Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes.)
—Walt Whitman
There’s a certain irony in the multiplicity of names for the many parts that make up a self.
Internal Family Systems clumps them into Exiles, Managers, and Firefighters. In Jill Bolte Taylor’s Whole Brain Living model, Four Characters gather in a Brain Huddle. Ian McGilchrist’s Master and Emissary seem to be the inverse of Jonathan Haidt’s Elephant and Rider.
This multiplicity of naming systems helps me hold them all loosely—as metaphors, not neurobiological facts. It also encourages me to choose my own names for the squabbling siblings within my skin.
For nearly all of my life, two dominant parts have done battle, like a litter of puppies who need to be warned, “If ye bite and devour one another, take heed that ye be not consumed one of another.” (Galatians 5:15, KJV).
But recently, they have softened into a more mature relationship—a mutually beneficial one. They have become the Butterfly (Fast Thought) and the Gardener (Slow Thought). One plans and tends, the other flits and pollinates. Both are satisfied.
Whatever we name our parts, and however many there are, this shift to equitable companionship creates more ease among components, more efficiency in the system. Instead of winners and losers trapped in unending war, there’s hope for win-win-win-win (with occasional skirmishes when we forget how good peace feels).
Not just within us, but between us as well.