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Lan Luo
Yale University, USA
Posters & Accepted Abstracts: Clin Psychol Cog Sci
This paper seeks to integrate perspectives from psychology, cognitive science, and behavioral economics to address how multiple selves theory relates to the science of pleasure. Drawing attention to one’s different selves can affect the experience of suffering, and more importantly, how and why someone may gain pleasure from pain. For instance, pain serves as a psychological anchor, emphasizing the awareness of one’s current self. This physical suffering may dissolve away the concerns of the future self, leaving the current self both intact and salient. However, under certain conditions, the current self can dematerialize in response to pain. This destruction of self creates an empty vessel of a human being, which can be filled with a new identity in extraordinary circumstances. Even without the complete destruction of self, reduced higher-level awareness could provide the current self with the possibility of seeking out entirely new abstract, conceptual representations. The author ends by proposing three precursors, which outline when such transformative experiences may occur.
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