Multiplicity: How Social Politics Form Fronts

[gharveyn.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... We wrote this article yesterday... hopefully we can successfully perform an LJ-Cut
:D

Multiplicity: How Social Politics Form Fronts

Multiples face a serious problem in society which may cause them to have frequent mental or emotional breakdowns. Social dynamics require consistency and conformity. Multiples often have trouble complying. Multiples may create new egos to respond to new social dynamics and these new egos may become rigid fronts that neglect the needs of their multiple systems under pressure from family, friends, lovers or bosses to present a known consistent persona.

If you examine diplomacy, it has rules. One rule is that the chosen diplomat has the power to speak for an entire nation and that they will consistently speak within the constraints of the society they represent, in the best interests of that group.

A front is the dominant ego of a multiple personality. The front can change. Some systems of multiple personalities have several different fronts each fitted to a particular context. Other systems have a single dominant personality that may remain a consistent front for relatively long periods of time.

Our social systems might prefer multiples to have only one front and to always be that persona and only that persona. Most people may grow up expecting or wanting other people to behave consistently, and most cultures expect most people to behave that way.

This is considered ‘normal’.

When there is a single spokesperson, such as a diplomat, whose role is to speak for a larger group of people consistently, with their best interests in mind, it makes it easier to negotiate with that group of people. Imagine meeting a diplomat who represents a different minority group of their nation each day. They agree to reduce their weapons of mass destruction in order to secure a peace treaty, because they are representing the pacifist group on Tuesday. Then Wednesday they represent the hawks and negotiate terms that can only lead to war.

In this manner, a multiple’s front may represent only a minority, and may represent a different minority in different contexts. If multiples behave inconsistently then no one can be sure what a multiple may really think or believe or how they may act. No one can trust them. Societies prefer people to have a single consistent front that will not change and possibly derail whatever plans are made with them.

This works in a social context, but can cause problems for multiples if they are not able to present a single consistent front that best serves all of their diverse needs or interests.

Multiples may challenge society to redefine the accepted concepts of personality or identity. It may be necessary for society to create new dynamic systems capable of adapting to the ways in which multiples perceive themselves and enable themselves to interact with other people.

Conventionally, societies create rules and require everyone else to live within the restrictions imposed by their rules, but multiples may be incapable of living within some of the unspoken rules of engagement that are taken for granted in most cultures. The typical response of our societies has been to punish those who fail to follow the rules.

Punishment can be informal or can be imposed by legal processes, but either way, the multiple suffers for their inability to conform to all of the expectations placed upon them.

One of the most common punishments a multiple faces is to be ostracized. People typically withdraw in relationships with other people whom they cannot understand or rely upon. So many multiples often face very limited social lives because the capacity of multiples to engage in consistent, reliable conduct may be too limited for most people to feel comfortable with.

Another common punishment is therapy. There is a dominant prevailing theory that if a person cannot behave consistently then they are mentally ill and their illness requires treatment. So multiples may be locked away from society ‘for their own good’ to remove them from a society that is too challenged by their presence and behavior to accept them within their culture.

In response to the pressure form society to behave consistently many multiples may attempt to present consistent fronts to avoid punishment.

Punishment can be economic. Employers may decide they cannot afford to have an employee that may possibly not be relied upon to consistently follow their business rules.

Punishment may be loneliness. Families, friends or lovers may not be able to adequately nurture or love someone whose needs cannot be consistently understood.

In personal relationships we create ideas about our partners which we use as models to predict each other’s needs and behavior so that we may respond to one another in mutually gratifying ways, whether in roles as family, friends or lovers. But with a multiple we often face frequent disappointment because what is acceptable or gratifying behavior on Tuesday may be inappropriate or painful behavior on Thursday. When someone confuses their partner too much their partner may need to defend themselves from confusion and they may do this by trying to coerce their confusing partner to behave more consistently. But this sort of pressure to conform to expectations is stressful for multiples and the result can cause even more harm.

The fronts required by multiples for a particular situation may not be adaptable enough to survive constantly changing as their situations change. The effort to create a single consistent front may be beyond the capacity of any multiple to maintain. So the pressures created by expectations placed upon multiples may inevitably lead to breakdowns in which the multiple must shed their current persona and attempt to build new personae that are better able to adapt to their various environments.

Multiples require relationships in which it is safe for their various inner-dwelling personalities to come forward and participate with people who will love them and care for them. By developing a culture that recognizes the unique needs of multiples and adapts to successfully embrace multiples, the needs of more multiples may be more adequately met. By creating such a culture we would be advancing the social skills and adaptability of everyone participating. This seems likely to promote a healthier society for everyone and not just multiples.

Okay, we followed the HTML method of cutting... we apologise if it didn't work...

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Comments

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

http://www.livejournal.com/support/faqbrowse.bml?faqid=75

Muchos Gracias

[gharveyn.livejournal.com]

We thought were following those directions when we tried to apply this LJ-Cut... We shall have to try it a different way next time...

Third time's the charm?

Re: Muchos Gracias

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Try again. You've almost got it. Be sure to include the [/lj-cut] end tag at the end of your post (naturally, substitute wedgies for those bracket things).

Thanks for disgreeing

[gharveyn.livejournal.com]

We were aware there would be some disagreement, we use our articles as exploratory devices, if we state something incorrectly or too strongly we like to learn about it.

You raise soem valid points.

We are new to the vocabulary and its uses and so it is a little rough. Our perceptions of what others experience as fronting are colored by our own experiences as we still haven't got a really good sample of other multiples' experiences to go with.

We hope to learn a lot more here, but we can see that things here may reflect a very different way of living and communicating than we are accustomed to, and that we are sure to make a lot of blunders along the way.

Fortunately we accept that as part of our learning and growing experience, so we aren't particularly afraid to make mistakes, its the eaiest way to learn sometimes, because folks can't see what we don't know if we hide our ignorance...

There was a companion article for that one that we will post in the next day or so... This is promising to be a very interesting place...

[20splinters.livejournal.com]

I have to agree with a lot of this. Between the bipolar and the multiples, even being evaluated psychologically is practically impossible! They want to know how a person behaves on a day to day basis, and between the mood fluctuations, the chaning sleep cycle, and the changes in interests and behaviors caused by switches in who's fronting, there literally is no consistency! Every single question can be answered, "It varies."

Also, yes, other people have difficulty dealing with different members, not necessarily even the members themselves, but just the knowledge that they are dealing with a different person. I've heard even recently, "You had this under control when you first moved in here! Why are you doing all this switching stuff now?" ::shrug:: It's just what we do, for one thing, and for another, Shel was getting suicidally depressed becauseshe was repressing the rest of us - we had to break through to help her! It truly isn't healthy for a multiple to hold back their other members! (Though we do restrict a few members who haven't agreed to work together with the rest of us, but that's different. We do still acknowledge their existence and they're allowed to interact on the inside, and if they ever agree to work for the good of all of us, we'll happily let them forward again!)

Joey

[gharveyn.livejournal.com]

Thanks Joey,
We were intrigued by Stray's dissenting opinions and appreciate we ahve a lot more to learn, but its good to hear from someone who finds something with which they agree as well. We realize the article was really a more personal viewpoint than it was represented as being, so its particularly nice to know someone else has had some experiences similar to our own.

We were hoping to have moved thorugh our crisis but we failed to get enough sleep (none at all last night) so we are feeling a bit rough right now.

It seems to us that when we are at some critical point like having to get a new place to live or a new job or beginning a new relationship that we are able to shore things up for the short haul and seem a lot more internally consistent to other folks, but once the urgent need has passed that we may revert to less 'stable' presentations, sometimes with a vengance.

It is a great relief to have found multiples to share these issues with.

We were hoping to avoid having any 'permanent' front but we may have trouble with that, it just seems that whoever steps in to fill that role gets stuck with the job and eventually becomes seriously depressed and has a breakdown. We were hoping to end run the depression and breakdown and escape dealing with it again, as it has been getting pretty bad again recently.

Any pointers about you help each other in your system would be appreciated.

:)

[20splinters.livejournal.com]

I've got sleep difficulties too and frequently end up up all night, though lately, I'm sleeping too much, but that could be a side-effect of the new antidepressant. I typically don't need much sleep, but some of the others in here don't feel rested if they get less than 9 hours a night!

And I have to agree with the deal of having a new "front person" whenevr starting a new situation in life! We tend to do that a lot, and as you said, sooner or later, the "front" breaks down and gets depressed. It seems to work best for us if we have 2-3, sometimes more, regular front people who switch back and forth in different situations. A few years back, it was mainly me, Gabby, and Rhiannon, possibly some one else, with Gabby handling social interaction online, me handling social interaction with younger friends, Rhiannon taking care of the kid, and Rhiannon and Gabby co-fronting for interaction with older friends. There may have been some one else fronting regularly then too, because we haven't quite figured out who was taking the biochemistry classes. (I know some of the material, but I suck at lab stuff, and don't remember anywhere near all of the stuff!)

We usually write far more about our internal system workings in the journal, but haven't been doing much lately, since I seem to be stuck at the front and haven't heard much from anyone else lately. :( However, feel free to friend it if you want. I'm going through a bit of my own little break down after being pretty much sole front for almost 2 months, so I'm sure tings are about to change! (If they don't change naturally, I may "hard kick" some one forward! ;) Just for a day or two, so I can take a much-needed break!)

Joey

[padawanagain.livejournal.com]

I think that maybe that your using a term [front] that people can use very differently.

To us, front means two things. One - the act of being in the body. Two - the term used for ANY person who running the body. A place or a person.

For some, therapy is not punishment. Some people actually NEED to be there.

I think it's true the old saying about not loving if you don't love yourself. If yous as a group don't understand how you work then no one else is either. You can't just expect people to know how to nurture you if you have no idea how.

The idea of creating people to get a perfect front is beyond me. I don't understand how people can keep on doing something like that if it's not working. People are not pawns and shouldn't be treated as such. What about more that one person at front? What about anything else? Perhaps the system needs fundamental changes if it's not working.

In my opinion, healthy multiplicity is changing when things need changing.

[catskillmarina.livejournal.com]

Actually the one who acts as the spokesperson here is not dominant and she does not talk
in all circumstances. The way we explain it is that if we were a borg collective,
constance would be locutis. She is very well spoken and formal, but a lot of time, i, miri
front. Toni deals with some other people better than constance so that one speaks to those
people so on and so forth.

Our personal experience has not been so bleak as you paint. We simply tell friends that
there are several people 'in there'.

--Miri and Constance

[catskillmarina.livejournal.com]

Here we speak for ourselves. We believe so deeply in equality and democracy that there
is no one here who claims special privileges. We agree to work towards the survival of
the whole. That is our main directive.

Some models posit that there is a dominant and possibly a 'core' who is to lead everyone
else. We simply work things out between ourselves. These models may be right for others
but they rub us wrong. We are equal.

--- miri of mtribe

[rabbitsystem.livejournal.com]

You seem to be thinking along the lines of the 'official' model, that is, that any individual within a multiple system is rigid and inflexible, because they exist to fill a role. You also seem to assume that all multiples can create and new people to fill new roles.

None of that is true for us, though I can certainly understand how the first part at least can be. It's just that you write as if it applied to all multiples, and it doesn't.

Thanks Rabbit

[gharveyn.livejournal.com]

You are quite right, we have a tendency to sometimes write in sweeping statements even though we should know better. Certainly, in our experience, we do create new personae on the fly, some of which become 'permanent' members.

But we haven't had a very large exposure to other multiple systems yet so applying our own experiences to others may not always be a good fit. We did assume that everyone else can synthesize new personalities, perhaps not a very reasonable assumption, as we are learning.

We see so many people here who seem to have an extraordinary capacity to switch, that is something we haven't really learned how to do in a deliberate manner. For us it is easier to synthesize than to switch.

You have just given me a valuable insight here because it may actually be our reliance on synthesis that has inhibited learning how to switch.

Thanks!

We are sorry we aren't likely to change our writing style, our style enables us to write; if we didn't take an authoritative role in our writing we would bog down.

Often in the editing we can achieve better balance, but the articles we wrote Saturday were really test pieces, we were hoping for lots of reactions to help us learn, so we were less concerned about being right than about drawing reactions, whatever other people might feel and be willing to share.

Thanks for participating you have been a tremendous help and we hope you will enjoy our future work with the same interest and willingness to contradict us and help us learn.

Re: Thanks Rabbit

[rabbitsystem.livejournal.com]

Your writing style's fine. Some sort of standard disclaimer - "This applies to a particular kind of multiple and may not fit other systems" - might work well. I actually really enjoyed reading this, it's good to see essays rather than endless discussion, though discussion is good too.
If you don't mind, I'd like to write something looking at the same issue (consistent public face, social strain) from the POV of a system like ours.

-Seb of the Rabbits.

Go for it Rabbit

[gharveyn.livejournal.com]

That's very exciting Rabbit, we hope you are able to write your ideas to your satisfaction and we look forward to reading them.

We love both essays and dialogue and we view essays as a an avenue to arrive at more meaningful dialogues.

Dialogues have value on many levels, and the 'endless discussion' has a great value too. We often need to stay connected to people and sometimes a forum like this is our best opportunity to find new connections to other people.

The act of remaining in a dialogue may be a greater purpose than the content of the dialogue, and that's ok.

We may all need that sort of contact from time to time and to have it in a public forum where people can choose to participate or just watch is a wonderful thing.