zema@uakron.edu wrote:

I have little experience in Pyschology so I can't comment on that aspect
of it, however if you look at the context of the story it seems to me
you come to the conclusion that each of Ranma's separate personalities
are different people.  I came to this conclusion merely using the fact
that that each of them, most significantly Master, had a variety of
abilities which none of the others did, and Master had these abilities
with no training whatsoever.  Perhaps this isn't as strong an argument
for each of the personalities being a separate person as I think but I
believe it does have some weight.

The reason Master has these abilities with no training whatsoever is
that Anand Rao used the the TSR series "Tribe of One" as the template
for "Stained Glass Mind".

The trick is that in "Tribe of One", the other personalities _really
were_ other people.  By magic, the main character had absorbed the souls
of his dead tribe and carried them around in his his throughout the
novel.  It was never really any version of MPD to begin with.

However, in ASTG Anand changed it so it wasn't magic but an actual
psychological disorder.  You never would have heard a word of complaint
from me if at some point we had found out that what actually happened
was that Ranma was tapping into the souls of people who had died at
Jusenkyo or something along those lines.

-- 
Matthew Campbell
E-mail: mgcampb@clemson.edu

"Margaret's explanation, which I liked better, was that you 
had to learn a culture until you knew whether the person on 
the other side of the table was following a cultural norm 
different from yours, or just an asshole."

- EARTH MADE OF GLASS by John Barnes