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.

Our selves and the roles they play

If these stories ring true, then I think it's worth thinking about how to be more like Bartleby and less like Jack's therapist. To the extent that multiple selves are a fact of life, how can we keep them from being a liability? Here are some ideas, which may not even be consistent with one another:

1. Trigger the right self for the role. When you are in court, do whatever you have to do to make sure your best lawyer self is up there. Same thing when you are on the field, or studying, or out at a bar. I think one obvious way of doing this is dressing the part. Listening to certain music would be another way to do it.

2. Get rid of the selves that we don't like. Is this a matter of will? Could the therapist have willed himself to stay professional when Jack got in his face? I don't know. At the very least, we should try not to nourish selves that we don't like by avoiding people, situations, stimuli, etc. that play into those selves.

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.

-- MichaelDreibelbis - 08 Apr 2009