Russian dolls as a metaphor

Those Russian nesting MATRYOSHKA Dolls – Matreshki / Матрёшки – always have been for me a metaphor of lifetime fragments: We start as a baby, then the Kindergarten, the school, high-school, job, founding a family etc.: and all those fragments with different structures of behavior are gathered in one identity …

To understand a little more difficultly is what I am in habit to note with pleasure about the intra psychic stratification within a person. The different ages generate different behavior patterns. I have spied out 5 striking structures by means of a long continuing self-analysis, for example, up to now:

Dissociative identity disorder

Image via Wikipedia

File:Dissociative identity disorder.jpg at wikipedia
painting by Mukti Alamsyah, participant for
“Free Your Knowledge 2010” Competition from
Bina Nusantara University Faculty of Psychology,
majoring in Psychology in Jakarta Indonesia.

  • 1) the childhood, baby (entitles: EMILY)
  • 2) the school child (entitles: Frits the Cat)
  • 3) the pubescent I (: KASPAR HAUSER)
  • 4) the JOB-ego (entitles: Genghis Khan)
  • 5) the retired elder statesman ego full of wisdom (entitles: Dr. Schwebmann).

It would depend with a healthy personality-structure to combine all learning layers with each other, acting integrated. By a psychiatric diagnoses personality disturbance (for example, “multiple personality disorder” or “dissociative identity disorder”) the different lifetime periods would lie side by side as fragmented areas without any bridge to combine each other. The decisive level of a person would act chaotically. The different behavior structures of the nesting lifetime periods would fight unpredictable and suddenly vs. each other: The inner child would try to act completely different than a young adult or a wise old man. Maybe a glimpse of those battles are in everyone …

About Didi van Frits

writer, photographer, guitarist, painter

14 responses to “Russian dolls as a metaphor

  1. And then come the grandkids….:)
    Ahh! The cycle of life or in this case the cycle of the Russian dolls.

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  2. Unique dolls.
    I remebered Japanese “kokeshi”

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kokeshi

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  3. thank you for the link 🙂

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  4. Pingback: Matryoshka: Russian Dolls Ballet | euzicasa

  5. I love the Russian dolls and we still have sets for our kids… As adults, we see the peeling off of layers; exposing the core, the soul within…
    Eliz

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  6. A much more in-depth look at matryoshkas than I offered. I’ve always been fascinated by them.

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  7. Pingback: Russian Nesting Dolls | Flickr Comments

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