The document discusses different perspectives on the relationship between mind and body, and how one's sense of self can change or split under extreme circumstances. It notes that philosophers have debated Cartesian dualism for centuries, while some neurologists argue the mind is a product of the physical brain. During intense pain like childbirth, one's sense of self can rapidly alternate between different states and it becomes hard to recall previous feelings, representing a more temporary splitting of self than a permanent before and after life event.

1. Exploring self splits in
narratives

4. Body and mind
 The Cartesian dualism of mind and
body has been heavily debated by
philosophers
 for centuries and has recently been
challenged by some neurologists
 (some of whom argue that the mind
is simply a creation of the physical
brain.

7.  This example shows a third person’s perception of
another’s changing personality
 (see 2.2 below for a discussion of the changing self).
The notion of a new
 person taking possession of a body can also be used
to express self-alienation.

8. Social Roles and Imaginary Selves

11. The changing self

12. In extreme circumstances, though, the continuity can break down. Lessing’s
character Matty in A Proper Marriage (1966, a novel in the same series as The
Four-Gated City) experiences a rapid alternation between different selves during
the pain of childbirth, caused by the fact that the cycles of pain and painlessness
are so all-encompassing and so radically different experientially that she cannot
even recall what the previous state felt like:

14. This moment-by-moment fluctuation of self during waves of pain
lasting for
Several hours is rather different from the splitting into a “before”
and “after”
State following a major life-event (presumably, a rather different
“split-self”
Metaphor could be used to represent a character before and
after childbirth.