestive and intuitive . . .

The memory queue is: memory optimization.

The memory of these individual personalities must work in a peculiar way. Having a new personality surface for one, should be first treated as if a new baby has been born i.e. another person added to society that has a fresh set of memories. Each individual personality is different from the next, just as each one of us is different from each other and have a different set of memories.

Yes, it is, and I am thinking that it is a difference in how the memories get distorted over time that might make a difference to how a person that suffers from split personality gets there in the first place. I mean is there any evidence that these people suffer this from birth - if not then they must acquire it somehow - if so then would it not be possible that the “wiring” for memories is being done wrong - either way one has to ask how?

As with any society there is the problem of real estate; that is that the brain is only so big and linear time only allows one personality fully through at any given moment. I imagine that memories also get attached and not just distorted. In fact I imagine a few things are happening to memory in any given twenty four hour period. We assume that in most people one set of memories are being worked on by the brain at a time but this does happen in such a way as to be parallel and not just linear so therefore I suggest that the splitting of these parallel sequences is part of what is causing the split personality. The memories get attached to a particular personality.

Good points . . . I am still not convinced that how neurons are wired has as much to do with on the fly thinking as we would like to believe - I had a thought that since our thinking is always performed in the past that awareness is actually an interpolation of our two most recent memories. This kind of memory is temporary and strengthens existing connections within the brain that allow for integrations of a new memory at a later point in time. Therefore our rationality is bound by past events. If a past event is being split for a particular unknown purpose then it maybe added to a personality.

Our memories also adapt. A good example of this is when the brain heals itself - healing is a process similar to what I have presented - well at least it could be.

Keep in mind that these are some casual thoughts . . .

You would think, wouldn’t you? But the case of Mia above suggests that personalities can be spawned bootstrapped as a fully developped character with (perhaps false) memories. For example, Harley Quinn is one of Mia’s alters and she remembers being from Brooklyn.

I’ve never heard of a case of a person being born with DID. They say DID is triggered by a traumatic event. The personality splits so that one can have the experience of “it didn’t happen to me” while the other remains dormant or unconscious if it can.

That’s possible. The parallel processing of memories may be leveraged by DID.

So how would that tie into your theory about our two most recent memories? Are you saying sometimes those two memories don’t always come together? That they can sometimes split, one going off to spawn new thoughts and new memories that are completely disconnect with the other and its new thoughts and new memories?

gib

The split personality is more peculiar than I first anticipated and I can not be certain that I am not getting myself a little lost in the subject matter.

I will perhaps read up a little on DID and leave you with the following for now . . .

There must be some initial point of spawning; now that I think of it, there maybe multiple points of spawning that bootstrap this fully developed character. I am thinking if these artificial memories are really there then they could be modified memories of other memories; I wonder whether the person would have to know about Brooklyn first for it to become attached - else we are talking about a possession.

It seems to me that they are acquiring DID somehow and traumatic events must be capable of triggering the original split and lay the foundation for other splits. Maybe each personality after the first furthers the separation from the trauma allowing the true personality to lay dormant as you put it.

Parallel processing of memories

Indeed. My intuition now tells me that DID is perhaps even more complex than this. I am guessing that the the initial trauma leads to a type of PTSD. That the stress part of PTSD is not so much expressed as stress but these personalities instead . . . P-T-DID-D? Or something like that.

Well, you are of course correct that how neurons are wired has everything to do with it - my thought was relating to the “bleeding edge” of awareness; the very next decisions that we make from the state of awareness have very limited time to be made and works somewhat like a lotto machine based on many different sets of past memories << man I hope that makes sense, sometimes I confuse myself >> Your mention of the Fibonacci sequence takes me back and yes, like the Fibonacci sequence.

I use the number two to be more figurative than anything - surely it is slightly more complicated than this - however for the sake of conversation, sometimes one must reduce to the first principles that can be made of a more complex situation - so I suggest a complex interpolation of sorts with a simple idea utilizing two memories instead of the whole picture - I think it proves useful. So in saying this, I would guess the part of the memory sequence that is the furthest away from the state of awareness is somehow able to corrupt an unintended memory sequence in an around about sort of way - perhaps a part of the sequence that has been previously attached to a difference sequence altogether << this is more conceptual conversation filler than anything.