In Michael Talbot’s book, the Holographic Universe, there’s a really fucking interesting section on multiple personality disorder (which I think is called “dissociative identity disorder” nowadays instead). I actually found a site where somebody transcribed the few pages from the book about MPD, but I’ll review the most interesting points here. Some of this stuff is rather unbelievable though, so I’m going to try and do further research on it. Anyway, here is what Talbot says:

1. The average person with MPD has between 8 and 13 personalities, though some “super-multiples” may have as many as 100.
2. Supposedly 97 percent of MPD-people have a history of childhood trauma and/or abuse (Although, I’ve elsewhere seen it said that this figure is skewed because people who are abused end up in treatment, rather than because of the MPD - and that supposedly many people [some might even say all] live with MPD but it doesn’t present a problem).
3. Each individual personality is supposed to be a relatively complete whole unto itself, rather than just a fragment of a personality.
4. Each of a person’s personalities is supposed to operate according to different brain wave patterns, based on brain scans
5. Personalities may have different memories, ages, abilities, handwriting, gender, race, culture, artistic talent, foreign language fluency, IQ, scars (?), burn marks, cysts, eyeglass prescriptions, voice patterns, and left-right handedness.
6. It’s also claimed that when a different personality takes over a body, that different allergies may manifest or disappear. There are cases described where an MPD sufferer with a severe allergic reaction was lead to switch personalities, and the reaction was contained.
7. I find this really hard to believe, but they also claim that if one personality becomes physically drunk, that switching to another personality, the person will become sober.
8. Dosages of medication (such as anaesthesia) need to be calibrated according to which personality is currently in control, so as not to overdose.
9. Some personalities are also said to be unanaesthizable, and others are unable to experience pain.

Like I said, some of these are pretty far out claims, although they are all really interesting. There’s also kind of a cool passage about this one woman who is supposed to have some kind of crazy healing factor or something:

Cassandra attributes her own rapid healing ability both to the visualization techniques she practices and to something she calls “parallel processing”. As she explained, even when her alternate personalities are not in control of her body, they are still aware. This enables her to “think” on a multitude of different channels at once, to do things like work on several different term papers simultaneously, and even “sleep” while other personalities prepare her dinner and clean her house.

Hence, whereas normal people only do healing imagery exercises two or three times a day, Cassandra does them around the clock. She even has a subpersonality named Celese who possesses a thorough knowledge of anatomy and physiology, and whose sole function is to spend twenty-four hours a day meditating and imaging the body’s well-being

Oh, I forgot to mention that elsewhere, the author talks about how multiple images can be saved onto holographic film in the same space, by varying the angle of the laser. The idea here then has something to do with the possibility that the brain functions this same way (or can) and that multiple images or personalities can be overwritten onto the same space. And then, based on what angle you look at the hologram from, you will perceive a different image.

Also, while we’re on the topic, here’s a page full of frequently asked questions about multiple personality. Also, I found this quote that I like:

The single body can be seen as supporting multiple identities pathologically, as in multiple personality disorder, or nonpathologically as in Heinz von Foerster’s implication of a “multiple personality order” by his claim,” I am not one man but a whole collection of people.”

And there are plenty of people who suggest that multiple personality is in fact a natural condition of the human mind, and that like everything, some people have it more than others (pretty similar to the whole monotheistic / polytheistic approaches to psychology). I’ve been trying to follow up with more info about von Foerster and the “multiple personality order” but haven’t found anything especially good yet though.