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Re:Split Brain Psychology by colechristensen on Saturday August 13, 2022 @03:43PM (#32453090)
Thank you for sharing. There are philosophical theories of mind that say we are all essentially like this but generally in a much less explicit way. The label “disorder” gets put on a person when the divisions become more explicit and come to the surface or when the darker aspects get control instead of being appropriately moderated by the rest.

I have been close to people who absolutely had a different consciousness take the wheel so to speak during extreme stress and entirely believe this division of mind is real.

Re:Split Brain Psychology by y-c-o-m-b on Saturday August 13, 2022 @04:13PM (#32453351)
Interesting point you bring up on the "disorder" label. I usually tell people that are newly diagnosed and freaked out about it that the label in itself is insignificant. It's only a "disorder" if it's disrupting your life in a negative way.

I have delusions, "magical thoughts", the occasional paranoia, and I prefer being alone. 95% of the time though those things don't cause any disruptions to my otherwise normal life. I have a wife, kids, and work at a FAANG without issue. I've had this "disorder" for over 20 years now and I only took anti-psychotics for maybe 3 months in the beginning. I'm on low-dose (100mg) Welbutrin to manage ADHD and minor depression, that's it. All that said, I've had a pretty successful and fairly normal life, so fixating on the "disorder" part of things is pretty much pointless. Saying I'm schizotypal is more about explaining to people that I think differently and observe my environment differently.

Re:Split Brain Psychology by mxkopy on Saturday August 13, 2022 @05:43PM (#32454075)
I've had experiences on psychedelics where my consciousness gets peeled back like an onion, with each layer being manifested by the drug as a separate voice. Things that we don't typically associate with an inner voice, like appraising some object or forming a reaction, became very explicit dialogues between influences in my mind. The loud ones were friends that I remember fondly. Some of them were comedians (LSD puts me in a silly mood). Some of them were even characters in books, and they were much quieter, but I could still feel their "grammar".

The eeriest thing is realizing why the voices are there mostly during the come up, and then get magnified to magical characters like gods and aliens as the trip progresses. I'm convinced LSD exposed aspects of my conscious processing to myself, and these voices weren't part of some creative hallucination. That all of us, psychologically, are just amalgams of influences, of which the human sort are usually the most direct, makes a lot of sense. Still, its eerie thinking that those voices are always there, just that in moments of inner cohesion they all work and therefore seem as one.

And I will say, being in that state of such explicit awareness of self was beneficial. I could say "no, don’t say that" to the voice that was saying "[morbid thing] was funny", for example. If someone thought like that all the time, I think it would be a disorder only to the degree that they wouldn't be able to communicate with others or whatever neurological overhead it incurs (maybe the brain needs some sort of central clock?).