Response To J. W. T. Redfearn's Comment

Dr Redfearn's generous acknowledgement that the committee analogy might show one way in which parts of the self interact, gives about as much recognition as one analogist can hope for from another. And even if the analogy holds only when things are working fairly well, that might be worth something.

I trust that his ‘comment’ and my ‘response’ will be read not primarily as an argument, but as a dialectic and discussion; dialectic in the sense of trying to clarify meanings as a discussion proceeds. I, for instance, was not alert enough to realise that his sub-personalities denoted such entities as archetypal figures and war between forms, though I understood that they were part of his universe of the self.

I also did not make clear that my committee analogy was intended to apply only to the self of consciousness. It is not to be seen as independent of other influences coming from the rest of the self. The members can hardly escape being affected by the entities specified and implied, as well as by the non-self universe.

Whatever names are given to such entities by one school or another, is it not by bringing them to the attention of the conscious self, that psychology would help it to come to terms with them and thus work toward a more fully developed, better adjusted total personality?

I ask readers to think about how a committee of the whole might function, as distinct from more usual committees. I understand that, at times, the Roman Senate had extensive legislative, executive, and judicial authority and could ruthlessly suppress some of its own members as well as other parts of the body politic. A committee of the entire conscious self would seem capable of arranging things so that the shadow does (or does not) have its say as fully as it should and be capable of learning to give due attention to ongoing struggles in their realm of which they are not sufficiently aware, so that there might be a hope of avoiding revolutionary violence which interrupts or destroys norm