Q: Can a person have two completely opposite sides to their personalities (a kind of split personality), and not have the two personalities affect their performance? And then, would they be able to merge or join the two halves to create a better personality?
I am discovering my protagonist has two sides to him. (He may have always had them, but now that I am writing about him as a child his other side showing up.) Right now I'm referring to the two sides as Little Boy Mark and Leader Mark. Little Boy Mark is timid, shy, nervous, and unsure of himself. He is scared of loving people because so many people have left him, or failed him. Leader Mark is bold, fearless, confident, decisive; all the qualities that make a competent leader.
Mark is is able to separate them until he has a break through, or a break down, and is able to 'join' the two personalities. Mark continues to have the qualities of leadership but also now is also able to show love, compassion, humour and have fun. Is this feasible?
A:This depends on whether you're looking for a true multiple personality ( it doesn't sound like you are) or just some contradictory traits.
Writing characters as multiples feels cliched to me because writers tend to misuse the disorder. (Oh, look, it's a crazy MULTIPLE!) If you want to read more about what it's like to be multiple (because you think it might help you understand extreme "splits" better), take a look at Lisa Featherston's Being Multiple in a Singleton World.
Someone who's multiple is one person with a lot of pieces; what makes them different from a "singleton" is that there are psychological walls between their different parts. Singletons have the different parts but they're all connected; they don't have separate names and memories. (They may, however, have parts of themselves they think of as "the wild part" or "the good part" or "the writerly part" or whatever.) Trauma is what causes the walls in multiples, and it's not (NOT!) the same thing as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.
As for someone who just has contradictory traits...I've always loved Walt Whitman's quote, "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes."
Everyone has contradictory traits.
As long as the same trait isn't contradicting itself (so-and-so can't fall in love, but falls easily in love with someone new; so-and-so is afraid of his own shadow, but is a masked crusader at night [unless he's faking the fear]), it works. In Batman Begins, Bruce is terrified of bats, so he uses that as his symbol, because bats represent fear to him. By adopting the bat as his symbol, he's doing two things: empowering himself with an image he can use to frighten his enemies, and confronting his own fears.
I think you have a good grasp of the character's "splits," and everything sounds very feasible, both from a psychological standpoint and a writerly standpoint. I think you can feel good about where you're going!
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