The devided self (PETER)- Laing

"He was able to carry on in an outwardly normal way the deliberate
employment of two techniques which he called 'disconnexion'
and 'uncoupling'. By disconnexion, he meant widening the
existential distance between his self and the world. By uncoupling
he meant the severance of any relationship between his 'true' self
and his repudiated false self. These techniques were basically to
avoid being discovered and had many variants. For instance, when
he was at home or among people he knew, he was awkward and
ill at ease, until he could get himself set into some role or part which
was not him, and which he felt was a suitable disguise. Then he
could, he said, 'uncouple' his 'self from his actions, and function
smoothly, without anxiety. This was not a satisfying resolution of
his difficulties, however, for various reasons. If he was consistently
not able to put his self into his actions for a long period of time, he
felt with growing intensity the falsity of his life, a lack of desire to
do anything, an unrelieved sense of boredom. Moreover, the
defence was not foolproof because from time to time he would be
caught off his guard and feel a look or remark to penetrate into the
core of his 'self. His sense of being 'in danger' from the gaze of
others became more persistent and less easily allayed by the device
of not letting them see his 'self. He would feel at times, and have
difficulty in dissolving the impression, that they could see through
his pretences.

His preoccupation with being seen was, I believe, an attempt to
recoup himself from his underlying feeling that he was nobody
(had no body). There was a primary inadequacy in the reality of
his own experience of himself as embodied and it was out of this
that his preoccupation with his body-for-others arose, i.e. his body
as seeable, hearable, smellable, touchable by the other. No matter
how painful this 'self'-consciousness was to him, it arose inevitably
out of the fact that his own body experiences were so uncoupled
from his self that he needed the awareness of himself as a real object
to others to assure himself, by this roundabout route, that he
had a tangible existence.
Furthermore, his delusion of smell from himself also became
less easily shakeable.

He found, however, another way of adjusting himself to his
particular anxieties, which had exactly the opposite advantages
and the opposite disadvantages. He could, he felt, be himself with
others if they knew nothing about him. This was, however, a
requirement that demanded exacting fulfilment. It meant that he
had to go to another part of the country where he was a 'stranger'.
He would go from place to place, never staying long enough to be
known, each time under a different name. Under these conditions
he could be (almost) happy - for a while. He was 'free' and could
be 'spontaneous'. He could even have sexual relations with girls.
He was not 'self-conscious' and had no 'ideas of reference'. These
no longer arose because the inner uncoupling of his self from his
body was no longer necessary. He could be an embodied person if
he was really incognito. If, however, he was known, he had to
revert to the disembodied position."

"Similarly, he was unable to patronize one public library and hold
a single ticket in his own name. Instead, he borrowed books from
various libraries all over the city, at each of which he held tickets
under an assumed name and a false address. If he thought that the
librarian had come to 'recognize' him, he did not return to that
library."

"Although this defence was difficult to sustain, since it indeed
demanded for its success as much effort, skill, and vigilance as
would be required of a spy in enemy territory, so long as he could
feel that he was not 'discovered' or 'recognized', this method did
serve to rid him of the need to be constantly 'uncoupled' and 'disconnected'.
But it required a constant anxious alertness since he
could never be out of danger. At this point, however, his situation,
although difficult, was not utterly desperate. It was, of course,
rendered critical by the way his schizoid defence system, which was
his whole modus vivendi, his attempt to find some feasible way of
living in the world, became an intentional project of self-annihilation.
It was when this happened that his precarious sanity began to
pass a critical point and become a psychosis."

Oh Peter.. my Peter.