Online research in philosophy

The condition known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is metaphysically strange. Can there really be several distinct persons operating in a single body? Our view is that DID sufferers are single persons with a severe mental disorder. In this paper we compare the phenomenology of dissociation between personality states in DID with certain delusional disorders. We argue both that the burden of proof must lie with those who defend the metaphysically extravagant Multiple Persons view and that there is little theoretical motivation to yield to that view in light of the fact that the core symptoms of DID bear remarkable similarity to the symptoms of these other disorders where no such extravagance is ever seriously entertained.

This paper outlines a multidimensional conception of Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) that differs from the 'orthodox' conception in terms of the content of its commitment to the reality of the self. Unlike the orthodox conception it recognizes that selves are fuzzy entities. By appreciating the possibility that selves are fuzzy entities, it is possible to rebut a form of fictionalism about the self which appeals to clinical data from MPD. Realism about self can be preserved in the face of multiple personalities.

Many of the differences between empirical/psychological and conceptual/philosophical approaches to the mind can be resolved using a more precise language that is sensitive to both. Distinguishing identification from identity and identification as from identification with, and then defining the experiential concept of the per sonat, provides a walking bridge. Applying the new terminology to increasing degrees of dissociation, from non-pathological cases to multiple personality, shows how our psychologies can profit from philosophical analysis while our philosophies can revise themselves according to empirical data. Redefining the psychological structures of persona, personality, and self in terms of an experientially more precise conceptual vocabulary, including the per sonat, avoids the pitfalls of the old approaches and provides insights into the nature of human consciousness that lead both to therapeutic results in psychotherapy and a long-overdue conceptual revision in the philosophy of personal identity. Among the practical conclusions is that for legal purposes MPD should not be considered as a multiple person phenomenon but, rather, as a phenomenon of one person who, simultaneously, is identified as many selves. Among the theoretical conclusions is that a person qua person consists not just in a biology and a psychology but also a philosophy.

KEYWORDS: dissociation; multiple personality, person, responsibility.

mainstream academicians. Perhaps the major common area of interest was that of dissociation — in particular, the study of hypnosis and multiple personality, The founders of the S.P.R. believed, along with many others, that dissociative phenomena promised insights into the nature of the mind generally, including..

Introduction -- Am I alone in my body? -- Multiple personality -- Personal identity -- Diachronic identity -- What am I fundamentally? -- Empirical discernability and fission -- My body -- The various senses of personal identity -- Multiple personality and individuation -- Morton Prince's seminal case study the dissociation of a personality -- Philosophical theories of multiple personality -- The coexistence thesis -- Sharing my body -- A criterion of individuation -- Multiple personality in therapeutic and biographic discourses -- Multiple personality in literary discourses.