Authentic Counselling Training
Personality Dissociation:
Subpersonalities and Multiple Personality
[Under construction: 1 July 2005 ]
Recognising subpersonalities
If a client (or a group of people) wants to work with subpersonalities,
the first stage is encourage identification of (not with) a major subpersonality. Only by becoming acquainted with our major subpersonalities can we turn them from being in control of
us to being utilised by us. To begin with, it is helpful to work with only a
few subpersonalities at a time, to avoid confusion
for a client or group participant unfamiliar with the concept.
There are several routes into recognising subpersonalities.
Most, drawing on psychosynthesis, make use of
imagery. My own experience of these techniques, which are
explained below, is very pleasant. However, my
experience of presenting the concept of subpersonalities
to hesitant, vulnerable clients as well as to suspicious, down-to-earth group
members, from within an imagery framework is that it is encouraging them to
accept the validity of a new and unfamiliar idea as a result of, at best
playing childish games, and at worst, engaging in an activity of which they
consider themselves incapable. Many people seem to find it hard to trust
their imagination. In response, over a period of years, I have developed two
techniques to avoid the overt use of imagery.
When counselling individual clients I employ a technique similar to the
Empty Chair Technique used by gestalt practitioners. In this, having encouraged
some loose identification of "a particular bit of" the client, I talk
increasing to the subpersonality with which we are
working. Using fairly intense rapport-building skills,
I encourage the client to speak to me from that subpersonality,
and also periodically reflect on what we are discovering. I do not attempt to
explain what is happening because reception of such an explanation would be
likely to precipitate a further subpersonality shift
in the client, which would defeat the object.
When working with groups of people, I do not know what subpersonality
is being explored by each group participant. I use a
structured set of questions, to which group participants respond individually
(usually on paper). The questions are structured to
lead inwards, the more challenging ones towards the end. A feature of the
questions is their ordinariness. This is because I am keen for participants to
expose for themselves to, and to work with, parts of themselves
that are real and everyday for them, as distinct from those parts which are
hidden from view. Subpersonalities play a major role
in the ordinary life of most people, and there is no need to sideline interest
in subpersonalities by making them too distant.
At the end of the exercise, after the feedback, I distribute copies of the
questions on paper. During the exercise, however, I deliver the questions
orally. This has a number of advantages. First, I can sense
the pace of the group, and whilst each group member is working alone, there
remains an awareness of the group by the group, offering safety in an
unfamiliar task (occasionally I preface the exercise with a brief relaxation
sequence in order to reduce anxiety) and reducing the possibility of a
participant's over-identification with the subpersonality
being explored. Second, I use the sound of my voice and the sequence of
words to alter the level of awareness of many of the participants. This gradual
process encourages the suspension of disbelief, and helps the participants to
become increasingly aware of their interior life.
I do not attempt to start the exercise from a state of altered awareness as
this would not only set the exercise apart from normality, but would also
encourage the participants to lose touch with their ‘everyday self’ (or ‘group
self’). Third, I can tailor the vocabulary I use to the group, so that with
health care professionals I tend to use a more formal register than that which
I use with Community and Youthwork students. The
following sets out the kind of things I say.
Exercise One
· This exercise has been designed to help identify principal subpersonalities. You can probably work successfully on only one subpersonality at a time, although you may find that, to begin with, you conflate two or more. Worry not, for as you continue to work with them, they will become increasingly differentiated.
· Think of yourself doing something that you often or typically do. Something that has a usualness about it for you, in that you do not feel as though you are acting out of character. As you think about you doing that, or being that, or being in that situation, what words or phrases come to mind? To carry out the exercise, you may find it helpful to use a pen and paper.
· Go through the questions sequentially, for they are designed to lead you inwards. The questions are of value in making subpersonalities concrete and explicit. After you have been through the list once, skim each of the responses again to see if you wish to add anything to your responses. Do not be anxious if you find yourself unable to write much or anything in response to the odd question, as this is normal. One of the points about subpersonalities is that they are partial, and by their nature incomplete.
· Unless otherwise made clear, the term ‘you’ is used to indicate that part of the whole you about which you now are thinking: you in that frame of mind, you in that subpersonality.
- How old are you? How do you
feel? You may feel a particular age, maybe the same age as the whole you
is now. Rather than a specific age, you may feel yourself to be within an
age bracket, or maybe you feel no particular age.
- Describe your body image.
For instance, are you tall or short? Slender or portly?
Do you wear your hair long or short? Have you facial hair? What is your
complexion? Do you wear make-up?
- What kinds of clothes do
you like to wear? For instance, formal or casual?
Loud or quiet? Bright or sober?
What colours? What kinds of material? What kinds of cut?
- Where, if at all, would you
prefer to go on holiday? For instance, somewhere in the
sun with sand, or somewhere exotic, or skiing on the piste,
or visiting museums and old quarters of towns and cities?
- In what kinds of situations
are you typically to be found? In what kinds of
situations do you flourish?
- What are your strengths?
- In what situations do you
feel least comfortable?
- What are your weaknesses?
- What do you want out of
life?
- What do you need out of
life?
- Try to identify and
describe, if you are able, a time, time period,
or event when this part of you first appeared.
- To what extent is this part
of you the part of you that you use much of the time anyway?
- If this part of you is not
predominant, what do you believe life might be like if this part of you
became predominant?
- What helps this part of you
to grow?
- How do you relate to women?
men? children? animals?
- Try to think of a name to
give this part of you. Maybe your own name, maybe another name, maybe the
name of a characteristic feature of this part of you, maybe the name of an
object.
Supplementary questions
The following questions are likely to become helpful only once several subpersonalities have been identified and
described.
- What gender are you?
- What is your sexual
orientation?
- What are your political
beliefs?
- What are your religious
beliefs?
- What, if any, kind (make,
model) of car do you drive? What colour is it?
Exercise Two
I have taken the following exercise from the late Malcolm
Sweeting (1), who developed it from Piero Ferrucci
(2). The exercise is more typical of those used with people who are familiar
with personal development. The exercise demands a high level of self-awareness,
as well as a mental fluency or even agility. Part of my reservation about this
method is that it connects more weakly with ‘how I am in real life’.
- Consider one of your
prominent traits, attitudes, or motives.
- With your eyes closed,
become aware of this part of you. Then let an image emerge representing
it. It may be a woman, a man, an animal, an elf, an object, yourself in disguise, a monster, or anything else in
the universe. Do not consciously try to find an image. Let it emerge
spontaneously, as if you were watching screen, not knowing what will
shortly appear on it.
- As soon as the image has
appeared, give it the chance to reveal itself to you without any
interference or judging on your part. Let it change if it tends to do so
spontaneously, and let it show you some of its other aspects if it wants
to. Get in touch with the general feeling that emanates from it.
- Now let this image talk and
express itself. Give it space, so to speak, for doing so; in particular,
find out about its needs. Talk with it (even if your image is an object,
it can talk back to you; anything is possible in the imaginary world). You
have in front of you a subpersonality-an entity
with a life and intelligence of its own.
- Now open your eyes, and record in a notebook everything that happened so far. Then give this subpersonality a name-any name that fits and will help you to identify it in the future: the Complainer, the Artist, the Bitch, Santa Claus, the Skeptic, Jaws, the Insecure One, the Octopus, the Drunken Sailor, the Clown, "I Told You So," and so on. Finally, write about its traits, habits and peculiarities.
- After you have identified
and exhaustively described one subpersonality
you can go on to the others. But take your time
and work on each one alone until you feel finished. The process requires
merely picking a few more of your prominent traits, attitudes, or motives
and going through steps 1 to 5 for each one.
References
- Sweeting, M., 1991, ‘Subpersonalities’, unpublished document, ‘Imagery in
Counselling and Psychotherapy’ course,
- Ferrucci,
P., 1982, What We May Be,
Personality
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