What is an alter personality?

 

 

… the emergence of what has been thus discarded or dissociated from consciousness” (The 3 Faces of Eve see BOOKS, ARTICLES)

 

Simply, it is an alternative (thus “alter”) to the original personality

Frank Putnam (see BOOKS, ARTICLES) says that “an alter is the core feature of Multiple Personality Disorder. [He or she exchanges] control over the person’s behaviour”

An alter personality has her own sense of self, range of functions, range of emotional responses, and life history.

Multiples may refer to their personalities as

- alters

- personalities

- parts, or parts inside

- aspects

- facets

- ways of being

- voices

- multiples

- selves

- ages of me

- people or persons or individuals

- spirits or demons

- lines

- others

 

FRAGMENT PERSONALITIES

There is also something called a fragment personality. This is a personality who still has a sense of self but his range of function and emotional responses are much more limited and restricted and he may have very little life history.

 

For example, my system created 13 fragment personalities called The Blue Ones. They were called that because they were seen to be tears. Their role was simply to hold difficult emotions, mostly grief and sadness, for some other personalities who could not afford to feel their emotions during the abuse. They knew very little about our life or about any other personalities but the ones for which they held emotions.

 

There are other kinds of fragment personalities. Besides ones that have only one emotion, they may:

• perform only one function for the person – e.g., drive the car, protect the body

• have a highly specified activity – e.g., cleaning the bathtub

 

For you, as an outside observer, it may be hard to tell the difference between a fragment personality and full personality.

It’s also possible that a personality’s role may change over time, from being a fragment to a fuller personality or vice versa.

Whether a full-fledged personality or simply a fragment, it may not make any difference in the healing process or it may take less time for a fragment to heal and possibly integrate.