Reading about systems described by therapists during the dawn of awareness of multiples shows me that a lot of multiple systems in the past consisted primarily of "plain old human beings" who all identified as such, whereas today more and more systems contain therians/furries and other more abstract types of beings.
I am not wholly convinced I believe this is the case. (I'm not attacking you, just mentioning something I've been thinking about, lately.) For one, during the 'dawn of awareness' of multiplicity-- in Western society, anyway-- there was a HUGE crossover between Spiritualism and multiplicity. 'Multiple personality' was used by some to refer to spirit mediums who let channeled spirits share their bodies, which wasn't uncommon in old-time Spiritualist practise. (Allegedly-- I'm not saying I necessarily believe this was true or always true.) There was also the Doris Fischer case around the turn of the century.
Doris Fischer was a patient of Dr. Walter Prince (not Morton Prince, who worked with 'Miss Beauchamp') around the turn of the century. She initially presented with symptoms of anxiety and excessive lethargy (I think). At first it was very much along the lines of "Sybil"; further on in the course of her treatment he actually took her to a medium when her symptoms weren't going away.
Well, according to this medium, Doris was really possessed by 'entities.' (The idea behind 'entities' is that the world is inhabited by a variety of discarnate spirits-- some the spirits of deceased humans, some from other dimensions, who can appear as apparitions or possess the bodies of living people.) Doris was allegedly inhabited by a whole array of entities fighting for control of her body. The whole thing turned into somewhat of a sideshow, with Doris becoming totally dependent on both the medium and therapist; the medium seems to have been taking her and Dr. Prince for a ride, and she appears to have enjoyed the attention, and because of this, I have a lot of doubts as to whether she was really multiple at all.
Anyway, though, the point is more that 'entities' weren't considered to necessarily be human. I don't think the appearance of nonhumans in systems is a modern phenomenon strictly-- as far as therians and furries go, there have been quite a few cultures worldwide which held the belief that animal spirits can inhabit a human body. If anything, one could say that instead of a recent trend, it's actually a kind of atavism, returning to much older conceptions of many spirits inhabiting a body. (My personal opinion, actually, is that there were even in Doris Fischer's time self-aware multiples with nonhuman system members. The keyword is 'self-aware,' really-- then as now, therapists were seeing a highly skewed sampling of dysfunctional, noncommunicating systems.) For the record, while the majority of us that we know of are human, we're sympathetic to otherkin, therianthropy, and similar phenomena in general.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2004-10-14 11:15 pm (UTC)I am not wholly convinced I believe this is the case. (I'm not attacking you, just mentioning something I've been thinking about, lately.) For one, during the 'dawn of awareness' of multiplicity-- in Western society, anyway-- there was a HUGE crossover between Spiritualism and multiplicity. 'Multiple personality' was used by some to refer to spirit mediums who let channeled spirits share their bodies, which wasn't uncommon in old-time Spiritualist practise. (Allegedly-- I'm not saying I necessarily believe this was true or always true.) There was also the Doris Fischer case around the turn of the century.
Doris Fischer was a patient of Dr. Walter Prince (not Morton Prince, who worked with 'Miss Beauchamp') around the turn of the century. She initially presented with symptoms of anxiety and excessive lethargy (I think). At first it was very much along the lines of "Sybil"; further on in the course of her treatment he actually took her to a medium when her symptoms weren't going away.
Well, according to this medium, Doris was really possessed by 'entities.' (The idea behind 'entities' is that the world is inhabited by a variety of discarnate spirits-- some the spirits of deceased humans, some from other dimensions, who can appear as apparitions or possess the bodies of living people.) Doris was allegedly inhabited by a whole array of entities fighting for control of her body. The whole thing turned into somewhat of a sideshow, with Doris becoming totally dependent on both the medium and therapist; the medium seems to have been taking her and Dr. Prince for a ride, and she appears to have enjoyed the attention, and because of this, I have a lot of doubts as to whether she was really multiple at all.
Anyway, though, the point is more that 'entities' weren't considered to necessarily be human. I don't think the appearance of nonhumans in systems is a modern phenomenon strictly-- as far as therians and furries go, there have been quite a few cultures worldwide which held the belief that animal spirits can inhabit a human body. If anything, one could say that instead of a recent trend, it's actually a kind of atavism, returning to much older conceptions of many spirits inhabiting a body. (My personal opinion, actually, is that there were even in Doris Fischer's time self-aware multiples with nonhuman system members. The keyword is 'self-aware,' really-- then as now, therapists were seeing a highly skewed sampling of dysfunctional, noncommunicating systems.) For the record, while the majority of us that we know of are human, we're sympathetic to otherkin, therianthropy, and similar phenomena in general.