Many selves (was Diaries (was: Re: The Pause that Refreshes))

From: altamira (altamira@ecpi.com)
Date: Mon Jun 12 2000 - 09:34:41 MDT


I posted a message including a question I was pondering: Are there people
who've undergone such radical personality changes that they wouldn't enjoy
being with their former selves?

Someone posted the response that such people would be known as
schizophrenics. (Sorry, I deleted the earlier posts, so I can't reproduce
them here).

Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of Jean Valjean before and
after he stole the coin from the little chimney-sweep. Would Mssr Madeleine
have enjoyed being in the company of Jean Valjean?

What if a person had undergone such a radical personality shift that he wold
loathe his former self and wish to forget the former self as though it(he?)
had never existed? Was the former self a necessary precursor of the present
self? If so, could loathing the former self be considered the same sort of
unpleasant emotion as loathing one's present self? If it were possible to
destroy or alter a portion of the brain so as to entirely eliminate the
memory of the earlier self, would this change the present personality of the
person?

Bonnie



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