#ask eremita

Raiden fits right in the example of repeated childhood trauma, the orphan child soldier born in a war torn country whose only achievement is a high kill count at a young age. That combined with whatever Solidus indoctrinated him is enough to break anyone I fear.

This kind of dissociation happenes when a person cannot take the events happening to them without going insane, so the personality splits forming alters. Yes both Raiden and Jack are alters, Raiden is the host aka main front facing, but Jack is still him, just with a layer of separation. It's a protection mechanism for the psyche in order to keep functioning, a survival mechanism. Raiden fights for justice and Jack kills for pleasure. That's what Raiden tells himself.

Desperado members serve as a mirror for Raiden and Jack, which is why they + the events of the story end up triggering the switch Raiden was fighting to contain.

From Raiden's dialogue the initial relationship to his Jack alter is shame. He denies being a a murderer, he denies taking pleasure in killing, he claims so hard that he's fighting for justice that he made it his whole mantra. That "killing is justified if it serves to protect the weak", but it's a flawed philosophy as Sam and Monsoon point out. It's what Raiden claims to be "the good guy" and he latches himself to that ideology and to his close ones to stay sane. Take all that away and what is left is the realization Jack is not some bad memory of the past, but also himself, the part Raiden is ashamed to admit.

Raiden also shows symptoms of PTSD, tho I'm talking about his complicated and abusive relationship to Rose post MGS2 and I said I'll keep that separate. In short, not even Raiden is the clean, perfect alter, he has many issues as seem in MGS2 and MGS4. Going back to MGRR now.

Alters can stay dormant for long times, have completely separate memories and when triggered the host may have no memory of what they did. But this is the clean version that movies show, the instant switch with amnesia. Clean switches rarely happen, it's more a subtle transition that can be accompanied with visual signals of dissociation like the person falling silent for a moment. Triggers can be anything from a loud noise to a smell, high stress or even safety.

Now why I'm saying fits OSDD better than DID? Because it seems he is aware of Jack and what he does in the moment, being able to pick up from what Jack left. That means the memories/emotions aren't fully compartmentalized, the amnesia part of DID is missing.

Why I praised the game and also criticized it? The game did well showing the gradual transition. We don't see Jack in the Monsoon scene for the first time, we see him in the Mexico scene where George tells Raiden to attack and his personality changes: different voice, different mannerisms. That was Jack and we didn't even realize fully. He switched because seeing the children being harvested, turned into weapons and gassed brought back trauma and the anger accompanied, they brought back Jack. In the car scene Raiden ruminates on what he did, on what he said, so he's aware of what happened, but cannot explain why he did it. He was angry, that's why he's going to Denver to fight World Marshall, but he can't explain to himself why he sliced George in half along with the Doctor, even if the boy survived. All without any hesitation.

Denver is the breaking point for Raiden, a whole level where he's forced to kill cops, not mercenaries in a war zone. He's the terrorist, the monster and as Sam points out, Raiden can justify himself as fighting for justice all he wants, he knows in the back of his mind that he's a killer and he enjoys murder. Hearing the thoughts of the people he kills gets Raiden near the breaking point, we see him be unable to fight and barely walk. And while we get annoyed at him acting like he's crippled, we tend to forget Raiden is a cyborg, he has to effectively pilot his body and his human brain is having a hard time not going insane. He's fighting the switch to Jack so hard he can barely function. Monsoon is the nail in the coffin for that switch.

Raiden can't identity himself with that part, with the Reaper, so Jack starts to bleed out in his speech, in his behavior, all until he takes over. Monsoon's philosophy of nihilism gets Raiden over the breaking point, if "justice" isn't a philosophy, then killing the guys who turn innocents into weapons like Raiden is the new philosophy and Jack can 100% get behind that.

Monsoon thinks Raiden lost his mind, but he is still aware of what's happening, he just couldn't take the emotional charge, he gave control to Jack, the alter who can take that title of monster. And here's where it ties to the game mechanic. Raiden GIVES CONTROL to Jack, Jack doesn't take over in a dissociative/amnesia episode. That's why I say it resembles OSDD more.

The Monsoon scene also serves as the start of a personality merge. Raiden or what's conscious of him in that moment accepts his Jack alter. Without proper psychological treatment it's likely the personalities won't fully merge, but from that point on Jack is present to some degree in game and the cutscene as we can hear his specific voice when Doctor asks if he should turn the pain inhibitors back on and it's Jack replying "No". And many more lines in the codec. It seems Raiden is keeping Jack around for survival, World Marshall, Sam, Pakistan and Armstrong are difficult moments for Raiden to survive on his own, Jack has the mainframe for that survival. The problem with Jack really is that he's cannot function outside of combat and his reasoning is incompatible with normal life, so Raiden keeps being the host and front facing alter.

What I dislike about the game is that the merge happens pretty clean and fast and from there onwards it becomes a power up trigger with a time limit that needs to be recharged. The gameification of the disorder breaks it for me. Idk how they could have done it better, but treating the Jack alter as a game element doesn't sit right for me personally.

Back to your question about their relationship, given Raiden and Jack share some memories and Raiden can hear Jack's voice in his head I say they do communicate internally to some level. It's not "hearing voices", but rather thoughts with voices and opinions that don't seem to (fully) belong to the person listening to them. So yeah they may communicate from time to time, tho Jack is likely dormant in normal situations, low stakes stuff.

Jack is definitely the dark side of Raiden, but I can't tell if he's a persecutor alter or not. He doesn't seem to want to harm Raiden as a maladaptive protection mechanism, although my argument can fall apart in the "pain inhibitors" scene. Generally he seems like a very aggressive protector role.

Raiden seems to be ashamed of that part of him in the beginning of the game, but later accepts it and starts the merging process. Raiden doesn't justify everything he does as "justice and helping the weak" anymore, but rather as Blade Wolf puts it "he fights to stop Desperado from creating other Jack the Reapers". That's a motive both alters agree on.