#john rowan

[possible-streetwear]

[praelectio]

Most psychologists assume that, no matter how many subpersonalities we find, ultimately all has to be reduced to one. This is the most general conception of mental health. But Watkins, and her mentor James Hillman asked the question ‘Why?’ Would it not make more sense to live with multiplicity, to recognize more than one centre within ourselves? Hillman suggests that this quarrel is rather like the quarrel between monotheism and polytheism. Psychology, he says, is secretly monotheistic and wants everything to be neatly hierarchical or bureaucratic. But could we not envisage a polytheistic psychology, which admitted that there could be many gods and goddesses, many egos, many identities, many selves?

Subpersonalities by John Rowan

[possible-streetwear]

[possible-streetwear]

[praelectio]

My own working definition of a subpersonality is a semi-permanent and semi-autonomous region of the personality capable of acting as a person. This goes further than the definition offered by Brown (1979), who says that subpersonalities are ‘patterns of feelings, thoughts, behaviors, perceptions, postures and ways of moving which tend to coalesce in response to various recurring situations in life.’

Subpersonalities by John Rowan

[praelectio]

The notion of oneself as a ‘community of selves’ can readily be elaborated further by some people to incorporate three, four or any other number of ‘selves’. Some of these selves will be found to persist and others may be more transitory, some will be ‘isolates’, and others will work in ‘teams’, some will ‘appear’ in many circumstances and others only on a few special kinds of occasions, some will be ‘more powerful’ and others will give way to them. Sometimes, people can defer and use quite elaborated accounts of their ‘community of selves’.

(Mair 1977: 131)

Subpersonalities by John Rowan

[praelectio]

Perhaps it is easiest to introduce the idea of ‘self as a community of selves’ by referring to the smallest form of community, namely a community of two persons. Most of us have probably, at some time, found ourselves talking or acting as if we were two people rather than one. We talk sometimes of being in ‘two minds’ about something, part of you want to do one thing and part wanting to do something else. Quite often we hear people talk of having to ‘battle’ with themselves, as if one aspect of themselves was in conflict with another.

(Mair 1977: 130)

Subpersonalities by John Rowan

[praelectio]

One observes that in a large number of people, placed in the most diverse conditions, the normal unity of consciousness is disintegrated. Several distinct consciousnesses arise, each of which may have perceptions, a memory, and even a moral character of its own. [...] Consequently, the limits of our personal and conscious memory are no more absolute limits than are those of our present consciousness. Beyond these lines there are memories, just as there are perceptions and reasoning processes, and what we know about ourselves is but a part, perhaps a very small part, of what we are.

(Binet 1892: 243)

Subpersonalities by John Rowan