2. Additional  Village Characters not found in Voice Dialogue

3. Discredited, Exiled or disowned (D types) 

Here I make a distinction that differs from Voice Dialogue. But it is one that I feel is essential to clarify what is happening in the inner village.

or Biblical disowning - the "real" disowned
The observation that a stronger self  will expel or remove other selves because they appear to be "troublemakers" is all too true.  The term "disowning" especially in the Biblical sense is a remarkably accurate description for this process (though not an easy one to visualise). Think of it this way. The "disowned" character was once an active member of the village. For example in a James  it was his sensitivity and his ability to tap into his emotions,  his "feeling" self. To James's primary "macho" self this feeling character was seen as a constant source of shame, guilt and loss of status amongst James's friends. The "macho" identified James's feeler self as a major cause of  as trouble. And so the decision was made. It had to be expelled.

After that, James stopped experiencing emotions and became a very tough character. 

His feelings character was not only turned out into the desert. In addition what it used to do is never even discussed in his inner village. Its original existence is denied. Any suggestion that the feelings might be able to return is vigorously denied and opposed.  And yet James's feeling character still exists. Somewhere out there in the deep dark forest the character survives, and waits for its opportunity to come back ..... 
As Hal and Sidra Stone have shown in case after case, the  effect of this is subtle but can  have a strong effect on your life. James marries a woman who has disowned her strong warrior woman character and is constantly experiencing out of control emotional outbursts. This is not a co-incidence! It is his exiled feelings using his wife to get back into James's life. 
Whatever characters you  have disowned can have an extremely powerful effect on your life as explained in my separate Voice Dialogue pages - Effects of Disowning and   Identifying Disowned Selves within you)

So for that kind of disowned and discredited character the term is absolutely accurate., Voice Dialogue teachers, however  tend to use the term more widely, describing any opposite self as "disowned" even when it is just an energetic opposite of a primary Active one. 
But, though secondary, some of these characters are clearly still active in the person's life or inner village. They talk to us. Some fix problems, some cause problems. They often do important specialist jobs in the village. They are often observed as parts of common repetitive patterns, good and not so good.  So they can't possibly be the same as the exiled, discredited or true disowned. 

This is why I like to identify and talk about several other kinds of selves that are "opposite" in the energetic sense but still quite active in their own way, for example:

• Backup (B) 
• Private (P) and
• Complex (C)  

For me the term "disowned"  (D) only applies to characters who are clearly outside the village and totally or almost always inaccessible. That is, unless you set up an active process for returning them to the village. And before you do that, you need to get the agreement of the Active villager who expelled them in the first place. (This is a more complex process but I will describe it in a later page (link to come -new pages to be written on this)

Feedback - please e-mail  me John Bligh Nutting -   at   nutting@growingaware.com

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