I analyzed six purposively selected cinematic texts that depicted protagonists experiencing alter personalities, and what is commonly known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) or Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) and which I have labeled alterity for this project. I employed a rhizoanalysis to examine messages in these films regarding alterity. I explored the disabling notions regarding the experience of alters that were present in these films, as well as both how and why the characters learned to experience alters. The unitary, cohesive and modernist Self is central to much Western thinking and to theoretical discourse in adult education, including research on authenticity in teaching and transformative learning, and yet protagonists in these movies presented polyvalent selves functioning in an assemblage rather than any such unitary or cohesive Self. I performed a public policy analysis and made recommendations congruent with adult educations tradition of advocacy and protecting benign human difference. I confront the oppressive role of the Self in psychiatric and adult education discourse and outline the possibility for the emergence of a culture of alterity and needs for future research.