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In THE PEOPLE YOU ARE, Rita Carter - award-winning science writer and international speaker - offers a new and vital understanding of personality. Rita explains that nearly every one of us is a team of personalities, working together, for the most part, to give the impression of a unified self. We are used to thinking of ourselves as one thing or the other - either introvert or extrovert, say - but things are rarely that simple for most of us. That's why we sometimes feel like a different person depending on mood, company and surroundings, why we sometimes suffer unaccountable memory lapses, why we buy something we then decide we didn't want in the first place, or why 'somebody else' turns off the alarm clock in the morning. Importantly, THE PEOPLE YOU ARE is also a practical guide to building a happy 'household' of personalities, explaining how to identify these different versions of ourselves and how to enable them to co-operate so that we can function successfully in life. THE PEOPLE YOU ARE is both an eye-opening and highly practical account of personality.… (more)
User reviews
Who did the results describe, and what if anything did they say about the future?
This book explores the multiplicity of personalities that almost all of us have.
The first half of the book describes the theory, building a spectrum which at one end has people with a single personality responding in the same way to all situations. At the other extreme is Multiple Personality Disorder, a Jekyll and Hyde like state where completely separate personalities inhabit the same person. Between these extremes we find most of us with multiple personalities connected by shared memories.
Rita suggests these other me’s are for example tapped into by the stage hypnotist for comic effect, or felt more prosaically as we switch from our work to home persona on the drive home.
The book is profusely scattered with vivid examples used to illustrate the arguments.
To a large extent we are unaware of these alternate personalities, and have little conscious choice of who to be at any moment. The thrust of the book is that this community of people we are offers immense potential, a pool of people we can draw upon to meet challenges and create opportunities.
Part 2 of the book provides a set of tools which will help you become more aware of the range of personalities you have, how to access them, change and create them. The result is a suite of you’s better tailored for different situations.
In the hands of consultants these ideas would quickly be abused as answers to apply, but as questions with which to explore who you are and can become this is a very powerful and intriguing book.
I am one of those who experience
Multiplicity explains the concept of and guides you through becoming aware of/conscious of your ego-states so you can better get to know yourselves and get the teamwork going.
Ego-states have been known about for a long time but there seems to be a tendency to associate these personality clusters/fragments with trauma and mental illness. I can't wait to read more about ego-states as seen in the healthy brain.
An exciting, thought provoking but light read and fun with personality testing to boot :-)