Accounting for “dissociative” actions without invoking mentalistic constructs

Abstract

Professor Hilgard’s paper, “Divided Consciousness and Dissociation,” covers much ground. The many everyday examples of “divided consciousness” that he cites are a fitting background for the study of complex human action. To move from protocol language to a scientific vocabulary, Hilgard and others have coined the descriptive metaphors executive function and monitoring function. These metaphors have an abstract quality and are consistent with the tradition of inventing categories or dimensions of the mind. I find a different set of metaphors more helpful. Guided by dramaturgical and narrative frameworks, I construe the actions of a person as governed by a selfnarrative. At one time, the person is the narrator, the author, the scriptwriter; at other times, the spectator. The imageries stimulated by these metaphors overlap those of Hilgard’s executive and monitor. To make the description more complete, another metaphor is required: the actor. The self-as-narrator composes a script for the self-as-actor. The self-as-narrator can respond to feedback provided by the self-as-spectator in continuing the self-narrative. I prefer these metaphors because they are more consistent with a constructivist perspective that directs us to view persons as agents, as doers. In the first paragraph Hilgard acknowledges that persons are active agents. However, the thrust of the neodissociation account is that persons are entities that carry with them cognitive structures that under certain conditions appear to be autonomous from the agent’s goals and purposes. The process through which cognitive structures become dissociated appears to be a happening, rather than the