Is this possible? (psychology questions)

[[Cameron]]

1.If subject A has a split personality problem this creates Subject Ab. If both knew of the other would it be possible for them to interact by leaving messages?
2. Subject A is very lazy and unfit, Subject Ab is a health nut and likes to excercise. If they didn't know each other and Subject Ab trained regularly and becomes muscular and healthy would Subject A's perception of himself alter or would he sill see the lazy man's beer gut?
3. Would it be possible for Subject A to be good at science but not maths, while Subject Ab is good at maths and not science or would the intelligances fuse?

[Mr Jake]

hmmmm..... What gave you all these Question? *goes searching*

[Chicky]

I can answer your question in about a year. After ive finished my psychology course.

[[Cameron]]

I was just talking to my friends at school, started talking about our teachers friend who had bi-polar moved onto split personalities. I started to wonder if these are possible. Might take up psychology when I leave school, but I'm only in year 9 so I should just wait and see what happens.
EDIT:
Chicken: I'll be waiting...

[mousemat]

mmmm pm me in an centurys time i shall have a logical idea by then .

[evenwolf]

Joker, I want to say that the part of the brain which is altered during multiple personality disorder probably wouldn't trigger a split in the person's physiological state.  I believe it is more to do with the person's behavioral state, or his emotions.


Now that I've given you as ambiguous a reply as possible- have you tried asking Jeeves?

[Andail]

You should read anyhing by Oliver Sacks, you'll find all sorts of amusing cases related to neurology and psychiatrics, and you'll also see the vast variety of these personality disorders.
- Which makes it hard to say whether something is impossible or not. Probably everything is possible.

Also, psychology isn't really the field - make your research in more medical areas. Psychology mostly deals with people who have perfectly functional brains, but with problems like depressions, stress, phobias and other social issues.

[Sutebi]

Okay, so I do not claim to be an expert on this stuff at all, but from what I've read and seen portrayed, I think split-personalities do indeed view themselves as different people, but sometimes can aknowledge that they are in the same body.

On a related note, I recently saw something like this. If you've never seen Psycho, or have no idea about the ending, don't read.

Spoiler

In Psycho, Norman Bates takes on the split personality of his mother, at times even having full conversations between the two. And when he "is" his mother, he even dresses up like her in a gown and a wig to finish off the illusion in his mind. So perhaps the unfit person would see themselves that way, but would not actually be unfit. Now, I realize that this is just a movie, but I feel it could happen.

[close]

I hope that helps a little.

[YOke]

This is a field I have great interest in, although on an amateur level. The following reply is based on tidbits I have picked up here and there. My information may be wrong, since it's based on facts served to me by TV-documentaries. Without any education in the field, this information has been processed by my own brain without any guidelines for how I should think. I could be way off, and I could be closer than most psychologists are. These are my thoughts, just as Freud's thoughts were his. (Note that I'm not comparing myself to Freud in any other way than that we both had/have thoughts)

Now... With the disclaimer out of the way, allow me to venture out of my field.

1.If subject A has a split personality problem this creates Subject Ab. If both knew of the other would it be possible for them to interact by leaving messages?

It worked in Psycho... (hah - Sutebi posted a Psycho reference while I was typing the post )
I guess it depends on wether the personalities are aware of one another. I seem to remember that in most cases they aren't.

2. Subject A is very lazy and unfit, Subject Ab is a health nut and likes to excercise. If they didn't know each other and Subject Ab trained regularly and becomes muscular and healthy would Subject A's perception of himself alter or would he sill see the lazy man's beer gut?

I've heard of cases (on TV) where grown men think they are 11 year old girls. So I believe he would see the lazy man's beer gut. Heck, there are many "normal" people who exercise and still think they're fat. Of course the eyes will see reality, but the brain will override if it poses a mental threat to the person.

3. Would it be possible for Subject A to be good at science but not maths, while Subject Ab is good at maths and not science or would the intelligances fuse?

If you know it, it's in your brain. However people with multiple personalities repress certain aspects of themselves and bring out others when they switch personality. In other words; they "forget" that they know. An interesting question is what would happen if a personality that doesn't know science is put in a situation where it's life depended on knowing. Will the brain override? Will the person switch personalities to a personality who knows?

Well... That took a chunk of time to write.

[Hollister Man]

I know it is possible (and has been done) to make someone think they're another gender or age (similarly to above) with hypnosis.  The subjects claim to have seen their own breasts or whatever when returned to their normal state, despite the fact that they never really had them.

The mind is a wonderful machine capable of many things.  Perhaps someday we'll have the ability to use a tool more predictable than hypnosis to effect the changes we want.

[Al_Ninio]

So um, if subject A holds a gun to his head, is subject Ab being held hostage?

[Darth Mandarb]

So um, if subject A holds a gun to his head, is subject Ab being held hostage?

And is it rape for subject Ab if subject A has sex?

[Blackthorne]

Anything's possible!  Just watch "The Electric Company!"  They'll tell you!

Bt

[Rui 'Trovatore' Pires]

Here's what I think, but my psychology classes weren't in-depth -

1.If subject A has a split personality problem this creates Subject Ab. If both knew of the other would it be possible for them to interact by leaving messages?

I don't think they can possibly know about each other. If they do, they find it very hard to believe, because they aren't in the least aware of it. NO AWARENESS AT ALL. They may just "lose track of time" and explain it in a dozen different ways while the other guy acts up.

2. Subject A is very lazy and unfit, Subject Ab is a health nut and likes to excercise. If they didn't know each other and Subject Ab trained regularly and becomes muscular and healthy would Subject A's perception of himself alter or would he sill see the lazy man's beer gut?

I think that's exactly the sort of things they tend not to notice. It's hard to believe, but you CAN not notice such things unless you bring yourself to do it. This may be one of such things. But I'm really not sure.

3. Would it be possible for Subject A to be good at science but not maths, while Subject Ab is good at maths and not science or would the intelligances fuse?

Again, not sure, but I think it is possible for that very same thing to happen.

And BTW, if you're thinking Schizophrenia for these questions for a game or something, remember that very few Schizophrenics develop a second personality. A MUCH more common form of Schizophrenia is "hallucinating another world", such as John Nash Ã, - see "A Beautiful Mind".

[DGMacphee]

Tyler started leaving me notes around our house.  Things like: clean the oven, empty the cat little box. Strangely, we didn't own a cat. Tyler left me these notes so he could spend more time exercising his body for the next club meeting. After a while, it felt like I'd been working out as much as Tyler. Even though I hadn't touched a barbell in weeks.

[Evil]

My father has mutliple personalities. They're more of voices in his head but they talk out loud. One time I remember walking into a room where he was talking to himself and he bumped into me then shut the light off. He had no idea I was even in the room.

[Pesty]

As for your first question, I think that it's possible for the createdÃ,  personalities to share and trade information between themselves, but the original person generally experiences blackouts, and so would be unable to retrieve information from the other personalities until they were 'integrated'.

And the second question, well, it depends on the subject. They could see themselves as fat and slovenly still, or they could become fit and not understand why or how. Most people who have had split personalities have had them for a long time and have trained themselves not to question strange changes in themselves. For example, If you've ever read the book 'Sybil', Sybil noticed when one of her other personalities got a hair cut, but just ignored it,Ã,  because she was too scared to ask herself how or when it happened.

For question number three, again, it depends on the subject. One of Sybil's personalities 'kept' the multiplication tables she learned when she was a child. The Sybil personality never knew, or remembered, at least, the times tables, so whenever she would have to multiply something, she would switch personalities or just not be able to do it.

I'm not a psychologist, so I don't know for sure about any of these answers. This is just what I've learned because this sort of thing interests me.

[[Cameron]]

Thanks everyone for your replies. This is not for a game but rather for my curiosity.

1.If subject A has a split personality problem this creates Subject Ab. If both knew of the other would it be possible for them to interact by leaving messages?

I don't think they can possibly know about each other. If they do, they find it very hard to believe, because they aren't in the least aware of it. NO AWARENESS AT ALL. They may just "lose track of time" and explain it in a dozen different ways while the other guy acts up.

If we held subject A in a room under video survailannce and caught the other personality on tape, would they beleive this or would this just cause mental anguish and damage.

[Archangel (aka SoupDragon)]

Ahh, iirc the two personalities can be aware of each other. There was one recorded case where the 'original' person would refer to the "bad" person, while the "bad" personality would talk about the "boring" person, although neither existed at the same time they knew of each other's existance, even having different names but I can't remember what they are now. Then of course some people might have the whole Fight Club thing going on too.

[Ozwalled]

Not sure if you're asking about this for a game or not, but if it is, as some people have suggested, multiple personality disorder, from what I can gather, is variable enough to allow for a lot of room to improvise, if you're making astory up around it.

The brain's a wonderful, strange thing, so if you can conceive of it hapenning and it seems somewhat reasonably possible that it maybe could, it's quite possible that it can.

As Andail Suggested, Oliver Sacks's books illustrate the facinating nature of the brain and how it can malfunction quite nicely, and with some funny, if sad accounts. See his book titled "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" for a lot of interesting examples of the brain's functionning gone awry (mostly due to injury, if I remember right).

And when you consider that there's such a huge amount of bizzare things that do go wrong, it's pretty amazing, really. People who are unaware of the right sides of things (including themselves), people who can't see certain angles of lines, people  who think that non-eadible things should be eaten, people  who can only see a few letters at a time but have otherwise normal vision (my mother suffers from such a dissability, actually), etc...

But if it's not for a game, safe to say that what was suggested is likley possible.