Usless Science Forum
Dream Work => Dream Theory => Dream Dictionary => Topic started by: Sealchan on July 09, 2007, 04:18:29 PM
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personality center
This is the idea that our personalities are actually composed of a collection or collective of personalities of lesser differentiation but which collectively represent a multi-talented conglomerate. There is sometimes a single leader. Often there is no specific center except, perhaps, the dreamer. I have not observed a complex hierarchy as exists in most human societies as of yet.
This idea is largely inspired by Daniel Dennett’s Consciousness Explained where he proposed that the brain does not contain a homunculus so much as it contains many lesser homunculi, or points at which decisions are made. It may be that in dreams a person is utilitized to represent a point of free will or decision, a perspective from which multiple choices can be made. These points within the individual psyche are diverse and dispersed. Decisions require a kind of socialized coordination of the various personality centers/points of decision. Whichever personality center wins out in a kind of competition of neuronal influence (libidic connectivity) becomes the decision maker for the whole or is able to move in a way less oriented to the mass movement.
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One analogy I have for how I understand what I mean when I say personality center is this...in our psyche there are a multitude of birthing points for complexes or personalities to originate. Perhaps there are as many such centers of origin/focus or personality centers as there are stars in the night sky. When those personality centers are coordinated then you get constellations aka complexes. The ego, the shadow, the anima/us and other characters may be collections of these constellations. Perhaps, the Self is the galaxy that all these stars revolve around.
An interesting extension of this analogy...if one has a different star/personality center than someone else then the stars will be arranged differently in your "night sky" and so when someone else points and says, "Hey those stars look like a ____", you might not see quite what they are seeing.