PERSONAL IDENTITY, MULTIPLE PERSONALITY-DISORDER, AND MORAL PERSONHOOD

Marya Schechtman argues that psychological continuity accounts of pers onal identity, as represented by Derek Parfit's account, fail to escap e the circularity objection. She claims that Parfit's deployment of qu asi-memory (and other quasi-psychological) states to escape circularit y implicitly commit us to an implausible view of human psychology. Sch echtman suggests that what is lacking here is a coherence condition, a nd that this is something essential in any account of personal identit y. In response to this I argue first that circularity may be escaped u sing quasi-psychological states even with the addition of the coherenc e condition. Second, I argue that there is something right about the c oherence condition, and a major task of this paper is to identify its proper theoretical role. I do so by reflection on integration therapie s for people with multiple personality disorder (MPD). The familiar di stinction between the moral and the metaphysical concept of the person is developed alongside such reflection. Connecting these two issues I argue that coherence acts as a normative constraint on accounts of pe rsonal identity, but that the normative dimension of personhood is not essential to our notion of a person tout court.