Multiple Personalities, Part Two: The Transcendental Ego, with Stephen E. Braude

source: New Thinking Allowed      2016年2月18日
Stephen Braude, PhD, is an emeritus professor and former chairman of the philosophy department at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He has also served as president of the Parapsychological Association. He is author of First Person Plural: Multiple Personality and the Philosophy of Mind, Crimes of Reason, The Gold Leaf Lady, Immortal Remains, The Limits of Influence, and ESP and Psychokinesis. He is the recent recipient of the prestigious Myers Memorial Medal awarded by the Society for Psychical Research for outstanding contributions. He also serves as editor of the Journal of Scientific Exploration.
Here he argues that, even when sub-personalities are in serious conflict with each other, they form a holistic system that is both adaptive and utilitarian. Braude invokes the eighteenth century philosophical argument between David Hume and Immanuel Kant to highlight the concept of the transcendental ego. He maintains that we are justified in inferring the existence of this mental function underlying all of the diverse expressions of multiple personalities. Generally speaking, however, his approach to defining multiple personalities is situation dependent.

New Thinking Allowed host, Jeffrey Mishlove, PhD, is author of The Roots of Consciousness, Psi Development Systems, and The PK Man. Between 1986 and 2002 he hosted and co-produced the original Thinking Allowed public television series. He serves as dean of transformational psychology at the University of Philosophical Research. He teaches parapsychology for ministers in training with the Centers for Spiritual Living through the Holmes Institute. He has served as vice-president of the Association for Humanistic Psychology, and is the recipient of its Pathfinder Award for outstanding contributions to the field of human consciousness. He is also past-president of the non-profit Intuition Network, an organization dedicated to creating a world in which all people are encouraged to cultivate and apply their inner, intuitive abilities.
(Recorded on February 13, 2016)