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multiplicity_archivesDo you think multiplicity is rare? How common do you think it is?
(I ask this because it ties in to a lot of things I've been thinking about lately. I won't talk about it yet, I want to hear what everyone has to say first. This is a new one for me, of course, as the chief opinion-spewer.)
I guess that I should clarify that I mean either natural multiplicity, or the tendency to multiplicity brought to the surface by childhood trauma (or any other event really). Also -- if I hear anybody say anything along the lines of "Everybody dissociates, some more than others..." I'll roll my eyes and think "Boat-misser!"
(I ask this because it ties in to a lot of things I've been thinking about lately. I won't talk about it yet, I want to hear what everyone has to say first. This is a new one for me, of course, as the chief opinion-spewer.)
I guess that I should clarify that I mean either natural multiplicity, or the tendency to multiplicity brought to the surface by childhood trauma (or any other event really). Also -- if I hear anybody say anything along the lines of "Everybody dissociates, some more than others..." I'll roll my eyes and think "Boat-misser!"
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no subject
Date: 2004-01-06 09:56 pm (UTC)I went most of my life without being aware of knowing a multiple, functional or otherwise, natural or trauma-born. I first encountered an out system a few years ago on a usenet newsgroup.
Since identifying myself as median, I've encountered a number of other systems, partly because I'm seeking out communities such as this one that are for us.
But also, we've found that being out has meant that people we've known for a while came out to us. People I'd never have guessed were plural, people I suspect I'd never had known were plural if I didn't, say, have a discussion about system management with my boyfriend while giving them a lift home.
So at the moment I suspect I know a lot more plural systems than I would if I hadn't sought them out, just because I'm hanging out here -- but I don't know how many people I've known in my life who were plural and silent about it. I don't know how to know.
Just a little excessive cerebrality from the system geek . . .
no subject
Date: 2004-01-06 11:26 pm (UTC)I think almost everyone has the tendency toward multiplicity. It shows itself in childhood games with imaginary friends, as a singlet friend pointed out to me when explaining why my revelation of being multiple didn't freak him out.
If a seven year old girl can have a tea party with three imaginary friends and play out amazingly complex conversations between them and herself, and this is considered perfectly normal, then the tendency to be more than one person, for whatever reason, cannot be as rare as those studying it professionally think it is.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-07 02:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-07 02:51 am (UTC)I should mention that I'm not convinced that every alleged "multiple personality" person I've met was actually multiple. In a subculture that values strangeness, and in which it's considered impolite to openly doubt a person's claims or question them too pointedly, there is always going to be a certain amount of.... let's call it "roleplaying"... by people who don't feel they command enough attention as "just themselves". Then again, who can say? Just because something seems improbable or implausible to me doesn't mean it is necessarily false.
Perhaps MOST people are multiple to some extent, and are simply discouraged from admitting it, even to themselves... in the same way that an apparent majority of the population are bisexual to some extent, whether they acknowledge it or not.
I don't see dissociation and multiplicity as being the same thing at all.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-07 04:19 pm (UTC)Not an attack. This caused me to be curious about what you might consider proof. *think* What I'm trying to ask is; if you could doubt someone and pointedly question them, what would prove to you that they weren't role playing? Is it just one of those "I'd know" situations, or do you see the possibility of proof?
Now, I realize that even if you can answer you might not. If there is some sort of proof, letting the role players know it might be silly, but I've never been able to figure out a way (other than energy signature shift and a few other things that can be faked) to tell if someone really is multiple or elven or any number of other things that tend to show up in the sub-cultures I've been known to frequent (Similar to yours, I think).
no subject
Date: 2004-01-07 08:06 pm (UTC)The sort of people I'm talking about are the ones who are so desperate for attention and approval that they make up grandiose stories about themselves and relentlessly tell them to anyone who'll listen. I would suppose that anyone who's hung around the various alternative communities much has encountered them. Now, in some communities, bullshit is relatively easy to "call" because everybody pretty-much knows everybody else, or there are objectively-verifiable skills that go with certain claims, or there's major differences between how things work in realtime as opposed to online or in works of fiction. In other communities, it's not so easy, because there aren't such clear delineations.
There are people who really were abducted by aliens, possessed by demons, aided by angels, visited by the Sidhe... or at least are honestly convinced that they were. There are people who really do have "wild talents" of varying sorts, or are "weirdness magnets", or live in several realities at once, or have good reason to think they don't fit the standard definitions of "human". And there are people who really are more than one person in a single body.
Something that's fairly common to all these people is a general reluctance to be perceived as crazy, or as liars. They don't boast about their odd experiences. Often they don't speak of them at all, or only in very guarded terms, under specific circumstances. They've usually got a whole lot of doubts, fears, and unanswered questions about just what it all means, and that comes through in the way they talk about it.
Not so the "roleplayers". They breeze right in with their accounts, which sound more like movies or fantasy-novels than experiences of actual people (and sometimes ARE lifted straight from a movie or book.) No underlying air of caution, no carefully-presented corroborating evidence, no tendency to drop the subject at the first sign of skepticism in the listener... because they're not talking about a strange, puzzling, often distressing event or phenomenon that could get them locked up in the lunatic asylum if the wrong people found out. They're just spinning a yarn.
There's no way to prove that, of course. Often, though, the same people who spin one kind of yarn and are not openly doubted are then emboldened to go on and spin others, of a sort that's more easy to definitively de-bunk. Thus they eventually pick up a reputation for bullshitting, and people stop taking them seriously (if they ever did.)
One person recently told me all about her "multiple personalities", and was allegedly "switching" into the five-year-old one right there on the phone. Yeah right, y'know? I remember when this person allegedly had Asmodeus Himself appearing in her kitchen. Over the past 26 years she has told me countless wild and improbable stories; I love her dearly, but I don't believe most of them, and I don't believe this one either.
Of course, I do not say so, because it would hurt her feelings, and anyway, she could be telling the truth this time - I think it extremely unlikely, but I have been known to be wrong before. LOL, she has no idea that I'm multiple, and I will never tell her.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-07 03:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-01-07 08:04 am (UTC)But I would say expressions of multiplicity aren't, particularly in creative expression where often people have to stretch 'outside themselves' in order to create.
I think this is where a lot of confusion comes from. A lot of my friends are very creative people, writers and actors and artists, and they try to understand our multiplicity from their experience, and can think that it is "just the same" as their creative fugues, for example, when they create something and then a few months later find it hard to remember how they created it, as if someone else had.
And it's hard for me to say that it's not the same, because of course I'm not in their heads, and because the language is still so limited. And also sometimes it's comforting to believe that it's just the same thing and really everyone's somewhat multiple. And a lot of the experiences are kind of a way for us to understand each other. I think there is some truth in that in that the human psyche can grasp the concept because consciousness involves some splitting: id, ego, superego kinds of things.
But it comes down to the concept of personhood really - we have specific people in our system that are /clearly not/ other people, who have their own id/ego/superego thing going, and we all have big differences not just in who we are, but how we approach things, how we relate to the world and life and others.
And other multiples I have met and believed were multiple /also/ have those very distinct people. But overall that's been pretty rare... out of the hundreds of people I have met in person, the multiples number in the low twenties, and I have been specifically interested in meeting them and looking out for them. :)
Shandra
Well put
Date: 2004-01-07 01:51 pm (UTC)We're still figuring out a lot about our personal dynamic. Language can be a horrible common denominator. Sometimes I have an easier time expressing my experiences algorhytmically, or mathematically. It's frustrating. Few other people will except either valid perl/C code, pseudocode, or a mathematic equation as a description of anything outside of a math class context.
Oh well.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-08 08:20 pm (UTC)Just some figures for you. Within the space of about the last 2 years, I have discovered four of my friends to be multiple to some degree or another. None of these friends know each other at all, and their situations are all very different, ranging from someone who has been aware of one or two other people before, to a fully functioning system, to an abuse victim with a violent other inside her. Given that you've got to be pretty close friends with someone before they're likely to tell you that kind of thing, and that also as some have said, society is likely to prevent people from self identifying as multiple, this has lead me to think a that perhaps being a natural singlet is really "the norm" at all...
Just my 2 cents.
no subject
Date: 2004-01-09 04:47 am (UTC)i think..
Date: 2004-01-09 05:27 am (UTC)^-^ two-cents...
Date: 2004-01-14 05:12 pm (UTC)