A state that several minds co-exist in a person has been described by many predecessors in psychiatry and psychology as was well described by Ellenberger in terms of “polypsychicsm” (Ellenberger, 1970) (Ellenberger, HF (1970) The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.). Although this notion could be foreign to many of us living in the modern world, it has been held by people as back as the beginning of human history. A well-known psychopathologist Hiroshi Yasunaga once described the notion “original projection” (Yasunaga, 1989) and noted that human child has a basic tendency to project his mind to anything surrounding him, living in a sort of animistic world. With this notion, he answered to a basic philosophical as well as psychological question of “why do we understand other’s mind” by saying that human mind starts originally form there, assuming minds in everything, and move toward not doing it.
I consider that our tendency to assume someone else’s soul can be a similar process. For example, a young man who is assigned to be a pilot of a suicide bomber in the war time, promises to her mother, that he would be back in a form of a firebug after he completes his mission and dies. Several days later, after his departure, the mother sees a firebug wondering under the eave of her household and immediately gets convinced that it is him. (Hiroi, 2001). This story strikes our heart as a moving and also a very natural experience that anyone in a similar circumstance can identify with. Assuming someone else’s mind in a person, is like considering that there is another mind on top of his original mind, and already takes for granted the existence of multiple personality. The firebug haunted by the young man’s mind can also have the mind of the bug itself. This moving story cannot exist unless we are free from our notion that there is only one seat of mind in a person.
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