The most interesting information that you can learn about is the subjectivity of another human being. If somebody can do something, we want to model that behavior and our models are of subjective experience. "What does she do inside her head that I can learn to do?" I can't instantly have her years of experience and the fine tuning which that produces, but I can very rapidly get some great information about the structure of what she does.

When I first started modeling, it seemed logical to find out what psychology had already learned about how people think, But when I looked into psychology, I discovered that the field consisted primarily of a huge number of descriptions about how people were broken. There were a few vague descriptions of what it meant to be a "whole person," or "actualized," or "integrated," but mostly there were descriptions about the various ways in which people were broken.

The current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual HI used by psychiatrists and psychologists has over 450 pages of descriptions of how people can be broken, but not a single page describing health. Schizophrenia is a very prestigious way to be broken; catatonia is a very quiet way. Although hysterical paralysis was very popular during World War I, it's out of style now; you only find it occasionally in very poorly–educated immigrants who are out of touch with the times. You're lucky if you can find one now. I've only seen five in the past seven years, and two of them I made myself, using hypnosis. "Borderline" is a very popular way to be broken right now. That means you're not quite nuts, but not quite normal, either — as if anyone isn't! Back in the fifties, after The Three Faces of Eve, multiple personalities always had three. But since Sybil, who had seventeen personalities, we're seeing more multiples, and they all have more than three.