March 29, 2009

There are several theories of the human psyche that posit the existances of an other with the self.
Sigmund Freud says that we have a superego that is an internalisation of out father.
Jaques Lacan says that we have an Other (capital "O") that is, somehow, language perhaps but evolves out of our (m)other. Mother? I find Lacan prety opaque.
Mikhail Bakhtin writes about a super-addressee, a someone that is always addressed as even we communicate to others.
Jamese Mead (by far the most common sensical of this bunch, but still not easy to grasp) says that we have, or I guess simulate, a general perspective on ourselves.
Christians believe that there is a God that is omnipresent even to our own minds I presume.

How about in fiction? In Star Trek there is a sort of pizza thing that attaches itself to people. I think that it attached itself to Dr. Spock. Dr. Spock was able to free himself of the paracitic, controlling, cranial pizza by flying towards a sun. In some episodes of Dr. Who there were some spiders that attatched themselves to the backs of humans that they then controled. Another "Dr. Who" book which starts at a point in time when the daleks are in control the worl. The daleks add a sort of hat or collar to humans by which they can control them. The "Dr. Who" book starts by recounting how a particular human kills himself in order that he is no longer a slave to the daleks. In the Manga Paracyte (Kizeichuu), an alien rubber monster invades a young man's hand.

In thus spake zarathustra, Nietzche speaks of a dwarf sitting on his shoulder. Numerous pirates have a parrot on their shoulder, for some reason.