Rewriting the Soul

Rating:
Summary: "Less than One"
Review: Hacking asks, "Is it real?" He referred to the epidemic nature of multiplicity. He wrote that at one time multiplicity was considered rare. Hacking asks, "What happened? What is it? And, what is the answer?" He considered that multiplicity could be a fabrication between doctor and patient or as a social circumstance. He suggests that an intervention should be made and concluded that the situation demand professional caution. He sites the organizational work done by, "the False Memory Syndrome Foundation, but he claimed to be neutral.

Hacking seems to be part of a movement that believes that "... emphasis on personalities is wrongheaded." He writes that multiplicity is a failure to integrate. He quotes Spiegel (1993) as saying, "The problem is not having more than one personality; it is having less than one personality." Hacking further writes a comparison of multiplicity to Alice (in Wonderland). "For this curious child was very fond of pretending to be two people. 'But it's no use now,' thought poor Alice, 'to pretend to be two people! Why, there is hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!"

Yesterday, I pulled from my shelves the first book I found on multiplicity. I wanted to write the first item in THE CATALOG. I skimmed through the first chapter. And, I felt anger and betrayal. This author's thinking horrified me. I don't have the ability to remember what I have or have not read or who is who, but I'd fallen under the wrong assumption that I have bought only "good books." So-be-it. This remains the first entry. We hope to offer "some" objectivity.

We will be checking out the other books on our shelves before going much further. We find it hard to remember, but we do know what allows feeling good or bad. We're not less than one!

Kate (Aynetal System)
KathrynCoreyCenter.com

Rating:
Summary: Interesting, but flawed
Review: This book raises a lot of questions. The issue Hacking takes on is fascinating: multiple personality disoder and its philosophical implications. Hacking is a lot more down-to-earth and clear as a writer than most other philosophers, making this book much easier to read than anything I remember reading in philosophy class in college.

Hacking analyzes both MPD and the MPD movement. This is really interesting and makes me, the reader, think that there is a fascinating story to be told here: the story of how the movement came into being and has changed over time. Hacking gets into that, but then he backs off from it, and says he has scrupulously limited himself to matters of public record. No fair! this frustrated reader wants to say. It's like someone saying...I know things you don't....and not sharing.

There are a few flaws with this book that mean Hacking's conclusions should not be accepted uncritically:

1. Errors of fact. Hacking is sloppy here, or he has one of the worst editors of all time. I'll cite one of the simplest. In the hardback version I read, Jennifer Freyd's name is misspelled throughout. She is referred to as "Jenifer". Maybe this has been corrected since then. But Hacking has the temerity to evaluate the quality of "Jenifer's" writing - when he can't spell her name right. Excuse me??

2. Difficult to follow in some chapters. I found the chapters on the history of memory to be poorly organized, so that I lost the thread of what Hacking was saying. This is my failure as a reader, perhaps. But if anyone else tries to plow through that part of the book and can't make it, you are not alone.

3. Questionable claim of impartiality: Hacking presents himself as impartial, favoring neither the FMSF nor the trauma therapists. In actual fact, he is either sloppy, or very close to an FMSF apologist. This can be seen in his unwise choice of source materials. He consistently ignores the more responsible therapists and books.

I believe one (or more) of the following possibilities is true:

- Hacking is an FMSF advocate pretending to be impartial
- Hacking really tries to be impartial here, but did a poor job researching his subject and presents his conclusions too confidently.
- This book suffers from the ill effects of poor editing

But Hacking does a couple of great things:

- He thinks for himself. For example, he asks why so many alters are men, or little children, or homosexual. Then he talks about the implications of this. Fascinating questions!

- He discredits the concept of a core self, pristine, pure, untouched by culture. Thank you, Dr. Hacking. It's about time someone did.

- He eschews jargon and buzzwords, in favor of his own thoughts and phrasing. This is not common in an author writing about psychology, and is welcome.

I also think that, unfortunately, there were two or more books here that got fused. One of these books would have been MPD, the modern movement, and what it says about human consciousness. That would have been fascinating.

The other book would have been about the science and politics of memory, including Hacking's term, memoro-politics. That could be interesting too, but only if Hacking included the work of more responsible therapists. To me, these two separate discussions didn't fit together well.