Personality dissociation: The Problem Of the Subtle Sybil Effect

By Ralph Losey

The underlying reason the big questions are so difficult to answer is ultimately personal - we are swamped in a plethora of identities, most of them false. These false personas were imposed upon us from the outside by society and from the inside by our own muddled thinking. For most of us, there is no single unified self, no uniform field of continuous consciousness. Our "common sense" notion to the contrary, that we are one person with a singular identity, is based on a false assumption. In the words of psychologist Charles Tart, Ph.D.:

"We just assume that a given person is relatively consistent with himself, that he constitutes one person with various characteristics, traits, and so on. Thus you call yourself by one name, with the implication that you are indeed one person even though you have a range of moods and feelings. ...we actually have many quite discrete sub-personalities, each of which calls itself "I" when it happens to be activated by appropriate environmental stimuli, but we have no unity of personality at all except in the sense that all the various sub-personalities are associated with the same physical body and name." 1

As Professor Tart and many others have found, by the time we become adults our identity is disjointed, fragmented, perhaps even fractal, like a "Julia Set."2 We have one series of identities and personalities inherited from our parents, fashioned to meet their expectations, or to rebel against them. There is another series of personalities acquired in the course of schooling, another while dating, another at work, another in a sport or hobby, etc. Close observation of yourself will reveal that you are different people at different times. There is precious little continuity between your different states of consciousness. When you are one person one moment, you have usually forgotten that you were a completely different person a few moments before, and will be yet another person later. You are consumed by the personality of the moment.

The personalities are isolated from each other by barriers of unawareness. There are defenses or buffers between the many "I's." There is no underlying actor to play the part, no one who remembers and coordinates all of the roles. It's as if a series of different people - acquaintances, not friends - took turns inhabiting the same body. We are one person when we first wake up, another person to our children, another to our spouse, another to our boss, etc. One "I" may make a promise, but the next "I" will not remember to keep it, or will not want to keep it.

We live in a chaotic world where an endless series of things happen to us that do not fit together, do not make sense. Many important things seem to be the result of chance or luck. There is no conscious being there to see the "big picture" so that it can all make sense. There is no center, no empty hub uniting the many spokes of the wheel, the many fragments of self. The conscious states alternate unconnected by inner silence. It is like hearing foreign words or sentences without any underlying comprehension. The underlying being who comprehends and integrates is unconscious. The actor is asleep. The play goes on mechanically, uncomprehendingly. For such a one the "scientists" are correct, man is a machine and enlightenment is impossible, or merely a delusion, another fleeting role. To quote my favorite lawyer, Abraham Lincoln: A house divided against itself cannot stand.

Since most everyone suffers from weakly-connected consciousness, this appears to be natural and normal. We only recognize it as a problem in its most extreme forms, where there is total and complete disconnection of the different parts of the self. These are the cases where the different people inhabiting the body are complete strangers to each other. This is the pathological disorder of multiple personalities made famous by the case of Sybil.3

Sybil Dorsett was a woman with sixteen separate personalities. At first none of them knew or remembered any of the others. For instance, one personality named Victoria Antoinette Scharleau was a self-assured, sophisticated, attractive blond, and another named Mike Dorsett thought she was male, a builder and carpenter. With multiple personality disorders it is not uncommon for the shy personality to be shocked to wake up naked in bed with a man the sexy personality met the night before. One personality shifts with another and there is no recollection of the prior person. There is a complete discontinuity of consciousness.

This kind of multiple personality disorder is often caused by extreme negative events as a child. In Sybil's case, she was tortured and sexually abused as a young girl. This caused her to break up, literally, because she could not bear the extreme abuse she was subjected to. Through years of therapy Sybil was able to confront the memories and eventually integrate the separate personalities into one. She became a whole person.

INTEGRATION OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Personality dissociation in its extreme form is obviously a problem which must be corrected, but the less severe manifestations - the "subtle Sybil" effect, wherein we are disconnected to a certain degree - is a problem unknown to most people. Psychology is just beginning to recognize this as a root problem which underlies many others.4 Most people do not know they are shattered. They treat themselves and others as if they were one person, already fully integrated and whole. In fact, most people are just integrated enough to function in society. They are not solid enough to answer the big questions for themselves, to make sense of their lives, and know who they are and what they can do.

If we stop to think about the discontinuity - the differences in our moods and personalities - we just assume it is natural and of no importance. For instance, who can constantly recall their dream selves, or who they were in deep sleep - unconsciousness? We accept the barriers between our waking and sleeping selves as natural, inevitable, just like the barriers between our left and right brains. We fail to recognize the significance of the basic discontinuity between waking and sleep. Even the lack of continuity in waking consciousness - which occurs to everyone in the course of a day, or even a few minutes - is accepted as natural. We are sad one minute, then the next we are happy, in the next reflective, in the next absorbed in music, in the next answering the phone. When we are with some people we have a submissive personality, with others a dominant persona comes out.

Is there a conscious being underlying all of these different states of consciousness? Is there a center unifying the multiple personalities? For almost everyone the answer is no. Their consciousness is not fully integrated, and they do not even see this as a problem. How is the actor to awake?

Recognition that "integration" of multiple selves is a problem is the critical first step in the solution. It is also the first step to answering the question of who you are. Only you can discover who you are, no one can do it for you. The discovery comes from observation of yourselves - all of them - and then integration into a conscious whole. This requires bridging the great divide between the waking self and the sleeping self. The corpus callosum dividing the left and right brains must be transformed from a wall into a highway. Then you can start to understand who you are, and begin to integrate all of the many snapshots of your life into a flowing movie.

Until you attain this continuity, your true identity will elude you. The meaning of life will remain an enigma wrapped in a mystery. Your true desires, your real potential, will remain hidden between the intervals of your many selves. You will be incomplete, asleep.

One reason most of us fail to notice the lack of continuity is that one or two personalities - and the states of consciousness that go with them - tend to dominate the other weaker personalities and their consciousness. They hide the gaps, cover up the problem. Frequently the dominant personalities are imposed upon us from the outside. The strong alien personalities - the dominant consciousness states - frequently overpower and sublimate the other parts of our self, the other states of consciousness we experience. The weaker states are then forced into subconsciousness or unconsciousness. They are forgotten, disassociated from the conscious identity.

One or two of the many personalities act in place of our overall Self. We do not know the plethora of possible personalities, unified and integrated in one being. We do not experience a healthy variety of conscious states. As a result our potential is artificially limited. We experience only a small slice of life. We see the rest as if through a glass darkly.

Consciousness of the other parts of our self eventually becomes forbidden. They are not even recognized when experienced. If they are consciously experienced, they are promptly forgotten. They become "altered" states of conscious, momentary lapses of character. This dissociation and imbalanced dominance of one personality and consciousness over all others - a kind of psychological cancer - frequently leads to illness, psychological complexes and neurosis. The underlying being aware of the many sides of self is asleep, relegated to the unconscious.

The strong role has taken over the actor and prevents him from waking. For most people the dominant personality is not even their own. It is a false personality imposed on them from their parents, friends, job or society. The false personality is a muddled thinker, with no connection to the other innate capacities of the whole being. The false persona is not linked with the true Self, it is not naturally a part of the underlying being. It is instead linked to the cultural consensus, the mass hypnosis and pseudo-thinking. If the actor should awaken he would not play that role, he would not accept that thought.

People dominated by false personalities are usually weak, with little energy or vitality. Usually, only personality which is in connection with a person's potential - their true inner Self - can vitalize and naturally make room for the whole Self. Only a real persona can accept and try to integrate "altered states." The false, unconnected personalities only block energy. They act as a negative mask to hide true potential, instead of expressing it.

The recognition and dropping of such lifeless personalities is the first step in discovering who you really are. It is the first step in "waking up." As you wake up you begin a conscious journey to realization of your full potential. There are many ways to wake up, many procedures. You need to find a procedure which is good for you. In that way you can move beyond legal study into the actual "practice of the Law." With an effective method and adequate teachers and counselors, you may be lucky enough to wake up. You may be able to tap your inner essence and develop a true personality.

That is just the beginning, however, not the end. At first, there are many dangers. You can still be dominated by the first real aspect of your self that wakes up. The first strong fragment personality to awaken may try to block the awakening of the rest. Still, it is easier to awaken to the full dynamics of yourself from out of a true personality than a false one. The actor once stirred may awaken. Once awakened, the road to self actualization may be traveled.

Another danger that remains after the journey has begun arises from cultural restraints and muddled thinking. This can cause you to awaken only certain socially-acceptable sides of yourself and repress the rest. You may be afraid of parts of yourself or be prejudiced against them. For instance, you may have been taught as a child that sex was bad and so refuse to awaken that part of your human nature.

If the real and awakened personas don't know any better, the phony censor persona may continue to have real power. Objective, holistic thinking is the answer. It can counteract the censor, the cultural restraints and inherited beliefs. Once your real personas are taught to think straight, they will see through the muddled thinking inherited from the past. Unlike the false personalities, the real personalities have the power and courage to act on their thinking. They can transcend the hindrances of the past. Armed with true thinking, they can overcome the cultural censor, and liberate all parts of your human potential.

á  1 Charles Tart Transpersonal Psychologies (1975).

á  2 A "Julia set" and "fractals" are explained in Chapter 6 on Law and Disorder.

á  3 Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber written in 1973 provides a full account of the case of Sybil Dorsett and her treatment by Dr. Cornelia Wilbur. After Sybil's death in 1998 her real name was revealed to be Shirley Ardell Mason of Lexington, Kentucky.

á  4 See for instance Multiple Mind (1992) by Gretchen Sliker, Ph.D.; Evolution of Consciousness (1991) by Robert Ornstein, Ph.D.

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