mix-up times

The phrase “mix-up times” describes periods when the inner personalities’ control of consciousness becomes confused and actions cannot reliably be attributed to the person who believes he is present. Its importance is practical as well as psychological: lost control disrupts work, money management, and the effort to live within parole conditions. Across these episodes, the phrase gathers a series of distinct failures into a recurring problem of time, responsibility, and governance.

Meaning and Internal Control

Arthur uses the term while explaining how control of the spot of consciousness can fail. He tells Ragen that even when Ragen was dominant in prison, mix-ups occurred; Ragen might not recognize them until afterward. Other personalities, including Philip and Kevin, had taken time without Ragen’s awareness. The implication is not simply that one personality deliberately hands control to another. A person can experience an interval as continuous and later discover that someone else acted during it.

Arthur also places this confusion within his account of the group’s internal organization. He says that Philip and Kevin arose when the mind tried to retain Ragen’s strength while making his anger more selective and manageable. He considers them dangerous because they might use weapons to frighten people and commit property crimes, and says he had declared them undesirable after their conduct in Zanesville. Yet, in Arthur’s account, declaring personalities undesirable does not prevent them from taking time during a mix-up. The term therefore marks a gap between rules and their enforcement: Arthur can describe who should control the spot, but the system does not always obey that arrangement.

Ragen challenges Arthur’s management rather than accepting confusion as inevitable. He argues that the mix-ups would not happen if Arthur controlled the spot properly, and contrasts the present situation with prison. Arthur counters that the problem existed there too, even during Ragen’s periods of dominance. Their disagreement makes the phrase carry competing explanations: for Ragen, it signals a failure of supervision; for Arthur, it names a recurring vulnerability that cannot be reduced to one recent lapse.

Work and Social Consequences

The phrase becomes visible in the ordinary demands of Allen’s job at Channingway Apartments. Allen collects a work order, drives to the apartment, and waits for Tommy, who is supposed to perform the repair. Increasingly, Tommy does not arrive, and Allen cannot reach him. Allen knows he cannot manage plumbing or heating repairs himself and is afraid to touch electrical equipment. When he leaves, he sometimes marks the work completed or records that the door was dead-locked, although the repair remains undone.

The consequences accumulate through tenants’ repeated complaints. After one apartment’s repair had prompted four callbacks, Sharon Roth drove there with Billy Milligan to find out what was wrong. The episode turns a private confusion of control into a public failure of employment: someone else must confront the unfinished work, while Allen cannot supply the skill Tommy’s absence has made necessary. The book presents no simple, dependable way for coworkers to distinguish a missed handoff from an ordinary failure to do the job.

Arthur’s response is to connect employment with a broader attempt at social stability. He urges the group to make new friends, avoid old criminal contacts in Columbus and Lancaster, and fit into society; he regards the work at Channingway as an opportunity. He also proposes fixing up the flat. In September, furniture is purchased for $1,562.21, with the first payment due the following month. These plans depend on continuity—showing up, keeping commitments, and managing expenses—that mix-up times repeatedly put at risk.

Money, Lost Time, and Recurrence

The disorder becomes especially concrete when Ragen wakes on a Tuesday evening believing he has slept only a few hours and discovers that the money he had put under his pillow is gone. He still has not paid the bills or bought anything for himself. Asking inside, he reaches Allen and Tommy: Allen says he saw the money and spent it without knowing he was not supposed to; Tommy says he used some to buy art supplies the group needed. The two explanations show that money can be used for different purposes during intervals Ragen does not control, while its absence leaves his immediate obligations unmet.

Ragen cannot find Arthur, whom he understands to be away studying rather than controlling the spot, and says he has to earn money to pay bills. He decides to rob again and insists that no one touch the money. In the early hours of Wednesday, October 26, he crosses Columbus for the third time, heading toward Ohio State University to find someone to rob. At about seven-thirty he pauses at an intersection beside a police cruiser and considers approaching the officers for money; when the light changes, the cruiser drives away. The episode binds the mix-up to renewed criminal danger: a domestic shortage becomes the occasion for an armed attempt to obtain cash.

Disputes and Attempts at Order

Later, Ragen realizes that money from a second robbery has also disappeared, although it was not used to pay bills. Feeling deceived, he rages around the apartment and demands to know who has been taking his time. Arthur questions Tommy, Kevin, and Philip, and all three deny doing so. Their accounts offer fragments rather than a resolution: Philip describes finding himself in a car with a blond girl and leaving once he understood what was happening; Tommy says he bought the girl a hamburger and had already had the money in his pocket. The exchange does not establish who took Ragen’s time or explain the missing money.

Arthur responds by ordering everyone to stay home for several days while they try to discover what is happening. He makes an exception for Tommy’s promised trip to Lancaster with Kathy to choose an anniversary present for Dorothy and Del, but limits the money Tommy should carry and instructs him to return promptly. They buy a chenille bedspread. This small, supervised errand contrasts with the larger uncertainty: Arthur can restrict a planned outing and set terms, but the prior intervals remain disputed. “Mix-up times” thus names not only uncontrolled switching but the difficulty of reconstructing events afterward, when every explanation begins from an incomplete share of the time in question.