Mind and Metaphor

[rachelmanija]

telophase reminded me of a conversation we had a while back, and I thought I'd throw it open for discussion (especially as there are a couple of psychologists reading this.)

We were talking about the mind and how it perceives its own processes, and how, if you ever grill people about how they see their own selves and the way they imagine their minds, they will come up with metaphors and concepts that seem extraordinarily weird to anyone who is not them.

Walter Jon Williams has an excellent sf novel called Aristoi, in which some of the high tech is psychology. People have learned how to induce multiple personalities in themselves (which they call daemons) in a very controlled manner, so that rather than having any kind of disorder or deficit, they can tap into the almost unlimited potential of their own selves. He makes it sound really fun, too: call up the physically adept daemon to help you with a fight, or the aesthetically-minded daemon to add to your appreciation of a work of art.

I once mentioned to Walter that I wished I had daemons. He looked rather surprised, and said, "But you do."

"Well, sure, in a sense," I replied. "But I mean I wish I had them the way they're depicted in your book, so they really feel like other people, not just portions of myself."

"The daemons in Aristoi were my attempt to write down the inside of my own mind, the way it feels to me," replied Walter.

"...really?" I said.

Or some such; this conversation is obviously not verbatim. Unfortunately, I did not a get a chance to further quiz him on what he meant by that.

But that's something else that makes me wonder whether the line between what are generally considered to be (a few-- not all!) mental illnesses and quirky but normal thinking processes is merely whether or not the person in questions interprets "other personalities," say, or "I am not human" as metaphor or fact.

Is there really something very different about the mental state of Otherkin, or do they just interpret the very common sense of being different from everyone else, and the also quite common identification with non-human beings, as metaphysically real rather than metaphoric?

Is that also the difference between Walter and Sybil?

Thoughts? Fascinating personal disclosures? Musings on delusions/ideas which are socially normal vs. weird, when they're actually quite similar?