Do you have split personalities?
Most of us can and do divide our lives into different factions. You may have a work faction, an immediate family faction, a hanging out with the buddies faction, dating faction, out of the country vacation faction. Each faction may have a separate and distinct personality. Cordial and tolerant at work, racist while driving, loving while at home, a drunk maniac while drinking with friends.
Have you ever thought of yourself as having a Spilt Personality Disorder. SPD can be determined in the average person if they lack a dominant personality that constantly rules over your decision making process regardless of your faction. This dominant personality regulates stability in who you are. Without this regulation, each personality can be so different that SPD may be at play.
In my interpretation of personality development, the determining factors of a particular personality is the emotional charge (mood range) received while partaking in certain acts, or being in certain environments. The other determinant is risk aversion, which is the amount of caution used in decision making.
If you have a drug dependency, while in the state of seeking a high, you are more likely to have a relatively high emotional charge, which can be any set of emotions such as depression or excitement. You also may display the inability to discern risk, or have a lack of ability to use your normal sense of logic. A person may have 5 different faction of personalities, where 4 of them use a consistently high level logical discernment, but when it comes to the personality that takes over during party time, sex time, gambling time, shopping time, child disciplining, dating time, love expression time, self respect time, a unusually different set of morals, standards or reactions may take over.
I hear your response, “I’m not crazy”. Well, let’s not jump to conclusions just because those are our wishes. Maybe crazy is why what we used to call dysfunctional is becoming the norm more and more. There used to be a time when we wanted someone who came from a good family, with morals and integrity. Now while on the second or third date it’s becoming popular to listen to the baggage or struggles a person has had to overcome. You sit there on the date and try to comfort them and relate, and soon feel as if you two can rescue each other from your past or present. From this we bond. Captain save-a-hoe says it’s okay to be in love with a stripper. Huh?
I believe the dysfunction within our society is derived from the SPD within our individual psychology. Why? Well, if a child is exposed to things that he/she is not mature enough to process and understand, that experience may rob the child of his/her innocence and distort the child’s reality. Take sexuality for example. If you were molested at a young age, you will more than likely have sexual issues throughout your adulthood. You were introduced to experiences and emotions that you were not properly able to categorize and appreciate. This will force your understanding to be guided to a distorted detour going forward. From that, all sexual relationships may be driven on a path that make less sense to others.
Why do you sometimes cry in the middle of sexual experiences? Why do you feel the need to share your body with different people in order to seek (yet never find) acceptance? Why do you normally know that the $1000 in your pocket is for the rent, but when you are driving past a casino, the money is all of a sudden earmarked for the next hour of gambling? Why do you stop valuing life while with your gangster friends? Why do you beat your child even when he does 
not deserve such lashing? Why is it that you are sitting in the bushes to see if the girl that you’ve known for two weeks will come home with some dude? Why do I accuse him of cheating every time he comes home late from work? Why do you treat everyone else with so much respect, but you really can’t stand to be alone, look in the mirror or accept compliments? Why do you continue to eat, smoke, toke, go for broke, go bareback, pay for prostitutes but all you want to do with them is talk?
Why? Normally you are very sensible, reasonable and careful. Why?
Good & informative entry! I think that we (people) sometimes alter our personality styles because we are afraid of what others may think about the “Real” us.
How does this R/T ones alter-ego?
On the flipside, having one dominate personality can be boring. You gotta be a freak in the sheets, corporate during the day, & hood in the streets. You must also have the ability to lose yourself in the moment! And know when to turn it all on and off.
If your personal struggle or area that you really truly want to change can be attributed to only one alter-ego, while your other personality is perfectly fine, then you should focus on the existence of that alter-ego. Discover what triggered that alter-ego to begin with and when does that ego show its head in your daily life. These are the beginning steps to resolving personal issues.
If you are cool with every side of you, then there is no need to adjust. I’m not against buck wild living. Do you, often times there are more people that benefit than not. Calculate your risk during times of personal reflection.