Multiplicity

Thank you Lance for recommending this book! I enjoyed it very much
(fortunately Exclusive Books had a copy so I could get it easily).

I was reminded of the old warning given to children who pull an ugly
face - 'don't do that, the wind might change and you'll be left
looking like that'. The adoption of a role or persona can stick and
become what you are - or a major part of your personality.

Catch 22 came to mind with the discussion of Major Major, Minor Major
and so forth, but the ideas made sense.

I'm not sure that I'm convinced that the various roles are really
separate personas, but I don't think that this is important to
enjoying the book and getting value from it. The idea of indentifying,
in a fairly objective way, different roles that you take on, sometimes
unaware that you're doing it, and getting a more integrated view makes
good sense to me.

The various clusters of persona covered at the back reminded me so
much of the Enneagram. Though they are all based on a nice
interpretation of the 'Big Five', I think that there could be a
mapping to Enneagram types which, like the MBTI, have the weakness of
being seen as fixed. It might even be helpful to those keen on the
Enneagram to see themselves as using different types at different
times as markers for their personas, rather than, as they do, wanting
to divide it all up into 'wings' which rather defeat the object of the
exercise.

I'd recommend the book as an interesting read with some practically
useful conclusions. It may only be one way of seeing things, but,
identifying a small and possibly damaging 'minor' (as the book has it)
as such might make it easier to fix (through adopting a different role
deliberately) than treating it as changing your fundamental
personality.

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