States of Consciousness
Charles T. Tart
12. Identity States
Self-observation, observation of others, and psychoanalytic data
indicate that various stimuli can produce marked reorgnaizations
of ego functioning very rapdily, even though these all remain
within the consensus reality definitions of "normal"
consciousness. These identity states are much like d-SoCs
and can be sutdied in the systems approach framework. They are
hard to observe in ordinary life because of the ease and rapidity
of transiton, their emotional charge, and other reasons. The isolation
of knowledge and experience in various identity states is responsible
for much of the psychopathology of everyday life.
Definition of Identity States
The concept of d-SoCs comes to us in commonsense form, as well
as in terms of my initial research interests, from people's experiences
of radically altered states of consciousness—states like
drunkenness, dreaming, marijuana intoxication, certain meditative
states. These represent such radical shifts in the patterning,
the system properties of consciousness, that most people experiencing
them are forced to notice that the state of their consciousness
is quite different, even if they are poor observers. A person
need not have developed an Observer in order to notice such a
change in his state of consciousness: so many things are so clearly
different that the observation is forced on him.
Although this is the origin and the main focus of the concept
of d-SoCs, the systems approach is applicable to important variations
occurring within the overall pattern we call the ordinary d-SoC,
variations that can be termed identity states. My own self-observation
and much scattered psychological data, particulary data gathered
in the course of psychoanalytic investigations, indicate that
as different situations impinge on a person and activate different
emotional drives, distinct changes in the organization of his
ego can take place. Certain drives become inhibited or activated,
and the whole constellation of psychological functioning alters
its configuration around them.
The most cogent formulation of these data into a comprehensive
picture is that of the Armenian philosopher and spiritual teacher,
George Gurdjieff. The following selection from Ouspensky's report
of Gurdjieff's early lectures {48, pp. 59-60} expresses Gurdjieff's
idea that we have many "I's," many little egos:
"One of man's important mistakes," he said, "one
which must be remembered, is his illusion in regard to his I.
"Man such as we know him, the 'man machine,' the man who
cannot 'do,' and with whom and through whom everything 'happens,'
cannot have a permanent and single I. His I changes as quickly
as his thoughts, feelings, and moods, and he makes a rpofound
mistake in considering himself always one and the same person;
in reality he is always a different person, not the one
he was a moment ago.
"Man has no permanent and unchangeable I. Every thought,
every mood, every deisre, every sensation, says 'I.' And in each
case it seems to be taken for granted that this I belongs o the
Whole, to the whole man, and that a thought, a desire, or an aversion
is expressed by this Whole. In actual fact there is no foudnation
whatever for this assumption. Man's every thought and desire appears
and lives quite separately and independently of the Whole. And
the Whole never expresses itself, for the simple reason that it
exists, as such, only physically as a thing, and in the abstract
as a concept. Man has no individual I. But there are, instead,
hundreds and thousands of separate small I's, very often entirely
unknown to one another, never coming into contact, or, on the
contrary, hostile to each other, mutually exclusive and incompatible.
Each minute, each moment, man is saying or thinking 'I.' And each
time his I is different. Just now it was a thought, now it is
a desire, now a sensation, now another thought, and so on, endlessly.
Man is a plurality. Man's name is legion.
"The alternation of I's, their continual obvious struggle
for supremacy, is controlled by accidental external influences.
Warmth, sunshine, fine weather, immediately call up a whole group
of I's. Cold, fog, rain, call up another group of I's, other associations,
other feelings, other actions. There is nothing in man able to
control this change of I's, chiefly because man does not notice,
or know of it; he lives always in the last I. Some I's, of course,
are stronger than others. But it is not hteir own conscious strength;
they have been created by the strength of accidnets or mechanical
external stimuli. Education, imitation, reading, the hypnotism
of religion, caste, and traditions, or the glamour of new slogans,
create very strong I's in man's personality, which dominate whole
series of other, weaker, I's. But their strength is the dtrength
of the 'rolls'[1] in
the centers. "And all I's making up a man's personality have
the same origin as these 'rolls'; they are the results of external
influences; and both are set in motion and controlled by fresh
external influences.
"Man has no individuality. He has no single, big I. Man is
divided into a multiplicity of small I's.
"And each separate small I is able to call itself by the
name of the Whole, to act in the name of the Whole, to agree or
disagree, to give promises, to make decisions, with which another
I or the Whole will have to deal. This explains why people so
often make decisions and so seldom carry them out. A man decides
to get up early beginning from the following day. One I, or a
group of I's, decide this. but getting up is the business of another
I who entirely disagrees with the decision and may even know absolutely
nothing about it. Of course the man will again go on sleeping
in the morning and in the evening he will again decide to get
up early. In some cases this may assume very unpleasant consequences
for a man. A small accidental I may promise something, not to
itself, but to someone else at a certain moment simply out of
vanity or for amusement. Then it disappears, but the man, that
is, the whole combination of other I's who are quite innocent
of this, may have to pay for it all his life. It is the tragedy
of the human being that any small I has the right to sign checks
and promissory notes and the man, that is, the Whole, has to meet
them.
People's whole lives often consist in paying off the promissory
notes of small accidental I's."
Gurdjieff's concept of these rapdily alternating I's is similar
to the systems approach concept of d-SoCs. If we call each I an
identity state, then each (1) has an overall pattern of
functioning, a gestalt, which gives it a system identity and distinguishes
it from other identity states; (2) is composed of structures/subsystems,
psychological functions, skills, memories; (3) possesses unique
properties not present in other identity states; (4) presumably
has some stabilizing processes, although apparently fewer than
the ordinary d-SoC as a whole, since identity states can change
so rapdily; (5) functions as a tool for coping with the world,
with varying degrees of effectiveness; and (6) requires an induction
process to transit from one identity state to another, a requisite
stimulus to bring on a new identity state.
These alterations in functioning that I call identity states can
thus be usefully studied with the systems approach to consciousness.
Yet they are almost never identified as d-SoCs in ordinary people,
for several reasons.
First, each person has a large repertoire of these identity states
and transits between one and another of them extremely readily,
practically instantly. Thus, no obvious lapses or transitional
phenomena occur that would make him likely to notice the transitions.
Second, all these identity states share much psychological functioning
in common, such as speaking English, responding to the same proper
name, wearing the same sets of clothes. Thse many common properties
amke differences difficult to notice.
Third, all a person's ordinarily used identity states share in
his culturally defined consensus reality. Although certain aspects
of reality are emphasized by particular identity states, the culture
as a whole implicitly allows a wide variety of identity states
in its definitions of "normal" consciousness and consensus
reality. Within the cultural consensus reality, for example, there
are well-understood concepts, perceptions, and allowed behaviors
associated with being angry, being sad, feeling sexual desire,
being afraid.
Fourth, a person's identification is ordinarily very high,
complete, with each of these identity states. He projects the
feeling of "I" onto it (the Sense of Identity subsystem
function discussed in Chapter 8). This, coupled with the culturally
instilled need to believe that he is a single personality, causes
him to gloss over distinctions. Thus he says, "I am
angry," "I am sad," rather than, "A
state of sadness has organized mental functioning differently
from a state of anger." The culture also reinforces a person
for behaving as if he were a unity.
Fifth, identity states are driven by needs, fears, attachments,
defensive, maneuvers, coping mechanisms, and this highly charged
quality of an identity state makes it unlikely that the person
involved will be engaged in self-observation.
Sixth, many identity states have, as a central focus, emotional
needs and drives that are socially unacceptable or only partially
acceptable. Given the fact that people need to feel accepted,
an individual may have many important reasons for not noticing
that he has discrete identity states. Thus, when he is in a socially
"normal" identity state, being a good person, he may
be unable to be aware of a different identity state that sometimes
occurs in which he hates his best friend. The two states are incompatible,
so automatized defense mechanisms (Gurdjieff calls them buffers)
prevent him from being aware of the one identity state while in
the other. This is, in systems approach terminology, state-specific
knowledge. Ordinarily, special psychotherapists techniques are
required to make a person aware of these contradictory feelings
and identity states within himself. Meditative practices designed
to create the Observer also facilitate this sort of knowledge.
The development of an Observer can allow a person considerable
access to observing different identity states. An outside observer
can often clearly infer different identity states, but a person
who has not developed the Observer function well may never notice
his many transitions from one identity state to another. Thus
ordinary consciousness, or what society values as "normal"
consciousness, may actually consist of a large number of d-SoCs,
identity states. But the overall similarities between these identity
states and the difficulty of observing them, for the reasons discussed
above, lead us to think of ordinary consciousness as relatively
unitary state.
Gurdjieff sees the rapid, unnoticed transitions between identity
states, and their relative isolation from one another, as the
major cause of the psychopathology of everyday life. I agree with
him, and believe this topic deserves intensive psychological research.
Functions of Identity States
An identity state, like a d-SoC, has coping functions. The culture
a person is born into actively inhibits some of his human potentials,
as well as developing some. Thus, even in the most smoothly functioning
cultures, there is bound to be some disharmony, some conflict
between a person's emerging and potential self and he demands
placed on him to which he must conform in one way or another if
he is to survive in that social environment. The psychopathology
of everyday life is abundantly obvious and has been amply documented
by psychological studies.
At the fringes of consciousness, then, there is a vast unknown,
not simply of relatively neutral potentials that never developed,
but of emotionally and cognitively frightening things, conflicts
that were never resolved, experiences that did not fit consensus
reality, feelings that were never expressed, problems that were
never faced. Immersion is consensus reality in the oridnary d-SoC
is a protection from this potentially frightening and overwhelming
unknown; it is the safe, cultivated clearing in the dark, unexplored
forest of the mind.
An identity state is a specialized version of the ordinary d-SoC,
a structure acceptable to consensus reality (ignoring obviously
pathological identity states). The extrainformational "This
is me" quality from the Sense of Identity subsystem added
to certain contents/structures constellates the energies of consciousness
around them and produces an identity, a role[2]
that a person partially or completely identified
with for the time. The identity "eats energy."
A particular identity state thus acts as loading stabilization
for the oridnary d-SoC; it absorbs much available energy that
might otherwise activate unknown and perhaps implicitly feared
contents that are not acceptable. When you "know" who
are, when you take on an identity state, then you immediately
have criteria for dealing with various situations. If I am a "father"
in this moment I know that certain things are expected and desired
of me and I can cope well within that framework with situations
involving my children. If the situation changes and I now become
a "professor," then I have a new set of rules on how
to cope with situations involving people who have identified with
the roles of "students."
Some of a person's most important problems arise when his is in
an identity state that is not really suited to the situation:
my children are unhappy when I am a professor when they want a
father, and I am not comfortable when my students want me to be
like a father when I think the role of professor is more appropriate.
Being caught in a situation in which one has no ready role to
use and identify with is unusual. For most people such situations
can be lightly confusing or frightening, since they do not know
how to think or act. They can bcome susceptible to any authority
who offers ready-made roles/solutions in such situations. If the
country is "going to hell" and nobody seems to have
any answer, it may feel much better to be a "patriot"
and blame "traitors" than to live with your confusion.
On the other hand, lack of an immediately available role can offer
a unique opportunity to temporarily escape from the tyranny of
roles.
Once a person has identified with a role, the resulting identity
state stabilizes his d-SoC not only through loading stabilization,
but through the other three stabilization processes discussed
in Chapter 6. When he is coping successfully and thus feeling
good in a particular identity state, this constitutes positive
feedback stabilization; he tends to engage in more thoughts and
actions that expand and strengthen the identity state. If the
fear of having no identity is strong and/or the rewards from a
particular identity state are high, this can hinder escape from
that identity state. Consider how many successful businessmen
work themselves to death, not knowing how to stop being businessmen
for even short periods, or how many men die within a few years
of retiring, not having their work identity to sustain them.
Success from being in a particular identity state encourages a
person to avoid or suppress thoughts and actions that tends to
disrupt that state: this is negative feedback stablization. A
"good soldier" is obtaining valuable information about
enemy troop movements—information that may save the lives of
his buddies—by torturing a native child: he actively suppresses
his own identity state of a "father" is order to function
effectively in his "soldier' identity.
Being in a particular identity state also functions as limiting
stabilization. The identity leads to selective perception to make
perceptions congruent with the reigning identity state. Certain
kinds of perceptions that might activate other identity states
are repressed. The tortured child is perceived as an "enemy
agent," not as a "child." This keeps emotional
and attention/awareness energy out of empathic processes that,
if activated, would undermine and disrupt the "soldier"
identity.
Identity states, then, are both tools for coping with the environment
and ways of avoiding the unknown. The degree to which they srve
mainly one or the other funciton probably varies tremendously
form individual to individual and identity to identity. Some people
are terribly afraid of anything outside the few narrow identities
they always function in: by staying in one of the other of those
identity states constantly, they never feel the fear of the unknown.
Others have less fear of the unknown, but find the rewards from
functioning in a few identity states are so high that they have
no real need or interest to go outside them. The latter type probably
characterizes a stable, well-integrated society, with most citizens
quite content in a socially accepted identity states.
For discussion of radically altered discrete states like
hypnosis or drunkenness, the concept of the ordinary d-SoC as
relatively unitary is useful. As the systems approach becomes
more articulated, however, we shall have to deal with these identity
states that exist within the boundaries of the ordinary d-SoC
and that probably also function within the boundaries of various
d-ASCs.
In this book, I continue to use the terms discrete state of
consciousness and discrete altered state of consciousness
to refer to the rather radical alterations like hypnosis or
drunkenness that gave rise to the concept in the first place.
I use the phrase identity state to indicate the more subtle
division.
Footnotes
[1] The analogy is to old phonograph rolls:
we would say "programs" with a computer analogy today
[C.T.] (back)
[2] I use the term role to
indicate that a person consciously knows he is acting a part that
is not really him, and the term identity state to mean
he has become the part. Clearly, the degree of identification
can vary rapidly. (back)