(no subject)

[hexpiritus.livejournal.com]

Some questions, if I may:

1) I am confused as to the level of strong responses to my previous post containing the Hofstadter quote. Though I was expecting a lively discussion, there seemed to be a level of hostility or annoyance that I was not prepared for-- I may be mistaken, of course. In any case, was it the quote itself that aggravated people? Is quotes discouraged on this forum, or is only quotes directly pertaining to multiplicity alone allowed, and not quotes that may be indirectly related? Should I have stated my intentions concerning posting the quote in this community so as to have cleared up confusion before it began? Cata keeps claiming that we were being attacked somehow, but I find no firm, logical evidence of her assumption, and so would really like to get to the heart of the matter.

2) Though I have posted previously, albeit a while go, on the innerworkings of our system, it seems recent events and abilities within may have changed the appropriate identification of our processes-- at least for the purposes of such communities that require correct identification. We have always thought of ourselves as multiple/plural for two years, but the ability that's arisen where we integrate at will, and usually safely, to combine consciousness and skills, and then separate, may put us in the "median" category. I'd really like some feedback on the particular division with multiple and median.

3) My significant other, also a multiple, is stressed and alarmed that two of the entities within their system has walked out on them (let's call them the Elf-Star). A shaman-type woman claims that one of the entities that was once in the Elf-Star, which they just referred to as Phoenix, is now in her. Is that possible, that entities can walk out of one body and right into another?

Thanks for your patience.
-Stel of Hexpiritus

Comments

[shandra.livejournal.com]

I'm overly chatty today so I'll bite.

1) I didn't catch a hostile tone exactly but maybe a weary tone. I didn't get into the discussion much due to weariness with it.

My weariness on the topic comes from the fact that language is so limited that when singular people talk about divisions in personalities or composite personalities or whatever, I have in the past gotten excited, only to realize /again/ that they are simply not talking about the experience of /my/ daily life.

And in fact those things have sometimes been used to "prove" that I'm not /really/ different and to basically quit "acting so funny." I'm now at the smile-and-nod point with it.

I am a complex individual who has facets to her personality and tension between her id and ego, and all those things, but none of that describes the experience of going to bed in 1998 and getting up in 2000 with no real memory of the time in between. Or of realizing that only two out of the perhaps 20 people in my inner circle at the time ever noticed that I was gone, because of course - they knew *us* not me.

The arguments that I have with myself about whether to wear the red leather jacket or something more conservative are /not/ the same as having a fight with Magdalynn about what she wants to wear and finding that I've lost. What she wants to wear is something I /don't/ want to wear. It's not a conflict, to me: I just don't want to wear it. :)

Yes, it's good to know that I'm human and having different facets to me is part of the human experience. On the other hand, grape juice is not the same as wine no matter how much one marvels at the grapes being able to produce both.

So, that's why the weariness. :)

2) That's a hard problem due to language, again.

I would say why we consider ourselves strongly multiple is that most of the time people have separate goals and opinions and any attempt to work together requires some give and take, negotiations, and we can only rarely meld some skills (others are shared or generally acquired, like reading). For example I can't play the piano all that well, but Lynn can.

Having said that, if we all should happen to have a common goal under enough pressure - like during labour when we all pretty much threw our wills and energies towards getting the baby out - it is possible. I sort of see, now, how a median system might work. But ours fell apart pretty swiftly once that goal was no longer in front of us.

So, I dunno. That's how we draw the line - 80% of the time we don't agree, so we're not median. :)

3) In theory I don't see why not.

Shandra

[hexpiritus.livejournal.com]

1) You know what? I think I finally fuckin' got it! At least, I try to explain so to Stel. It's that whole "affinity" thing. Kinda just like the drama that exploded a week ago between my queer "colored" female friends and my queer "white" female friends. Though there was open hostility there, with the whole "white priviledge" stuff, basically the former created a political group in my city EXCLUSIVE for "Queer Women of Color", and the latter group made an uproar about discrimination. If the first group had just explained right off officially and formally, instead of making it a "who's the more racist" battle on Livejournal, a lot of madness would have been avoided. Such as "you will not be able to give input in certain meetings where we will be discussing Queer Women of Color issues because you haven't experienced specifically or identify with those issues"-- something like that. Then again, the other team didn't like being labeled as "privileged white folks" right off the bat by the QWoC, because many have known struggle and oppression their own ways. Similarly, I FUCKIN' HATE IT when singletons pigeonhole me, but I can see Stel get excited about ANYTHING that even remotely describes our experience as wonderful and bubbly and a cause for sharing and joy and stuff. We don't have a lot of multiplie-self-affirming-positive-acition-shite in our life except from our multiple-girlfriend-system. (Whaddaya call that, anyways? Say you're dating a female-bodied system but not just the females in 'em?) So is it really more just an issue that the only people who can TRULY describe multiple experiences and theory are, of course, multiples? Of that issue, I completely understand.

-Aster of Hexpiritus

[shandra.livejournal.com]

Yeah I think that's a really good parallel situation. As a white female I may have experienced a few discriminatory things, but it is /not/ the same as racism all my life. But because I *want* (with the best of intentions) to empathize and stuff I could conceivably try to say "oh that's like when this xxx thing happened to me." But it's really /not/ the same. But it is in the same family. But - yeah. :)

So yeah - I take the feminist view that the people best able to describe their experience are the people who've had it. Of course with multiplicity that's tricky - who in our system is going to speak for us? :)

[appadil.livejournal.com]

I'm coming at this from a slightly different perspective thanks to recent discussions I had about literary criticism... authorial intent vs. reader response... You know the Robert Frost poem, The Road Not Taken? According to the author, it actually isn't about anything more than what it seems on the surface, choosing between two roads in the woods. There's no intended statement about life, no deep philosophical insights, and yet people still keep finding them.

And they aren't wrong. Just because they weren't intended doesn't mean they aren't there. Reading and listening aren't about passively receiving a message, they're about the meeting between reader and author, listener and musician. Each performance, each reading is unique to the recipient. It's not about what they put into it, but about what you take away from it...

I've got a list of quotes from various places which are somehow spiritually important for me, little bits of insight that just struck a chord somehow. Some of them were probably intended that way, some of them weren't, but it doesn't matter because they have significance to me. My attitude towards Hexpiritus and that quote is similar-the quote to you is about what you know deep down it's about, even if someone else knows it differently. It may not have been written to be about the experience of multiplicity or anything, but if it works for someone, great. Meaning is where you find it.

Or something like that.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Though I was expecting a lively discussion, there seemed to be a level of hostility or annoyance that I was not prepared for-- I may be mistaken, of course. In any case, was it the quote itself that aggravated people?

Want me to be totally honest? I think it was the quote. A lot of people here have been told things by well-meaning friends and family, along the lines of "but everyone has multiple personalities," "I'm a different person at home and at work," "everyone is a different person in different situations." That's true in a way, and William James wrote about it a hundred years ago and concluded that it's hard to say anyone really has a 'true' personality. I know that you didn't mean, when you posted it, to imply that this was all multiplicity really was, but there were some people who took it that way; probably a lot of them were remembering things they'd been told in the past.

We have always thought of ourselves as multiple/plural for two years, but the ability that's arisen where we integrate at will, and usually safely, to combine consciousness and skills, and then separate, may put us in the "median" category. I'd really like some feedback on the particular division with multiple and median.

IMO, fuzzy at best. Billy Milligan's group was able to integrate for a short time, but when they got into a situation where a certain person's skills were needed, they all spontaneously differentiated back out again. Shirley Mason's (Sybil) integration only lasted a few years, according to those who knew her well. There have been times in our life when we had to mush several people together for the sake of presenting a consistent front to everyone around us. I think one of the problems with the median category is that a lot of people experience being "not quite multiple" or "sometimes multiple and sometimes not," and that can manifest in a lot of different ways. There seems to be a fairly broad area where calling oneself multiple or median just comes down to personal choice.

A shaman-type woman claims that one of the entities that was once in the Elf-Star, which they just referred to as Phoenix, is now in her. Is that possible, that entities can walk out of one body and right into another?

Well, in the days of Spiritualism it was certainly thought they could. Back then, a lot of people believed that multiples were people hosting outside spirits in their body, and a lot of mediums (or people who said they were mediums, anyway-- this is all hearsay, I certainly can't vouch that this was actually what was going on) had spirits who moved in and lived full-time with them. A lot of mediumship traditions hold that channeled entities can migrate from body to body.

Although... I'm not sure whether I'd trust this person, necessarily. I've seen at least one instance of someone claiming that a person from another's system had moved into theirs, for blatantly manipulative purposes. You describe her as 'a shaman-type woman'-- the problem is that a lot of people who claim to be shamans or to be practicing shamanic traditions really aren't; they may be sincerely misguided and think they're practicing real shamanism when they're not, or they may be outright frauds in it for the money.

[pthalo]

Once, I asked someone from my religious community (who doesn't know I'm part of a multiple system) what he thought of people who have more than one soul. And he said "you mean multiple personalities, don't you? This is a disorder. You see, everyone has multiple personalities from time to time. They see an issue and they can't decide what to do, part of them says "do it!" and the other part says "do something else!" and so they split for a time. But then they make the decision and are back to being one person again. It becomes a disorder when the person is split all the time and this is unhealthy."

So I didn't say anything to that and he still doesn't know we're plural. WE are out on a "need to know" basis and lots of people simply don't need to know.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

That's better than some of the religious writings I've seen where multiple personality is thought to be caused by "an excess of personality", by which they mean an excess of ego, (caused by Satan, natch) which attracts demons who become part of the.. blah blah blah.

[pthalo]

I was once told by a Christian nurse while in a residentail treatment center that I cut myself because I'm possessed by demons (Mark 5). I said no, I cut myself because I was abused. She said abuse weakens the spirit and that's how the demons got in.

That kind of turned me off to Christianity at the time.

I don't think there is any writings in my religion on multiples. I haven't found any. So I think this was just this person's opinion and not something official.

[inshadowhiding.livejournal.com]

* pictures a senaero *

*nurse driod * "... you cut yourself due to the presence of demons!"
* "victem" * "Yeap, and your one of them"

such a pity this would have you locked up more * sigh*

[echoesnspectres.livejournal.com]

I'm morbidly curious about who said that, and when. (Also is this the only nonsense they wrote or were they confused about other subjects as well? Some people spout so much [uh, blah-dee-blah, not-nice word] that it would be ridiculous to take their opinion on anything seriously. But I may be too optimistic there.)

- Teh Excessive Ego Demon aargghh I will eat your soul!

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

This was in an article that was up on line for a long time, about how the mental health system's belief in and perpetuation of the concept of multiple personality was a heresy. The idea was that by focusing on the abuse histories of people with multiple personalities, by sympathizing with them, helping them deal with abuse-related issues and integrating their personalities, doctors were encouraging these people to cultivate their already excessive egos. I can't find the article anymore, it was some Amen-Hallelujah thing.

Oh, and how about this:
MPD Is A Sin (http://www.nccg.org/deliverance/mpd/MPD03.html)

There's tons of... fertilizer out there.

[pengke.livejournal.com]

Ok, wait, if the 'sinful' multiple system was integrated, how could they make a group decision to unintegrate?

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Dealing with abuse issues cultivates the ego? I always thought that people who'd been abused generally had problems with self-image; or is it one of those 'suffering/pain is good for you' deals?

[echoesnspectres.livejournal.com]

Amen on the fertilizer. Looks like that website spouts a lot of reli-sh*t on other subjects as well. (Which I suppose is comforting in a way.)

[kasiya-system.livejournal.com]

the hell did I just read? o.O

ugh I feel ill... :/

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

This isn't it, but it's very close:

http://malignantselflove.tripod.com/faq82.html

[effrenata.livejournal.com]

This guy seems to link almost everything to narcissism, including autism.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

And then there's always this:
http://www.psychoheresy-aware.org/mpd.html

Kai tried to find that earlier, but couldn't remember what it was called.

[echoesnspectres.livejournal.com]

This is their lack of knowledge on multiplicity coming together with their moral judgment on having a chronically divided will, which is totally different from having a divided mind or several minds. Also, notice the "parts" talk again. And being ambivalent about something is splitting? I must be in so many parts right now, as I still haven't figured out how to deal with our Bookcase Categorization Disaster. :P

[pthalo]

Yeah, my reaction to that was a silent "you have no idea what you're talking about."

On median-ness, as other people have commented on the quote

[kiya]

It took me a long time to figure that using an interpretation of plurality to explain myselves was a good idea, despite having names for everyone for about ten years before that.

The thing is, we are strongly co-conscious, very fluid, and pool skillsets all the time; how prominent individuals are in the "mix" varies smoothly. It tends to be only under strong stress that we become very strongly distinct, without skillswapping and blended perspective. I think of myselves as plural/median/what have you because that gives me tools and perspective that address in-system issues; other people have found that it helps them understand me.

One might make an argument that I'm somewhere in the hazy area between 'singlet' and 'median'. If we're operating in this notion, you may be occupying the hazy area of overlap between 'multiple' and 'median'. If approaching matters that way gives you tools that help your system, go for it. If not, I don't know that it matters in the grand scheme of things.

Re: On median-ness, as other people have commented on the quote

[effrenata.livejournal.com]

This Party would fit in the single-to-median area too. We seem to be a little closer to single, insofar as stress or concentration on an external object causes us to slide together into one, whereas only when we have leisure do we spread out and become more distinct.

The metaphor we use is a paper fan with different designs drawn on its folds. We can fold the fan and fit all together, or we can open the fan and reveal its individual segments. The fan tends to close under stress, and to open up during relaxation.

I chose median as an identification because I've always had "imaginary" identities in my mind, and I prefer to spread my self-concept through a larger spectrum rather than confining it to one "main" identity.

[kangetsuhime.livejournal.com]

What hostility? People probably eye rolled a bit, but that's to be expected. Many many multiples don't fit that mould. It was the content of the quote that likely caused problems. though, dropping it with no explanation probably did not help. It's nice if you clarify what you intend to achieve.


They can walk out, just as spirits can walk in. But be wary of anybody who claims they have them. Most people are either lying or deluding themselves or whatever.