| | |
|
MultiplePersonalitiesRearTheirHeadsAgain 3 - 09 Apr 2009 - Main.MichaelDreibelbis
|
| | Strength in numbers? Quite the opposite.
Bartleby
Bartleby's great strength is his unity of character. On the strength of consistency alone—whatever multiplicity lies beneath the surface— he turns the employment relationship on its head. The narrator may try to explain his failure to budge Bartleby as pity for the poor guy, but that sounds like a rationalization for his own weakness to me. Why else would he actually walk around the block as Bartleby suggests when Bartleby doesn't let him come in the office? Nope, Bartleby is just stronger than the narrator, in spite of everything the narrator has going for him.
The Therapist
| |
<
< | If unity of character is Bartleby's strength, it may also be the therapist's weakness in “Something Split.” This guy made a ton of money; let's imagine that, prior to his work with Jack, he had been the consummate professional. But Suddenly, with Jack, something split. Jack's intense whisper and stare triggered an old self, a little kid with a lawyer father who wasn't a very good therapist. The split introduced multiplicity where there previously had been none, and that multiplicity compromised the therapist's effort to effectively play his chosen role. | >
> | If unity of character is Bartleby's strength, multiplicity may be the therapist's weakness in “Something Split.” This guy made a ton of money; let's imagine that, prior to his work with Jack, he had been the consummate professional. But Suddenly, with Jack, something split. Jack's intense whisper and stare triggered an old self, a little kid with a lawyer father who wasn't a very good therapist. The split introduced multiplicity where there previously had been none, and that multiplicity compromised the therapist's effort to effectively play his chosen role. | | | Our selves and the roles they play | | | Do we want one self? | |
<
< | It's fine to talk about trying to play the right role in the right situation. But don't we want to do more than play to the roles around us? Don't we want to define them, rather than be defined by them? For this purpose, a single self seems useful. Maybe achieving this goal is a matter of playing only one role (like Stevens in The Remains of the Day) or maybe it's a matter of redefining the roles we do play, as we play them. Either way, it's worth questioning whether multiple personalities are ideal, even if they are real. | >
> | It's fine to talk about trying to bring the right self to the roles we've put ourselves into, but don't we want to do more than play our chosen roles well? Don't we want to define them, rather than be defined by them? For this purpose, a single self seems useful. Maybe achieving this goal is a matter of playing only one role (like Stevens in The Remains of the Day) or maybe it's a matter of redefining the roles we do play, as we play them. Either way, it's worth questioning whether multiple personalities are ideal, even if they are real. | | | -- MichaelDreibelbis - 08 Apr 2009 | | | I'm also not sure that the answer is to merely avoid stimuli that you determine as 'negative'. Again, looking a bit at psychology, the best way to treat a phobia is to overexpose. Simply avoiding stimuli is an impossible solution, given the number of unknown interactions that occur throughout life. Although I don't think this means the opposite (simply seeking out stimuli that moves a person towards a self that is 'negative') is necessarily an answer, simply ignoring a 'problem' doesn't fix it.
Lastly, I'm not sure if I see eye to eye with you on exactly what multiplicity of self indicates. In your last paragraph you talk of taking on a 'role', which sounds like a character or costumed form of self. I see it more as a particular response by an individual, still very much a 'me' and not a 'pretend me' dealing with certain stimuli. In that context, it isn't a question of 'playing a role' versus 'defining a role' but more a question of how I respond to a particular context (and how, then, the interaction of my certain self interacts with other certain selves). | |
>
> |
- I have fixed the last paragraph to better reflect the point I was trying to make--that stuff about roles wasn't clear.
| | | Bartleby is a character, and can, I think, afford to be one dimensional in self. I'm not so sure that we can, nor should. |
|
|
|
|
This site is powered by the TWiki collaboration platform.
All material on this collaboration platform is the property of the contributing authors.
All material marked as authored by Eben Moglen is available under the license terms CC-BY-SA version 4.
|
|
| | |