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Split Personalities and Reincarnation

A

AndreaFrances

Member
Anyone have any insight into the connection between reincarnation and split personalities? I came into this life having a mother with a split personality.One side is friendly,outgoing,and a nurturing parent.The other side is a nightmare who hates everyone and hates herself.I don't see any connection between the two at all! All my life I have tried to understand how this can be the same person..until I realized maybe it isn't the same person.She was on medication for a long time and it seemed to suppress the troubles.But that's all it is..just suppressing.The minute she stops taking medication it feels like another person is trying to take over.
Despite this we have always been close on some level.I understand that I cant take responsibility for her actions..but at the same time I have always felt naturally more like her parent!What is this really?I know that I knew her before and we have been together many times.I just have to ask myself how any life can end up like this!
 
Hi Andrea,


I really wasn't sure whether to try to respond to this. I suppose because it could impact or broaden the discussion of PL memories and tendencies in relation to mental problems in ways that are very unusual on the one hand and are pure speculation (by me) on the other. Also, I am going to have to display my own minute level of knowledge in terms of psychological phenomena. But, fools rush in . . . so, here goes: I have long assumed that PL personality traits may form unassimilated parts of the unconscious self that are rejected due to their lack of congruity with the current lifetime and current life persona. This leads to problems . . . .


This is, btw, merely an expansion of the general Jungian idea that one of the big goals of life is "individuation" which involves assimilating the parts of ourselves that we initially reject and push into the subconscious. This is the half-baked explanation of a very amateur Jungian, so take it with a grain of salt. In any case, to the extent I understand the process it involves dealing with the "Shadow" which is closer to the surface and then the "anima" or "animus" if we are, respectively, male or female. This is not the end of the process, but that's enough for now (besides I am quickly out of my depth on things like this). Anyhow, the question is where do these "rejected" part of ourselves come from?


The usual answer is that they are, at least at the very beginning, inborn. This should be a clue to where I am going, as someone who believes in PLs also believes that a lot of our inborn traits have been developed in PLs and sometimes over several lifetimes. So, what happens to the traits you developed in your lifetime as Napoleonic Grenadier, when in your next life you are born and raised to be a Victorian lady? Mommy and Daddy are going to punish and scold when you attempt to gut your little brother. So, a young Victorian lady is most likely to repress these no longer socially acceptable impulses. (One of the most prominent human tendencies is the tendency to "go along to get along" and a small child vs. parents and society has very little choice in the matter).


This doesn't mean these traits have been wiped out, they're still there and are likely to show themselves in unpredictable and negative ways. To go back to some earlier lingo, they are now parts of the Shadow and Animus that need to be brought to the surface and assimilated in a "healthy" way. This is far easier for the modern woman than for the young Victorian lady in the example given, but you see the problem. Anyhow, I'm no psychologist, but this might be something like what is happening with your mother. Just an amateur guessing . . . .


Cordially,


S&S
 
I'm certainly not a proper expert on any of this, but as I understand it there isn't really any such thing as a 'split personality', except in the movies. Although some people, as a result of severe childhood trauma, can have 'disassociation issues' I don't know whether it's really much like it is portrayed by Hollywood.


Also, while I have a lot of time for Jung, I think he got a lot of stuff wrong. A lot of the things he talked about including the 'anima/animus' the 'subconscious' and the 'collective unconscious' are better explained by past life memories in my opinion.

I know that I knew her before and we have been together many times. I just have to ask myself how any life can end up like this!
Click to expand...
Who knows! :)


Some people have an idea that things should be fair and things should get better from one life to the next, but you only have to look around to realise that is not always the case.


However, if you are looking for answers, I know it's annoying, but you are the only one who can answer these question. We can give what guidance we can, but we can't tell you the answer.


Have you kept a journal of your various memories and impressions? Sometimes just writing it all down (quietly and slowly by hand is best) and thinking over it deeply can help you to see where the patterns are. For instance, do you always feel responsible for her? Why? When did this start? Maybe it's time to review whether that is working out for you?
 
I've wondered that myself, but keep in mind that split personalities generally happen to people who've undergone some horrible trauma. (And even then it is controversial.) They may not even remember the trauma because of repressed memories, but the personalities represent different sides of themselves. So someone might have the personality of a five year old because they internally want to return to that more innocent time, but also have the personality of a very angry and vindictive person who wants to avenge what happened to them, and/or punish themselves for the trauma (self hatred, basically). There might be some PL regression as well, but I think it's mostly a coping mechanism.
 
Some of the cases I've read about in various psychological literature now (in retrospect) sound like past life personas (or at least their skills) have been pulled in to help in the present life.


One, in particular, had a portion of themselves that was proficient in martial arts, though they forgot about those skills when other moods were predominant. Obviously they had been through situations that made them feel extremely unsafe and this was their way of coping, by creating their own inner protector to deal with danger.


I'm fascinated by the way personas integrate after the person becomes conscious that the characters are all part of themselves, because it seems to me that something similar might be possible with vivid past lives, to some extent. (Or maybe I'm just dreaming.)
 
She could have biochemical problems.. food sensitivities does that to me .. ie I eat something my body cannot break down which is poison to it .. but it responds in very dramatic ways with some foods making me feel like super woman.. In these states I feel on top of the world and could engage socially with people..


And then hours /days later the high goes away to be replaced by the depression, pain fatigue etc..


ALso copper problems made me extra manic , arsenic made me OCD .. I may have been seen as split personality but that I had chronic fatigue as well so was always tired along with this wrestlessness ..


Past life triggers did play into the depth of the feeling but I had to treat my physical body as well in order to get a handle on things..
 
I've often wondered about people who have multiple personalities It seems as though some of them know things that the main personality doesn't have - like different languages, artistic talent, etc.
 
re: split personality


Hello, I have worked with numerous dissociative identity disorder (DID) persons (formerly known as multiple personality disorder); and usually it's caused by heavy trauma while in childhood. DID is rather rare, but I was able to meet with numerous DID clients as my boss was studying DID people. Each of them had experienced major trauma during their childhood.
 
I agree with the above post - it's not a split personality, as such. That term implies a wrong idea of the phenomenon.


It's dissociative identity disorder, and practically all people who show symptoms of this, have experienced severe (childhood) trauma.


In psychotherapeutic terms, the ego has split itself into two or more parts. They are not complete personalities, but aspects of a personality (hence why the old term is wrong), in order to protect itself from complete annihilation.


From a past life perspective, I'd say that one could look at past lives for the trauma that caused the fracturing. The actual fracturing I'd say is a 'this life' phenomenon.


A good book to gain some insight in trauma from a psychoanalytic perspective is Trauma and the Soul by Donald Kalsched.
 
What interests me is how the various fractured personalities can know things that the whole personality would not know in that lifetime - languages, talents, etc. That's what leads me to believe there might be some past life issues involved with the phenomenon.
 
Actually, there has been interesting research on that.


Apparently, the subjective amnesia that people claim to experience, cannot be objectively reproduced. Research reference: Huntjens, Peters, Woertman & Van der Hart, 2003.


This means that the research shows that people with DIS do have subconscious knowledge of things they have learned 'under a different alter'. Information is transferred between alters (not personalities, it's not the right term). Researchers think this is due to a cognitive bias, but I'm wondering whether it has something to do with a possible memory disturbance due to trauma.


In any case, it's interesting to think of dissociation as a spectrum. On the one end of the spectrum, there is the experience that many have had - the feeling that you are outside your body, looking at yourself. This can happen to people under stress, for instance.


Then you have people who experience a dissociative fugue, where people who experience a very stressful event, leave their home and environment and settle elsewhere, with no memory of who they were. Those are the people that pop up in news stories. They often regain their memory after a while and return to their 'old life'.


Then at the very end of the spectrum there is Dissociative Identity Disorder, which is a severe disorder, where several aspects of the psychy have severely disintegrated.


While I think there is so much about DIS and dissociation in general that can be explained well without involving PL theory, I have no idea how come that people with a dissociative fugue would know a language they did not formerly know (as opposed to forgetting one's native language - that can be explained by systemic amnesia). Imho, it goes to show how damaging dissociation can actually be. But I would prefer to theorise about it on a case-to-case basis.


Also, I think I'm done posting here on this topic - I don´t feel I´m getting anywhere with these posts.
 
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