Sub Personalities

As human beings we have a complex structure making up our personality. Recent findings suggest our waking personality is not made up of one integrated monolithic structure, but rather many different modules of behaviour and skills. Different circumstances call upon different modules. Some of this is obvious in that we may have a skill in dealing with a group of people, but the behaviour related to it does not dominate our behaviour unless we are dealing with several people. In this sense the personality we become at that time is unconscious during most of our activity. It can therefore be thought of as a sub-personality.

Many dream characters – other people who appear in our dreams – may be thought of as a sub-personality. As such they denote aspects of our character or personality which do not denote our everyday behaviour, but emerge, sometimes unexpectedly in certain circumstances. For instance in a violent argument our behaviour may be totally different to what we would expect of ourselves, and may disappear – become unconscious – rapidly. See Characters in Your Dreams; Autonomous Complex; Talking As.