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p53 [This follows several case studies of people whose memories of their pasts were erased in various ways] Erode memories and you wear a person away, bit by bit. Erase all memories and you erase a person completely. Then replace the lost memories with fresh ones and you create someone new. In the event of such extreme memory erasure and substitution, there is surely justification in speaking of the death of one individual and the coming into being of another. And, most tellingly, it is precisely in these terms, and without any hesitation, that people to whom catastrophe has happened describe their inner experience.
p54 Selves are defined by memories. So, if a brain’s memory chain is badly disrupted or destroyed, the brain will feel very different... if all of a brain’s memories are lost, the accompanying self is lost too.
Instances of total, permanent amnesia challenge us to reevaluate our concept of death. For if we consider the most relevant aspect of death to be “what it feels like” (the subjective experience) rather than “what it looks like” (the objective view) then total memory loss does seem to qualify as an event remarkably similar -- and, indeed, ontologically identical -- to death as we normally understand it. If the experience of being a particular person, say person A. is contingent upon having a particular stock of memories, then if this stock is irretrievably lost the feeling of being person A. must be lost as well. Person A. as a psychological entity, has effectively died -- died, that is, as far as the victim and the victim’s family and friends are concerned...
Yet the brain, as a result of its evolutionary heritage, is a resilient organ. And, if it remains fully functional, then no sooner has it been deprived of one complete set of memories than it begins to lay down a fresh set, like a camcorder that keeps on running. This reacquisition of memory takes place automatically, just as it does in the case of an infant. Moreover, it involves an actual physical change in the brain -- a major regrowth and rearrangement of neural connections. As the brain that once generated the feeling of being a person builds up its new collection of archives so, at a conscious level, it begins to give rise to the feeling of being a different individual, person B. And, significantly, this is not a problem or a concern either for person A or for person B. At the time at which the old memories are lost (which in an accident is more or less instantaneous), person A ceases to exist and so cannot subsequently experience any regrets, sadness, fear, or loss at what has happened... Person B, on the other hand, emerges gradually as new memories are acquired and, having no recollection or sense of attachment to person A, has no cause to be troubled by A’s demise. B’s main problem will be that, as an adult rather than an infant, she will almost inevitably have commitments carried over from her previous “life” to which she has to readjust...
p56 When I talk about “you,” I implicitly refer to a particular body and brain, and to what I perceive as being a certain, unique, reasonably consistent personality that is projected to the outside world. But as far as you are concerned, “you” are what it is like to be a certain stream of consciousness. My view (which forms part of my stream of consciousness!) [I take no responsibility for that exclamation point.] is of a specific organic machine and its persona, its outward face. [The choice of the word “face” here reminds me how peculiar it was that Oliver Sacks, who has been mentioned several times already, couldn’t recognize faces.] Your view -- your direct experience -- is of being the subjective entity that the machine gives rise to. It cannot be emphasized enough that these two phenomena -- the machine and the feelings of this machine -- must be considered with the utmost care with regard to both how they are distinct and how they interrelate. The brain and the mind belong to two different categories of existence, different facets of reality. [It annoys me when authors use jargon like “ontology” but I can see now that in this case it is unavoidable since ontology is central to what he’s examining, at least in this part of the book.] And although all the evidence of science is that there is a clear dependent relationship (in particular, “you” cannot exist without a brain -- or an adequate substitute for a brain) there is nothing prima facie that insists there must be a unique correspondence between the feeling of being you and a particular brain, or vice versa.
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p59 [I’m passing over a long passage about our subjective experience of time, how we are not conscious of (literally) any periods of time when we are unconscious or deeply asleep. Subjectively there are no gaps in our stream of consciousness.] ...From your internal perspective... “you” are never unconscious -- for this represents a contradiction in terms. There has never been a moment in your life when subjectively you have not been present. And nothing will or can happen in the future to change this fact.
“The feeling of being you” is a persistent phenomenon. It is simply not possible from your point of view to know or experience or even conceive what it would be like not to be you. And this applies to everyone else. It is true even for people who have suffered the most profound forms of amnesia...
p60 The persistence of “you” is a phenomenon of vital concern to us... Our overwhelming desire is to stay who we are now, not to become some other “you” that our present self wouldn’t be able to identify with and that would inevitably involve us becoming someone else. [Not sure this is 100% true. I suspect many people, at one time or another, would opt for becoming a different person -- and forgetting their present identity -- as an alternative to physical suicide. Again Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind was playing with this idea.] The thought of changing triggers our anticipatory fear of death, of losing our present selves. What we fail to properly recognize, though, is that we are always changing. And when we do become someone else -- as happens every moment, whether we realize it or not -- then we no longer hanker for the preservation of the self we used to be. The desire for self-preservation automatically transfers to whatever new “you” we have become.
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[Inevitably, he moves on to multiple personality syndrome (MPS)] ...In cases of MPS it is as if a group of individuals is vying for control of a single body. Different members of the group take it in turn to become conscious [not quite my understand] and decide what the body will do and say. Talking to someone with MPS can be disconcertingly like trying to hold a telephone conversation with a number of people fighting over a single receiver -- you can converse with only one at a time and can never be sure who will answer next.
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The account of a man with MPS from The Minds of Billy Milligan by Daniel Keyes is amazing but it isn’t quite my interest here.
p62 ...In most cases, the original or root personality is seldom aware that the newer personalities exist, though the latter are often aware of each other and of the original. One way to check for true separateness is to look for consistently differing brain wave patterns among the separate personalities... Frank Putnam did this and discovered differences as great as those between separate individuals in... (EEGs), visually evoked cortical responses, and galvanic skin responses... And... 3-D scans have shown that entirely distinct regions of the brain are active depending upon which character is in charge.
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The core personality of someone with MPS may suddenly and alarmingly find that several hours or even days have elapsed without their knowledge. In an instant, it will seem to them as if they have leapt forward in time and been transported to a different, possibly unknown place... For a lost slice of their lives, they were literally not themselves; an alternative personality had taken control of their body, with a character and set of memories of his or her own.
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p64 [I’m jumping into the middle of a long story about a woman with MPS] ... As far as B1 [the core personality] was concerned, Sally did not exist. But Sally knew all about B1 -- her every thought, action, and dream. Sally could recall B-1’s dreams better than B1 could herself, because Sally was there all the time, in the background, watching and monitoring B1 even when B1 had control of the body...
...to confound Sally and prevent her listening in on conversations Prince [the psychotherapist] didn’t want her to hear, he would sometimes communicate with B1 in French, a language in which B1 was fluent but Sally could not understand a word.
p65 Then B4 appeared... The ever-present, ever-watchful Sally (she claimed that she never slept) [but how would she know?] reacted strongly to B4’s arrival, regarding her as another, unwelcome rival for control of the body. Although Sally knew about B4’s actions, she did not, as it happened, have access to her thoughts. Even so, from listening to what B4 said, it didn’t take Sally long to realize that B4 was making up her own version of events from the last six years, [when B4 had been dormant] and Sally started referring to her as “the idiot.”
Prince discovered that by putting either B1 or B4 into a deep hypnotic trance, yet another personality, B2, emerged who claimed to be both B1 and B4. Because B2 appeared to combine the virtues of B1 and B4 without their excesses, Prince decided that B2 was in some sense the real or whole Christine Beauchamp [not the patient’s real name]. Therefore he explained to B1 and B4 that he wished to awake B2 from the deep trance as a unified, fully conscious individual. But this immediately created problems. Although B1 and B4 were components of B2, they effectively ceased to exist as independent entities when B2 was present. To B1 and B4, life as B2 was the equivalent of death.
p66 [They eventually give in] The epilogue is that B2 proved quite stable, though on occasions, at times of strain, she would temporarily split back into B1, B4, and Sally. And when B1 and B4 did emerge, it was for them as if they had woken from a coma; months would have gone by as if in the wink of an eye. As for Sally, she returned to the state she had occupied since 1898 -- an intraconsciousness, a passive, aware cohabitant alongside Christine.
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It is so easy to get distracted by the oddness of MPS. Darling seems to have missed an important part of the stories he’s told us here: As I thought, “Sally” is a case of two personalities being aware in the same body at the same time. Even when she was not in control of the body she continued to “exist” as a self-aware stream of consciousness. “Sally” seems to be a special case even in the peculiar world of MPS, but I don’t think it is that unusual for personalities to be aware of the doings of at least the core personality. Just for a laugh we could call this non-Cartesian dualism.
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