The Undesirables

The Undesirables is the name Arthur gives to personalities he has silenced and excluded from control of the consciousness. The label turns a question of internal governance into a hierarchy of usefulness and acceptability: Arthur decides who may take the spot, who must remain hidden, and whose actions justify permanent exclusion. The concealed personalities eventually reveal themselves at Athens Mental Health Center, and their memories prove indispensable to Billy Milligan’s understanding of his own life and to the book’s account of his integration.

Meaning and Membership

Arthur’s category is not simply a list of criminal personalities. It gathers together people he regards as possessing undesirable traits or as having functions that are no longer necessary. The designation determines their access to the spot, the shared consciousness through which a personality can act outwardly. To be silenced is therefore more than to be disapproved of: it means being denied a public presence and kept beyond the awareness of personalities who do not know the hidden group exists.

The personalities associated with this suppressed group differ sharply in temperament and ability. Philip is described as a small-time criminal with a strong Brooklyn accent, vulgar speech, and a record of minor crimes; Kevin is a planner who devised the Gray Drug Store robbery. Walter, who imagines himself a big-game hunter, has an unusually strong sense of direction and is used as a spotter. April is consumed by plans for revenge against Billy’s stepfather, while Samuel is religiously observant and the only personality who believes in God. Mark performs monotonous work without initiative and may stare at a wall when no task is assigned. Timothy withdrew into an inner world after a frightening encounter in a florist shop. These distinct profiles make the label’s broadness apparent: criminality, revenge, religious belief, passivity, and withdrawal are not the same quality, even when they are gathered under Arthur’s rule of suppression.

The term also has a history beyond the original hidden group. Arthur later classifies Adalana as undesirable after she takes the spot and time, and he bars her from doing so again. In prison, Arthur and Ragen likewise decide that Bobby’s continued fasting is weakening his body and declare him undesirable. These episodes show the category functioning as a continuing disciplinary power, not merely the name of a fixed roster.

Secrecy and the Breach of Control

The concealed status of the group is enforced by silence. The other personalities have been told not to mention the Undesirables, and the hidden members are not to be revealed until sufficient trust exists. That secrecy explains why Billy can remember the names Philip and Kevin without understanding what they mean. When asked about them, he cannot recall their connection, but the word undesirables keeps returning to his mind, attached to Arthur and to something he cannot yet identify.

The first disclosure to Dr. David Caul comes amid a weakening of Arthur’s domination. Ragen explains that the hidden personalities had been silenced because their functions were considered unnecessary, but that they have now rebelled and chosen to reveal themselves. Kevin has written a list. Ragen regards the disclosure as necessary, while also acknowledging that revealing the group before trust is secure has cost them a defense mechanism. His explanation makes secrecy both a form of protection and a means of control: it limits exposure, but it also prevents the known personalities from understanding the whole system they inhabit.

The revelation is not presented as a simple liberation. Ragen is sworn to secrecy and recognizes that disclosure brings risk; at the same time, he refuses to lie to Caul. His account anticipates a future in which the personalities will be solidified together, with one dominant consciousness and no more amnesia. The hidden group’s appearance thus marks a crisis in Arthur’s system and a step toward a different kind of order.

Arthur’s Rules and the Cost of Exclusion

Arthur’s authority over the spot is expressed through explicit judgments. When he identifies Philip and Kevin as antisocial criminal types, he says they are banished from the spot. Yet the rules permit distinctions: Tommy can still take control despite being belligerent, because his resistance may protect younger, more obedient personalities from strangers. Arthur’s system is therefore not a simple test of good character. It weighs conduct against perceived function, retaining a personality when Arthur considers that personality useful and excluding one when he decides the risks or violations outweigh the benefit.

The rules also make banishment a recurring consequence. After Samuel sells another personality’s artwork, Arthur orders the painting destroyed and declares Samuel undesirable. Samuel argues that his belief in God should count in his favor, but Arthur does not reverse the decision. The episode exposes the reach of Arthur’s governance: even a distinctive conviction does not guarantee protection from a sanction imposed for violating the group’s property rules.

Other exclusions arise from the difficulty of maintaining control during mix-up times, when personalities may take time without the others’ knowledge. Arthur explains that Philip and Kevin were formed by separating some of the destructive force associated with Ragen’s hate, allowing strength and aggression to remain while attempting to control violence. He nevertheless considers the two dangerous because, with weapons, they would use fear to get what they wanted and commit crimes against property. After Zanesville, he declares them undesirable for committing what he sees as unnecessary crimes. He worries that access to old criminal associates in Columbus or Lancaster could lead them to violate parole conditions. His account presents the label as an attempt to contain danger, but also reveals that suppression has not prevented the hidden personalities from acting or taking time.

The group’s existence also unsettles the language Arthur uses to describe it. He calls its members defective or unnecessary, yet the concealed personalities retain memories, intentions, skills, and histories. Their absence from the spot does not erase their presence. The designation organizes who is permitted to act; it cannot make those excluded cease to exist.

Disclosure, Integration, and Narrative Significance

When fusion occurs, the newly integrated consciousness understands why earlier fusion had been incomplete: the other personalities had not been revealed. He recovers their actions, thoughts, and memories, including the failures, crimes, absurdities, and tragedies Arthur had tried to control and conceal. As he remembers these events and tells the writer about them, the other personalities also come to know their shared history. The end of amnesia changes the group’s relation to its own past; once the hidden material is known, the personalities cannot remain as they were.

The Undesirables therefore matter not only as an internal category but as a narrative structure. Their suppression creates gaps in Billy’s knowledge and delays the full account of his life. Their disclosure brings concealed crimes and experiences into view, while their eventual memories make a fuller fusion possible. Arthur’s effort to preserve order by deciding which personalities count instead produces an incomplete history. The hidden group’s return makes that incompleteness visible, and integration begins when the lives Arthur had kept in the shadows become part of what Billy can know.