hey sunrise. i think the ideal situation... is that you will work through your transference BEFORE termination. i guess the ideal situation is when you decide that you don't want to do therapy anymore :-)

> "An ego state may be defined as an organized system of behavior and experience whose elements are bound together by some common principle."

i like that :-) Dennett refers to the 'common principle' as a 'centre of narrative gravity'. i'll try and explain...

what is a centre of gravity? roughly... a centre of gravity is a posited point. it isn't a physical point (because whatever particle you try and locate as the centre of gravity changes as you move the object). it is a 'theorists construction' is what Dennett thinks it is. a postulated causal mechanism (e.g., why did the chair fall over? because the centre of gravity was on the left...) similarly, the 'common principle' is a 'self' is a 'centre of narrative gravity'. e.g., why did i start screaming? because j. was afraid of something, or whatever...

i think of the 'how many selves' notion as being the same as: 'how many centres of narrative gravity do we need to posit in order to make the best predictive and explanatory sense of the persons behaviour? that is a matter of interpretation... it can be a little like this:

OO
OO

How many objects are there? If you look one way there are four distinct objects. If you look another way there is one object, however, (a square). So... How many selves make me? There is a bias for single-mindedness over completeness ;-)

I think there can be genuine problems with indeterminacy. Which is precisely what we would expect if most (or this) mental illness existed along a continuum rather than being categorically different from normality (or the non-pathological). I am wary of theorists who seem to view DID as being categorically different from other conditions and especially wary when they do not seem to acknowledge that there is thus a continuum of appropriate treatment strategies for people lying along a continuum.

People like Putnam seem to think 'one must elicit the alters as distinct self states'. If he can't elicit the alters then what? Then either the person doens't have DID (so what variety of treatment does he suggest now? he seems to remain silent). Or the person isn't ready for therapy (i see, no therapy for them). Perhaps I'm being unfair to Putnam...