and that personality has consensual sex

Does it? I mean: Would the clients be paying for an imprint that would refuse them? The Dollhouse seems to be able to imprint the physical and emotional - why not make sure the Actives say yes to the clients? Why would we assume the imprinted Actives suddenly have free will in this particular area?

(Note: I have not watched the second episode, so everything I know about it I learned from this board.)

I guess that was a poor word choice on my part. It's consensual in that the personality desires it, or is at least not opposed to it, but you're right, it's not really "consensual" in a broader sort of way.

As to the multiple personality thing: There is controversy about whether Dissociative identity disorder is even real. If it is real there is controversy over whether there are actual multiple personalities or merely the delusion of multiple personalities. And if it does happen there is a question as to whether it happens other than as a side effect of therapy.

So there is no real reason to think the imprinted personality is a separate person, able to give consent for activity Caroline would not consent to. I'm not sure if Alpha is simply a Ninja that did not get erased, or if (as is hinted) Alpha is the merging of every set of memories and skills Alpha ever held. The latter seems to me to support the "sophisticated roofies" over separate personality who gives consent.

I will add that if these identities really are separate identities then maybe it complicates the rape question. (I'm not certain, but maybe.) But then the erasures are murder. So creating new people to serve clients, and then killing them after.

Quite a few people on LJ (which is the only place I've read) came to that conclusion right away.

I just asked because it seems like a show where rape is common and commonplace would not be something I would think a network would want to produce. Maybe I need to up my cynicism.

At any rate here is the "Skeptics Dictonary" take on multiple personalities.

[link]

It seems that the idea that these are actually separate identities rather than aspects of the same person is controversial.

So creating new people to serve clients, and then killing them after.

This is the way I saw it in the first episode. It feels a little less like that in the second episode.

The closest naturally occurring phenomenon to Dollhouse probably is not DID, but something called Psychogenic Fugue (or Dissociative Fugue), where people temporarily develop a new identity and with a new lifestyle. They usually recover the old identity completely over time.

On TV the minister from Pine Valley develops a fugue state and is soon running a successful strip club in Center City. In real life, the “new” identity tends to be confused and marginally adjusted at best, triggering efforts to help the person recover the old identity. But there may be a few legitimate cases where someone changed skills and personality and was viewed as a success in their new identity.

why not make sure the Actives say yes to the clients?

You mean make them unable to say no to the clients? It's possible. I'd been assuming they just tailored the personality in such a way that the personality would really want to have sex with them, but a) that's a fine line, and b) we don't really have enough data to know which.

I just asked because it seems like a show where rape is common and commonplace would not be something I would think a network would want to produce. Maybe I need to up my cynicism.

FOX? I believe the suits at FOX believe that rape is something that only happens in a dark alley at night, when a stranger jumps a slutty woman who was clearly asking for it because of what she was wearing and anyway, what was she doing in such a bad part of town anyway if she didn't want to be raped? I don't think they consider such complicated things as, Can someone consent to sex ahead of ever meeting the intended sex partner, especially when their executive functioning has been erased? I don't think that *they* think what they're showing is a young white female with no agency being raped by different men week after week.

I also believe that far too many of the coveted male 18-30whatever demographic believe the same things.

And I'm not remotely kidding.

The closest naturally occurring phenomenon to Dollhouse probably is not DID, but something called Psychogenic Fugue (or Dissociative Fugue), where people temporarily develop a new identity and with a new lifestyle. They usually recover the old identity completely over time.

And now I'm flashing on the Agatha Christie episode of Doctor Who.