Tom T Hall declares in one of his songs that ‘big preachers know a lot more than I do.’ Nonetheless, Tom T had his own belief as to the role that Clayton Delaney would play in the great beyond.
The beauty of being a columnist rather than a journalist, is that, like Tom T Hall, you have the right and the platform to contradict those that ‘know a lot more than I do.’
What do you think of split personalities, dual personalities and multiple personalities? Is the person with a dual personality two people, or two sides of the same person, or sort of like a sheep with two heads? The most extreme example of a split personality is of course the Jekyll and Hyde story.
I recently met up with a distinguished author and broadcaster who is in the process of writing a book on the life of a person who demonstrated acts of unselfish, generous service on one hand; coupled on the other with astonishing cruel and cynical betrayal of good and trusting people. Again, we ask: Is this a split personality … two different people in the same skin – or just more of the impregnatable mystery that devises the human mind?
One of the most deviously dishonest and damaging people I ever met, is also the most plausible and charming man you could meet today. So, who can tell the difference?
A New York architect; a family man and a pillar of his community is currently being charged with being a serial killer of several women over more than a decade. There are loads of such stories on TV every night, where a ‘Mr Nice Guy’ fools a partner and friends for years whilst his ‘other half’ is a rapist and killer. Many who ‘know a lot more than I do’, would argue that these are clear examples of a split personality … but is this a cop-out and a way of trying to put a simple label on a baffling, but not all that rare, duplicitous mind?
The vast majority of us do not slink out at night to kill somebody, but what if each of us pause for a few moments and do an honest stock-take of our inner mind and compare the worst thing we ever did against the good deed we are proudest of. Some difference … eh? If you were to tell your two stories, wouldn’t it sound very much like two different people?
I can look back on how I handled or responded to similar situations on different occasions and the view from here is quite staggering. Like that author told me about her subject, I have at times shown a meanness of spirit, spite, and self-righteousness that I regret. Not a mass-murderer, mind you; and the strange thing is that in the same circumstances at other times I have, in more than equal measure, been charitable, generous, forgiving and done a few good deeds. I am not a split personality … and yet, I can almost be two very different people.
Have you managed to figure it out yet? My verdict is that I don’t believe that anyone has a split personality. Everyone has just that one elastic personality. We do have many ego states within our personality to handle different situations. How we react to a situation can be governed by how we feel about other things around us at that point in time. Even small things …. I am still haunted by the fact that I once refused to give a young English student the price of a meal one time in Spain. Why did I do this – and yet often walk up and give a few bob to someone on the street without being asked? This isn’t a dual personality … it’s just demonstrating a complicated personality that we all have. We act differently when shouting for Westmeath than we do when playing with the children in the garden!
People display a different personality at work than when they meet the Gorls and Lads in the pub. In reality, we spend the greater part of our lives ‘playing a part.’ Our personality traits are governed to a large degree by convention. We are taught how to behave in situations and going from one to another can seem like two entirely different people.
In simple man’s language; there are a lot of different divides in our head and this is all part and parcel of just one personality … the only one that we’ve got. So next time you get ‘caught out’, don’t try to extract yourself with the claim that it wasn’t really you, but the other guy – the bad side of your split personality! And yes, I do believe there is such thing as a warped personality …
Don’t Forget
It is extremely difficult to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.
