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Originally Posted by grant hutchison
It's an example of the sort of thing I mentioned to Joe Durnavich earlier, the fact that many people have the experience of being a spectator in their own heads from time to time.
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I was acting on the assumption that a self-described "demonic possession" is generally a mental construct of someone who could not face the reality of their own behavior. A cynical view, perhaps. You are right that another possibility is some actual altered mental state at the time due to a more clinical neurological issue. I was thinking more of situations where the psyche might intentionally break its concept of continuity for self-preservation of a perceived identity, as in, perhaps, a multiple personality disorder.
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More extreme is the situation I experienced, in which I "found myself" in a consciousness which I experienced as having no continuity with my original persona: I felt that I wasn't "I" any more, and it was the original "me" who was working my body.
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A fascinating (albeit horrendous) condition, one wonders why you would associate "yourself" with something other than the "original" you. One wonders how you managed to reunite without seeming like an "invader" to the original you. I wonder what happens to "bifurcations" that fail to reunite, perhaps that is a path to MPD.
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And more extreme again is the situation experienced by others, in which their familiar "I" is just gone: there is no reassuring presence in the body, just an automaton-like response to outside influences, which they observe in some way but seem powerless to modify.
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That would be unfortunate indeed.