Multiple
Man
ADAM CRABTREE
in conversation with
ALEXANDER BLAIR EWART
Author of Multiple Man: Explorations in Possession and Multiple
Personality (1985), Adam Crabtree has been a practising therapist
for more than twenty years. A frequent guest lecturer and
teacher, Crabtree has written and narrated radio programs for
CBC's Ideas ("The Enchanted Boundary"), as well as produced a
series of seventeen programs for educational radio entitled
Mysteries of the Mind. His most recent book is entitled Magnetic
Sleep: Mesmer & the Roots of Psychological Healing (1993).
ALEXANDER BLAIR EWART: One of the issues that has certainly come
up for a lot of people exploring the new age movement is the relationship
between channeling and multiple personality disorder, and the fact that
since Freud we have been progressively finding out that the human being is
more and more complicated than we used to think.
ADAM CRABTREE : For me, the history of this goes back long before
Freud. It actually goes back to Mesmer, who developed animal magnetism,
and out of that grew hypnotism as an art. That was really the uncovering of
an unconscious or subconscious world and multiple streams of thought in
that subconscious world. Freud came in after about a hundred years of that
investigation had already taken place and he really didn't add anything
significant in terms of the architecture of that. What he added was a way of
understanding the unconscious in terms of emotional conflict and so forth,
which is, of course, extremely important.
ABE : He had a tremendous aversion, didn't he, for anything on the hidden
side of the human being, the occult or whatever you want to call it?
ADAM C : To my knowledge he avoided it. Some people have surmised that
he had an interest that he could not follow partly because he was already
engaged in things that were controversial enough.
ABE: If the human being is functional or living on many levels of awareness,
and there seem to be more and more levels opening up all the time, our view
of what a human being is must be undergoing an incredible assault.
ADAM C : Yes, that's right. That assault was already taking place in the
1870s and 1880s and Pierre Janet was right in the middle dealing with it,
because he actually said that there can be many streams of consciousness, of
subconscious processes of thought, unknown to the person, and they can all
be going on simultaneously. That was a huge statement to make because it
certainly breaks down the notion of our being simple beings with a mind,
and that we know what's going on in it.
ABE: What would be an example of that?
ADAM C : Well, he dealt with quite a few women who had disturbances of
consciousness that today we would call dissociation, and he invented the
word dissociation actually out of those experiences. These were people who
would alternate back and forth between states of mind. In some cases they
were multiple personalities and those states were different personalities.
What was pretty clear from the point of view of our interest in channeling or
anything related to that kind of phenomenon is that these streams of
consciousness were not coming and going one after the other. They were
actually existing side by side or simultaneously within the individual. He
found in his experiments with people who had various personalities that
each one of these personalities had a mental life. In the last ten to fifteen
years of multiple personality disorder work, this is one thing that becomes
very obvious, that there are simultaneous streams of consciousness, one for
each of the operating personalities.
ABE : And each one has, for instance, different handwriting?
ADAM C : They can, yes.
A B E : It is also suggested that they tend to originate, as far as the person
herself is aware, or the personalities themselves are aware, either at the
point of this lifetime's birth or at a later date. If I understand this correctly,
that's one of the ways of telling the difference between multiple personality
disorder and, say, someone channeling an entity. Yet it doesn't seem terribly
reliable to me.
ADAM C : There is a problem here. In my work with multiple personality
disorder usually it is quite possible to trace the origin of a personality to a
specific moment in the individual's history. Now, they often begin around
age two, three, or four, and then continue to be formed for any length of
time and sometimes throughout life. A person can have many, many
personalities. You can trace the origin, and it is often the case that the new
personality was formed to handle a difficult situation, a specific trauma,
sexual or physical abuse. But you haven't really solved the problem,
unfortunately. You still haven't solved the problem of: is that personality
something that is then created from scratch within the individual in some
mysterious, unconscious way, or is it a pre existing personality, let's say a
past life personality or even, heaven forbid, a personality from, let's say, a
wandering spirit of some kind, not previously involved with the individual? I
say "heaven forbid" because this is so hard to accept in our conventional
thinking, but I have seen a couple of instances that make me really take that
possibility seriously. You would probably be interested to read Chris
Sizemore's book called A Mind of My Own because in this book, Chris, who
is Eve of The Three Faces of Eve, says something that really struck me. She
is now one personality. She has been integrated, but she has come to the
conclusion that these personalities were with her at birth.
ABE : What does that mean for her?
ADAM C : In other words, it looks like her own personal experience of her
multiplicity is that these are past life personalities. For someone to say that
in this field is pretty startling. Even though she is not a doctor of psychiatry,
she has a lot of stature in this field. People do listen to her.
A BE : In the mystical schools the person who is undergoing spiritual
development is told there will come a point when they will start to remember
or experience feelings from other lives, and that the biggest problem at that
stage will be to hold yourself all in one piece, because you will be assailed by
emotions from different parts of time. You will have this experience of being
pulled into several pieces and that only through training in personality
integration is the neophyte likely to survive that level of initiation. It seems
that a lot of people who are diagnosed as schizophrenic, for instance, seem
to be having a very mystical kind of experience, but are unable to hold their
integration while they are going through it. Are there parallels there? Is the
gap closing between what we are finding through Western research and those
older traditions?
ADAM C : As of yet, in terms of the conventional workers in the field of
mental health, there is still quite a gap. There is a comparison to be drawn
here in what's happening in the investigation of multiple personality
disorder and what you were saying earlier about Freud, in that the people
who work with multiple personality disorders have had a very hard fight
over the last ten to fifteen years to get the disorder recognized and accepted
as a real disorder. There has been an amazing, very strange resistance on the
part of the psychiatric and psychological world to accept this disorder even
though the evidence for it is undeniable.
ABE : Why do you think that resistance is there?
ADAM C : Well, I have my own personal theory about that. I think it is
because there is an unspoken, unconscious fear that to accept multiple
personality disorder is like accepting multiple souls or spirits in a person,
rather than just accepting multiple parts, which is the way psychiatrists who
work with it present it.
ABE: So there is a kind of identity crisis there?
ADAM C: I think so.
ABE: As in, who is the real Adam Crabtree and who is the real Alexander
Blair Ewart? Well, who knows?
ADAM C : Yes. You have that problem no matter which side of the fence you
stand on. That is, no matter whether you accept the personalities as parts of
one individual or from other lifetimes, or spirits, you have the same problem
of who the real one is. Because even if you accept these things as parts, it is
hard to say sometimes who is central or who has the inside track on the
identity of the individual.
ABE : Psychology was originally rooted in metaphysics, wasn't it, and it
sort of got moved away from it and pushed more in the direction of
anthropology and so on, and because there is no metaphysical underpinning
that's agreed upon in any way in psychology and psychiatry, we have a kind
of crisis now.
ADAM C : Yes, I think that is true. I think that this condition more than any
other disorder challenges our view of what human beings are. That is
actually why I wrote the book Multiple Man, because I felt that multiple
personality disorder is a window into human nature that is unique and
challenges a lot of things we don't ordinarily think about.
ABE : It is interesting that what personality means now is different, and
that the personality has undergone an incredible revolution in the last
hundred years through, for instance, the media. There are vast numbers of
people all around us who wish they were actors and who actually are acting
a lot of the time. So we have a culture that encourages this and in looking at
channeling there is a level there where it is almost as if human beings are
turning into a form of media.
ADAM C : Yes, that is right. My attempt to understand the phenomenon of
channeling has been, in my own estimation, only very partially successful.
The way I explain it to myself is that if others, let's say, who are not part of
my own personality or part of my own past lives, but others outside of that
line of experience, are going to talk through me or somehow manifest
through me, then there must be something in my very nature that allows me
to do this. There must be some way that I am so malleable that I can, at
least temporarily, become somebody else and do it very well. It is as if a part
of me, analogous to a past life personality, can become an outside
personality, at least temporarily. That's the closest I have been able to come
to try to say something about what is going on in the structure of the human
psyche with channeling. It's complicated by the problem that we can act
from our own unconscious. In other words, it is possible and I believe that it
does happen, that we can form personalities, or let's say, become actors in a
certain persona because of something unconscious that wants to express
itself, and not necessarily because of another existence or because of an
outside entity.
So there is the problem of credibility, or how does one judge the
credentials of the purported entity who is coming through? It might be that
the individual who is doing it doesn't have any doubt, but for those on the
outside it seems like to a large extent they have to rely on cogency and
maybe even, let's say, predictions coming true, evidence of that kind, or
some paranormal productions that all add up to conviction. And maybe
that's good enough for most people. For me, I have difficulty with this. But I
don't at all deny the possibility that channeling, or some channeling, does
have something to do with another outside "entity" expressing or
manifesting through an individual.
ABE : I am completely convinced of that myself, that that phenomenon can
happen and does happen, and is probably happening a lot more than we
publicly acknowledge.
ADAM C The problem lies in judging any individual case. Every case
becomes somewhat problematic.
ABE : Yes, because we are dealing with human beings. So you can't
standardize.
AD AM C : Yes, that's right.
ABE : So we are saying here, then, that possession, if that isn't too
sensational a word to use here, is possible and that there is some evidence to
point to the fact that it can happen and that it does happen.
ADAM C : Yes, definitely.
ABE : What does it mean for us if our culture develops an interest or
sympathy towards something like channeling, where the possibility of
possession is opened up?
ADAM C : I don't know, because that requires a judgment on the culture
and society today. I think there have been cultures in the past who have
certainly accepted this fairly easily, the notion of "possession" and
" prophecy." But I think the fact that we are accepting it today, I hope in
addition to whatever degree it arises from insecurity and looking for answers
more ardently than before, that it also means there has been some
progression towards self exploration on the level of the psyche. When I read
things from earlier sources, let's say, a century ago in the area of
psychotherapy and psychology and so forth, I do believe that there has been
an advance in inner awareness generally in the world.
ABE: Oh absolutely.
ADAM C: Maybe part of the reason that about 25 or 30% of the population
actually believes in these things is that to some degree we are becoming
more experientially aware of the depths of our psyche.
A B E : I am quite aware I am making a value judgment when I say this, but
one of the criteria that I have used to orient myself towards the phenomenon
of channeling is the criterion of integration versus disintegration. The more
integrated somebody is, the healthier they are, the more disintegrated, the
more unhealthy they are. It seems to me that channeling encourages a
disintegrative process.
ADAM C : It seems to me that it does, too. I don't see how it could be any
other way.
ABE: In that sense channeling worries me. What I mean by channeling is
deep trance channeling, where someone is unconscious and another entity is
using their body in some way or another to communicate with other people..
I have this deep sense that in a way it doesn't matter what that entity is
saying, that something that shouldn't be happening is happening, namely
possession. At the same time I am aware that I am deeply conditioned by a
Christian background.
ADAM C : Yes.
ABE : One of the questions is where does the channeler go while the
channeled entity is using their body?
ADAM C . A question that has never been answered to my knowledge at all
satisfactorily. When you study the equivalent of channeling a hundred years
ago, one of the most interesting parallels to modern channeling, I think, is
William Stainton Moses. William Stainton Moses himself felt a little bit
uneasy with these entities who expressed themselves through him. He
questioned them, wondered if they were really who they purported to be,
and so forth. But when you read what they had to say, they are in about the
top 5%, I would say, in terms of quality, because so much of the outpourings
you got a century ago and what you are getting today is pretty poor. You are
not really learning that much and some of it is sort of silly.
ABE: Pious pablum.
ADAM C : Yes, and so you don't feel a lot of confidence. To me, this is one
of the problems that I have with channeling. I find it hard to get interested
in the content. The phenomenon I have an interest in, but the content very
often isn't enough to hold my interest. I get better content from people who
are living. And so why would I be drawn to this? I think that one of the
reasons that people are really interested in channeling perhaps hasn't as
much to do with the content as the fact that it is happening.
ABE : Yes. There is some miraculous or mystical process going on.
ADAM C : Exactly. Now with regard to the business of where somebody goes
when they are channeling, the very same problem happens with most cases
of multiple personality disorder. When another personality takes over, the
host or original personality goes away and is not aware of what is going on,
and when it comes back, it is not aware of having been anywhere. This is
one of the reasons why many do not know they are multiples, because all
they know is there is a blank in time. They haven't been anywhere else.
There is just a blank. Now that's the case only for the birth personality.
Usually the other personality and there can be ten, twenty, thirty other
personalities in an individual will be aware of what's going on when others
are out, or they can be if they want to, if they want to bother to pay
attention. They have the sense that they are somewhere all the time. Inside
they have their spaces and their places and their activities.
So there is a parallel in multiple personality disorder in that the earth
personality or the host personality has the same kind of "Where do I go
when these others are in control?" that many mediums had, like the
nineteenth century medium Leonora Piper, for instance. She was not aware
of being anywhere, I believe, when she was channeling or someone was
talking or writing through her. To my knowledge that has never been
satisfactorily answered. Why should it be, for instance if you can use
multiple personality as a way of looking more deeply into this why should
it be that only the central personality has the blank? With the man
multiples that I have worked with, that is a question I have not been able to
answer. Now, there are exceptions. There are some multiples where the one
who appears to be the birth personality also has awareness when others are
out. These are very highly developed multiples, where they are functioning
quite well, and the personalities cooperate with each other, and so forth. But
there could be a question there of whether you are really dealing with a birth
personality at all, or whether the individual thinks they are because they go
back a long way. There is a question there and in my mind it is still
completely unanswered.
ABE : If I sit down to meditate, I'm pulling my awareness away from all my
worldly concerns, away from everything to do with other people, in a way,
and focusing myself on, say, a very, very deep level of relaxation. The
interesting thing with that is the more I do it, the more I feel integrated, the
more I feel well, and the more I feel I have access to all of my memories at
every level. I don't see that process working in channeling, for instance,
where there is simply a blackout, really, on the part of the human being and
then this other thing happens. What I find distressing is the apparent lack of,
curiosity on the part of the channelers themselves about the psychology of
what is actually happening to them.
ADAM C : Yes. And that corresponds to multiple personality disorder, too,
because people who dissociate easily in this way often don't have much
curiosity about it. They just accept it and don't explore it as a phenomenon
ABE : Which again is a very strange thing, that on one hand you
people claiming that through these means they are able to reach deeper
levels of reality, understanding, knowingness, and life wisdom, and yet at
the same time there is a sort of aphasia towards the actual functioning of the
process. Why have human beings reached this stage now where the critical
faculty is not working?
ADAM C : Well, I think that the critical faculty has always been not,
working. [laughter] I think that it just depends on who you are talking to
For instance, mediums have always been remarkably uninterested in looking
at themselves.
A B E : So the question arises then is channeling dangerous?
ADAM C : Is it dangerous? I don't think so. I don't think I could call it
dangerous. I think it runs the spectrum from being an obstacle to having a
full life, to maybe for some people actually being a positive experience. I
don't know enough people who are engaged in it to judge that, but from
what I have seen and have read of it, from what I know about people who
dissociate, that dissociation can be present in degrees in people's lives, but I
don't think it is dangerous, I haven't heard of cases of possession that are
really destructive, and this surprises me because I still work with people who
have very bad possession experiences from, say, the Ouija board and
automatic writing. But I haven't had anybody come to me yet who was one
of these bad cases from channeling. Now if that were happening from
channeling, then I would say it can be dangerous. In regards to my own
particular bent as a psychotherapist and historian, my main interest has
always been dissociation in all its forms, and I think this is a really
interesting recent type of dissociation, and that we can learn from it. I am
sure we can learn from it by studying it.
