The Sexual Self, the Aggressive Self, and the Self Self
A classic split personality appears in which three personas inhabit one body. First is the host or so-called normal one. Second is the aggressive one, and third is the sexual one.
A person with a split personality is someone who, in psychiatric language, is referred to as a dissociative identity disordered person. What this means is that the person’s identity is dissociated or, in other words, parts of the person’s personality are located in different compartments—each separated or dissociated from the other. These compartments are so separate that in this split personality or dissociative identity disordered type, at rock bottom, three personas exist in one person or in one person’s personality. And even when there are many more than three personas that show themselves, these are really subunits of the basic three.
1. the so-called normal one known as the host;
2. the aggressive persona; and,
3. the sexual persona.
At one time or another, each of these three personality components gets, so to speak, to do its own special thing. In this sense, each persona—other than the host (known as “alters” or “alter personality”)—develops its own memories, emotions, personality style—even handwriting. And what is really amazing is the way that the whole thing works.
And the way it works is this:
1. the host personality—the so-called normal one (the self self)—does not know of the existence of the other two;
2. each of the other two—the aggressive and the sexual—know of the existence of one another, and also know of the host.
Thus, the host is the one in the dark—not aware of these other two personalities lurking within, and not conscious of what these other personas do when they take over and do their thing.
What are these things that the aggressive and sexual personas do? Well, the aggressive persona will do aggressive things such as fight, act hostile, be belligerent, become argumentative, be scornful, be smoldering, and, generally, protest everything in sight. The sexual persona will do sexual things, such as flirt, be seductive, be promiscuous, be exhibitionistic and/or voyeuristic, and so forth.
Such was the case with Joseph. He was thirty-five years old and had been hospitalized for the second time in one year—each time for depression. And each time he was hospitalized, his depression lifted. He worked as a handyman to clients whom his adoptive mother cared for in her capacity as a home nurse’s aide. He would become uncomfortable talking about this arrangement, because he confessed that when his adoptive mother was at work, he felt deprived of her presence.
At the hospital, he was caught sexually exhibiting himself. He had been exposing himself to women in the women’s ward. He escaped being detected during his act of exposure, but was found later in his room wearing female clothing. He also had a collection of female toiletries, cosmetics, and so forth. When confronted with all of this evidence, it was too late. He had already switched. The term “switching” is used to mean the transformation of one persona to another.
Thus, to confront Joseph with the fact that he was wearing lipstick could not shake his bewilderment about how that had happened. He could not understand how all such female paraphernalia found itself into his room. In addition, a diary was found in his room. The diary was a conversation between a man talking to a woman. The man explained to the woman that he felt good only when attacking others, while the woman explained that she only felt good when being exhibitionistic and exhibiting her (his) penis while pulling up the leather skirt she (he) was wearing. And the diary went on like that—one or two pages from him to her, and then one or two pages from her to him.
Again, Joseph denied knowing anything about the diary, or of any other event that took place either by his aggressive persona or by his sexual one. Along with this denial he expressed a philosophy of nonviolence, even though others on the ward complained that, at times, he was physically threatening to them. This, too, he denied ever knowing about.
His early history consisted of a very overprotective relationship with his mother and an extreme dependence on her. She adopted him when he was three years old and soon thereafter divorced her husband, retaining full custody of her new child.
She home-schooled him. It appeared that he may not have had any friends whatsoever. In fact, he actually could not name a single friend from his childhood. The picture was of a lonely boy having only limited contact with others and, more or less, having his adoptive mother as his only relationship.
Everything he remembered about his childhood involved his adoptive mother. He denied having any sexual feelings toward her, but was evasive in his answers to such questions, making it clear that it was likely there was more here than met the eye.
However, there were intimations of a great deal of seductive behavior at home. In describing his history at home, he casually mentioned that his mother would always walk around the house in her bra and that she was a well-endowed woman, quite busty. In addition, he mentioned that she was a disciplinarian and would not tolerate any talking back. “No lip from me,” is how Joseph put it. In addition, bathroom doors were never locked, and even when either of them were showering or bathing, the other would sometimes walk in and out of the bathroom. These revelations reached a crescendo when he reported that in their cramped apartment there was only one bedroom and that they both shared the bed.
During his adoptive mother’s visits to him in his current hospitalization, she was not really properly dressed. She offered a garish display of her very voluptuous figure—both with respect to the style of clothing and the colors. Everything she wore was skin tight, designed obviously to display her figure to what she considered to be its best advantage.
This rather seductive, ostentatious, and inappropriate display of herself, apparently, was an example of the influence she had on this man even when he was a child. And Joseph stated, “I love her, man. She’s beautiful, and always was—in and out of clothes.” It was crystal clear that his only real interest and focus was about, and on, her.
In professional psychiatric circles, it’s generally accepted that a split personality can develop from a lot of physical and/or sexual abuse. With respect to the sexual issue, sexual favors can be given for obedience or merely for commonplace compliance—for the appearance only of behavior that is permitted. In fact, as Joseph’s history unfolded, it was revealed that this adoptive mother seemed to have controlled and manipulated him his entire life with the promise of her love, her seduction, or whatever the sexual favor would have been. In his own admission, he painted a picture of a kind of worship he had for her.
In any event, the bottom line here is that he was not physically abused. Rather, it seemed clear that he was sexually controlled. On the one hand, he wasn’t permitted to be aggressive or angry; on the other, apparently he wasn’t free to be sexual except with her permission.
It is also reasonably clear that this man’s fractured self could not have happened in the absence of a very strong and intense anger that was being suppressed. The point is that when someone is controlled and so dependent on the controlling person, and, on top of it, also loves the person—madly loves that person—then that someone is no longer in charge of his or her own personality. He or she would almost necessarily, and for survival reasons, have to do the bidding of the controlling person.
And this is what seemed to have happened here with respect to Joseph’s life problem. His split personality swallowed all of him. Thus, in order for him to have salvaged some normalcy, in his unconscious mind his psyche ingeniously created three personas to make up for the problems of his one personality. And what were these problems? They were rules he got from his adoptive mother: not to have aggressive or sexual feelings—at least not without her permission. So he obeyed, but still created personas with their own emotions for which he was not going to be responsible. Of course, one was aggressive and the other sexual.
In this way, the purpose of such a personality fragmentation is to escape painful and/or embarrassing memories and to sneak around the rules, so to speak. Like this, as the host, as the person who does not consciously know of the existence of the other two, he is free of their so-called “evil” impulses and deeds, as well as from the accumulated memories of these impulses and deeds.
This man’s wish was to be a whole person but also to completely possess his mother along with obeying her. So he got his wish by obeying her insofar as he was able to trade his sex and aggression for her favors. Yet, his direct wish to be one whole person was gratified by his three-part personality that always reduced his tension because he was then able to express all facets of his personality without worrying about it. In this way, he could curry favor with her and still be one whole person, albeit fractured. But this kind of obedience and worship carried with it a tremendous undercurrent of anger because in anyone’s personality, great dependency breeds great anger.
Of course, the anger would be deeply suppressed or repressed and it would be the kind of anger or rage that affected the psyche in such a way, that the psyche, without question, must have ejected the fractured persona of this man—his split personality—out of the domain of wishes and into the realm of personality traits. The fractured or split nature of Joseph’s personality swallowed him whole, so that now he could be identified as a “split”—the main identifying trait of his personality.
Of course, the reason his psyche would have ejected his symptom out of the domain of wishes and into the realm of personality traits concerns the threat to the psyche because of the great magnitude of his anger, the powerful intensity of his anger, the deep penetration of his anger, and the chronic lifelong duration of the symptom.
Essentially, then, this man was spending his entire life behind the line, in withdrawal and in a swoon with his adoptive mother, who herself was, and continued to be, quite disturbed.
There would be no chance for him to cure his split symptom solely through the talking cure utilizing our symptom code. In this case, medication would be required that, together with the use of the symptom code, could address some of the issues of his fragmented personality.
Thus, a new treatment approach needed to be developed so that this man’s personality fracture could begin to congeal or heal. Then he could be whole. And this would only be able to occur if his anger toward the who—his mother—would become conscious. As it stood, his repressed anger and his memory of the who were obviously dislocated, so that his symptom was now a very hard-core symptom trait.