Multiplicity
Multiplicity: The New Science of Personality, Identity, and the Self is a fascinating book by author Rita Carter, an award-winning science and medical writer. Carter lives in Oxfordshire, England, and is the author of several books about the brain, including Mapping the Mind and Exploring Consciousness.
Multiplicity has several exercises such as the one in Chapter 6: How Multiple Are You? that is designed to find out the degree of separation between your personalities, not the number you have or what they are like, as another exercise later in the book will help discover this information.
From the dust cover:
Have you ever looked back on something you did and wondered, “What on earth was I thinking?” been shocked at sudden changes of behavior and demeanor in your loved ones? Said to a friend, “I’m just not myself today”?In Multiplicity, Rita Carter offers us a new and vital understanding of ourselves. She argues that the impression most of us have of being a single self is an illusion and that in fact we are made up of a group of personalities held together by shared memories. Multiplicity, says Carter, is a brilliant trick of the mind that helps us cope in a fast-moving world and makes us supremely adaptable. Each of our personalities has its own viewpoint, emotions, and ambitions.
The mother who feeds breakfast to her children, for example, has quite different concerns and opinions from the woman taking part in a boardroom discussion two hours later, and from the woman she will be with her husband that night. No one personality is more authentic than another, Carter argues, and the ability to switch between personalities according to what is demanded of us is a huge strength, provided our various selves work together as a team rather than against one another.
In addition to revealing groundbreaking research on identity, this fascinating and practical guide gives you the tools you need to get to known your various personalities. Extensive self-assessment tests, case studies, and illustrations help you recognize and integrate your own team, as well as show you the most effective way to put that team to work. By combining the different skills, knowledge, and perspectives of your personalities, you can learn to use all your assets to your best advantage and tap into your true and vast potential.