#4 in support of IFS

Death of the model of waking awareness as monolithic; and, Death of Jung’s “shadow”

If you are age 25 or younger, you might say, “Why do we need to explain internal parts and voices? Aren’t they obvious?”

Well you see, earlier generations, back to the 1400s at least, were raised with a male model of a monolithic waking awareness: There is just me. There are no parts. It’s all me. Popeye (1930s) put this succinctly, “I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam.” This is the male myth of monolithic waking consciousness.

Sherlock Holmes model

The monolithic model of our waking psyche was male-friendly, not female friendly. As well, “I am that I Am” in the Old Testament, still reverberates down thru a thousand generations of males.

1750–1950, Natural Science — as conceived of in mainstream male-dominator culture — repeated and expanded on the monolithic model of our waking psyche. But it too was subject to change; it became more and more one-sided.

One-sidedness in the monolithic model of waking awareness, as a male topic, evolved this way:

- This is the way things are,

- Alternative views are not welcome,

- Multiplicity in any form is not welcome,

- Two or more things being true at the same time, are unwelcome,

- Subjective phenomena is unwelcome; in fact, it’s invalid and not “real.”

In the late 1800s, the positives of this unitary, monolithic model of consciousness crystallized in an artistic manner, into the fictional character, Sherlock Holmes. Holmes exemplified the one-sided, monolithic, male model of our waking psyche — for men (and women willing to think like men).

Looking back on Holmes and his periods of social withdrawal, his opium addiction, his violin playing, it’s strange (arrogant?) conventional males ignored Sherlock Holmes’s divergent internal parts.

Conceiving of the waking human psyche as unitary-monolithic, with only one part, peaked in its usefulness between 1880s-1930s. Skinner’s Behaviorism and IQ testing characterize this period.