An important observation, but there are also counterexamples-- if they say "I don't know what possessed me", the "I" is still there, but so is some other being or consciousness, acting in some bizarre shared state. They might say "I was possessed by the devil" to excuse their behavior, but if they really believe it, they must believe that their identity was interrupted by the possession. Perhaps a need, brought on by guilt or incredulousness, can exceed even the need to sense a continuous identity.

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.
In that situation, the "I" is still there, forming a bridging continuity between "before" and "after", but (apparently) existing outside of the decision-making loop during the events under consideration.
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.
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.

Grant Hutchison

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.
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.That would be unfortunate indeed.

You described walking and not being able to stop. Would it be fair to say that it was your behavior at the time that you felt disconnected with? Your example describes a disruption in behavior--a "this not how I normally am."

(Try not to let my use of the word behavior influence you the wrong way. Nobody is talking about rats pulling levers here, but of the indescribably rich tapestries of human life and all that it entails.)

Rather, I think "internal" and "external" are primarily metaphors for talking about aspects of our lives. They are handy shorthand for referring to otherwise complex aspects of life. My own situation in the world is unique to me. I may describe aspects of it as if I was necessarily witnessing events taking place strictly inside of me instead of as something I do or that has happened to me and that you do not share in or are aware of.

"Objective" and "subjective" are just handy inventions of the philosophers. The substrate of everything we talk about is our lives in the world. We draw all sorts of pictures in such talk including the pictures of "internal" and "external" worlds. Normally, I would be polite and not point that out, but this is a science forum on a skeptic board. I feel obliged to keep you all on your toes!

Ah, I see what you mean. One wonders to what extent that manoeuvre would be successful, internally: if the continuity of self would acquire a retrospective break, or if the denier is still aware of continuity at some level.
At a more mundane level, does everyone who behaves appallingly when drunk really "remember nothing" in the morning?

Yeah, MPD; or to give it its new name, dissociative identity disorder. It's tricky example, since it's extremely rare and of dubious status as a clinical entity. There are arguments (which I find fairly convincing) that it's iatrogenic, or at least built up in a sort of collusion between patient and therapist.

Well, I can shed no light on the first question. It's just the experience I had, a strong component of which was the sense that I was outside myself: that the original "me" was still in charge of things, and that I had slipped out of register with "me". I've spoken to a couple of other people who've had similar experiences after long periods of exertion and sleep deprivation in endurance sports. But they both describe "out of body" experiences, without any sense of "lost self": they just drifted along while their body did the work, unsupervised. Both found it rather pleasant, since they were isolated from the pain and exertion.
My own experience involved four days in the Scottish Highlands in which I climbed a lot of hills in horrible weather, got very wet and tired, missed a lot of sleep, didn't eat very well, and finally had my tent shredded by the wind. So I set off in a moderate storm to walk to the nearest town. Initially I struggled through deep heather in the dark, falling frequently, and promising myself a rest when I got to a path several miles away. Eventually I stepped out on to the path, thought "Right, I'll sit down" and just carried on walking. That (of course!) was the point at which I had the very strong sensation of having come unstuck from myself.

I "got back in again" as I approached the lights of the road, when I began to panic that the "I" in charge might just walk straight out into such negligible traffic as there might be on a Highland road at four in the morning. There was a bit of a psychic lurch, and there I was again, with tarmac hard under my feet, the road lights very bright, and the sound of the river very loud. My legs were very tired.

I don't see this as any sort of mystical experience, and I wasn't in any sort of "do or die" survival situation: it would have made much more sense to find a bit of shelter by the path, brew up a hot drink and eat the last of the chocolate before starting off for the road. It seems like I just got hit by a variant of the more "usual" out-of-body experience reported by tired people who are still exerting themselves.

Grant Hutchison

That happens every time you are startled. When there is a loud bang, your body first flinches seemingly on its own. You can feel afterward that you are not the only one running the show.

That describes one's surprise at one's behavior. We tend to think of a person (including ourselves) as a body being driven by an internal operator, much like a bulldozer or construction crane has an operator in the cab. We do that, I think, because we are otherwise at a loss to explain how bodies can do the things they do.

When your actions puzzle you, it can seem like there is more than one operator in the cab. There is only one person, however, and no operator. (Or we could say that a person is a first-class operator and not something that is operated.) That one person can act in complex ways.

Am I correct that you are describing people in a condition where they are unable to speak or otherwise respond to those around them? If so, notice that it is behavior that is being referred to here and not a literal "inner I" that has vanished.

No, I felt disconnected from myself. I was not myself. I was another self, which felt no continuity with the self I was observing. The other self was responsible for the behaviour that I did not will.
It's evident that what I describe is not something you recognize as a possibility inside your own head. That's perfectly all right by me: it's a weird thing. But at this point (as I suggested earlier when talking about interviewing patients with regard to their experience of "self") you either have to take my word for my own subjective experience, or decide that I am mistaken or deluded.

Grant Hutchison

If you excised all that happened and all that you did in your life from consideration, are you saying that what would be left over is your raw identity? Is it something that could be bottled and studied in the lab? Injected into someone else?

Because the word "identity" is used as a noun, and nouns often refer to distinct things (like a house or a tree), I think you are looking for a distinct something that is the referent of the term "identity." You even used the term "perceive," as if your identity was something that stood before you in some sense.

I think you may be reifying identity.

No, I'm referring to prolonged periods of complex behaviour: speaking, carrying out a sequence of actions, moving from one place to another.

No, these are people who are describing episodes in their lives when they have become "depersonalized": have lost their sense of self entirely, or have separated into an "observed" and an "observing" self. During these episodes, their behaviour and conversation may appear normal to those around them, but they have an inner sense of behaving like an automaton, or of observing themselves carrying out behaviours that they are not personally engaged with. They are often frightened or distressed during such episodes, but can't externally evince these emotions, which adds to the sense of depersonalization.
By some counts, depersonalization is the third most common psychological symptom in the general population, after depression and anxiety. Like depression and anxiety, most episodes are transient, and don't herald any sort of psychiatric illness.

Grant Hutchison

I have had quite a few experiences that I interpret as concurrent processes handling different functions. For instance, I can start thinking about something on the freeway, and, without realizing it, drive under what I call "autopilot." That is, part of "me" will continue driving the car and alerts "me" when I'm getting close to the off-ramp. There have been times I've been quite surprised when I realized where I was. Another fairly common example (and I think most people experience this) is if I try to remember something - a name or face, for example - and I can't quite place it. It isn't unusual that I will seem to forget about it, but several hours later the answer will pop up, as if some process had continued searching memory and came back with an answer. Even in writing this, there seems to be a part that thinks of words, another process that types the words, and still another process that proofreads those words.

It does seem to me that many of the concepts we have about individuality are learned through the culture. While I certainly have a (fairly strong!) self identity, it does seem that many people insist on absolute ideas about what constitutes their identity that I find rather odd.

__________________
I say there is an invisible elf in my backyard. How do you prove that I am wrong?

Disclaimer: Avatar is not an official NASA image and does not imply any specific interplanetary or interstellar capability.

The Leif Ericson Cruiser

I'm sure the autopilot thing is in there, in the spectrum I'm trying to describe.
The "passenger in your own head" phenomenon involves actually observing that autopilot in action, rather than realizing after the event.
Hearing yourself give a surprisingly good (or bad) answer during a viva examination is one example that many of my colleagues seem to recognize; a number also identify with the sense of watching themselves manage a medical emergency, and wondering where all that good stuff is coming from.
On a more bizarre note, Susan Blackmore describes the regular experience of going into a restaurant, opening a menu, and then mentally "sitting back" with a degree of interest to hear what she's going to order when the waiter comes over.

Grant Hutchison

Sorry. I got a little confused over who is who in you! Which self is speaking to us today? Is it the one I labeled [1] or [2]? Why would self [1] think that self [2] was its former self if not by the change in your body's behavior?

Also, isn't it possible that you are just drawing linguistic pictures for us as a means to get a grip on a complex change in your life, in this case the picture of two "selves" fighting for control of Grant Hutchison?

Far from true, my good man! We are all sometimes not ourselves at times because of stress or other reasons. Your body will protect itself. If your life emotionally exhausts you, for example, you may find yourself in a condition where you are unable to get out of bed and face the world.

Actually, Grant, I have been keying on the fact that when asked for an example of a disrupted self, you responded with a description of your behavior, in this case, your walking and not being able to stop. I wanted to point out the role that action plays in the notion of "self." If you didn't include your behavior, I don't think there would have been a case of disrupted self left over.

As I say, now's the time you get to choose whether you believe my report of an internal state, or not. From the pop-psych and the use of the phrase "my good man", I think I can guess which option you're going for.

Grant Hutchison

Notice, though, that the way you describe it, the "observer" never suffers from disorder. It is always functionally competent to observe the part suffering the disorder. People tend to describe the action of drugs in a similar way. They divide the body into an observer and an observed. The drugs never affect the observer part. Instead the observed part generates hallucinations that the observer observes.

This homuncular language is a sure sign of folk psychology, that is, our handy way of explaining complex behavior through simple metaphors.

Then you should perhaps write to the compilers of ICD-10 and DSM-IV, both of which use the reported "observer" state as a criterion for diagnosis of depersonalization disorder. What people report is, after all, how we learn about their internal state.

Grant Hutchison

I think that your claim of a "report of an inner state" is the employment of metaphor to describe a change in your life. Because I speak English and am somewhat competent in its metaphors, I understand what your report means. Your report allows me to appreciate and sympathize with your situation. It doesn't mean I have to treat it as literally the case that there are two "selves" running around inside you. It is Grant Hutchison I sympathize with.

But you treat the patient, not some internal state.