#The monster within us series#

Julia Bradbury, 52, shares fears that having kids later in life increased her risk of breast cancer and reveals how she has 'reset' her lifestyle as it's revealed he has 'no relationship' with any of his kids Your reviewer had a go, but soon discovered a hitch: which one of him should be in charge of answering the questions?ĭAVID SHUKMAN is environment and science correspondent for BBC News.īuy a copy of Multiplicity: The New Science Of PersonalityĪngelina Jolie steps out with daughter Vivienne in LA after Brad Pitt calls abuse accusations 'completely untrue'.

#The monster within us series#

She believes we should see our collection of personalities, our 'inner diversity', as an asset or 'precious faculty' to help us cope with a rapidly changing and uncertain world.Īnd for people for whom this idea rings true, the latter part of the book includes a series of exercises designed to help you 'map' your own different personalities.Īs a guide, the author has names for them such as the Pleaser, the Clown and the Professional. To those who may flinch from such radical thinking, the author offers a positive take. And that can lead us to behave with a particular set of characteristics depending on where we are and who we are with.

SO IF one memory is 'activated', many others connected to it will become involved in the reaction too. She explains that we accumulate memories that are linked together in a network - rather like a fishing net - and this shapes the nature of our responses. But Rita Carter has highly-praised books on the mind and consciousness to her name, and her work is always grounded in a thorough reading of the science. So what emerges is a stunning new perspective on what makes us tick - that rather than being static beings, our various personalities 'form, change, fade away, reform, merge, shrink and grow'.įrom some authors this may appear fanciful, unfounded or unbelievable. What this book now argues is that while extreme cases of multiple personality are an affliction, all our minds share a few of the symptoms. So, a diligent, career-minded personality, faced with a job interview the next day, will go to bed early - only to find that a more slothful, chilled alternative has calmly thumped the alarm at dawn and rolled over for more sleep.įor years, symptoms like these have been recognised as a disorder - even a danger, along the lines of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. All too often, it's the least helpful that surface when least needed. One researcher believes that between four and nine distinct personalities can usually be identified, typically with one or two being more dominant.Īnd as in any home, some are likely to be more constructive and diplomatic than others. What this suggests is that, however hard you look, there may not be an authentic self - a 'real' you - but instead we should see ourselves as a household of jostling, sometimes competing characters. Scans have recorded distinct elements of the brain 'lighting up' in response to different situations or changes in behaviour. Now research appears to provide some basis for this. In modern times, Freud and Jung described distinctly separate elements of the mind.Īnd every day we hear echoes of that - complaints that 'I'm just not feeling myself' or that some unexpected action 'really wasn't like me'. In ancient Greece, the philosopher Plato identified the three components of rational self, spirit and appetite. On one level, the multiple nature of personality is not a new idea. A bullied daughter can be transformed into a domineering wife. A devoted father at home may be faithless when away.

And the result, it is argued, is that we can present utterly distinctive characters to the outside world.Īt its simplest, this means that though decisive at work, we may dither over a domestic task as simple as choosing dinner. It can feel as if another 'you' has rudely barged in uninvited and aired a thought that the real 'you' would never tolerate in public.Īnd that notion, that there may be more than one of you, or that you may have shifting manifestations, could be closer to the truth than we realise.Īccording to this riveting account of the latest science of the mind, we could indeed be hosting more than one personality. Horribly familiar to us all is that agonising moment when something toecurlingly inappropriate escapes from our lips and we yearn to vanish instantaneously into a very large hole in the ground.įrom an unknown and murky corner of the mind, the forbidden words rise up and somehow bypass our normal good manners so that, to our horror, they are spoken - and the excruciating memory produces sweaty palms for years afterwards.