A New (to me) identity concept: Plural Persons, Systems, Multiplicity, Alters, Headmates

Great Debates
1

In an online social group that I occasionally participate in, someone posted a request to use a tool (PluralKit) that would allow that person to post using multiple identities, instead of just a single user name.

Curious as to why someone would want to do that, I inquired and the response was that the person is “a system and the different headmaktes are looking for slightly different things. … there is more than one person who occupies this brain. y’know how nonbinary is under the trans umbrella, most people know DID (dissociative identity disorder), I’m under that umbrealla or more, DID is under the 'plurality umbrella” i’m a variant of DID’"

So the idea is that a plural person, or “system” is a host for multiple “headmates” or “alters,” who each want to be treated a separate person, in this case, for the purposes of social interaction, including possible dating.

I was taken aback by this notion, but then I thought, well, if a person can be transgender, then why can’t someone be a plural person? In both cases, my thought is, well, maybe I personally wouldn’t want to be in a relationship with that kind of individual, but maybe there are those who are fine with it? And who am I to contradict what someone says about es identity? But I also have this voice inside me saying “this person is playacting.”

This concept leaves me with a lot of questions, like “what is a person”? (Just like with transgenderism, which leaves me thinking “I don’t know what gender is now.”) I don’t really know what to think, but, I guess, here’s a new thing.

Some resources I found online about this concept.

https://www.pluralpride.com/playbook

https://pluralityresource.org/plurality-information/

http://www.exunoplures.org/main/articles/rules/

Some individuals describe their experience of multiplicity as a form of neurodiversity, rather than something that demands a diagnosis.

2

I don’t really have anything insightful to add on the topic, but at least the very germ of the idea doesn’t seem that unreasonable to me: I have often observed that I’m a slightly different person when interacting in an English-speaking environment than when speaking my native German—I’m slightly more extroverted, a bit more talkative, more sociable, and so on. So I can at least imagine a magnified version of this; and to a certain extent, I think our personalities are always modulated by context.

Although another way to think about this would be that, thanks to English being a foreign language, I get to wield it in a different way; I can sort of use it as a screen between myself and those I’m interacting with, to kinda mask (think of the origin of ‘persona’) my ‘true self’, and project a different image. German I use much less consciously, and thus, I’m in much more immediate, as in unmediated, contact with others, which gives me less hiding space.

3

I know someone who considers themself to be a DID/plural person. They’re VERY private about it, so I’m not going to share details about it but:

  • I consider this person to be generally pretty sane and grounded
  • As far as I can tell, they consider the DID/plurality to be a natural consequence of the way they grew up (ie, shitty childhood in many respects) rather than something chosen.
  • As far as behaviour goes, I’ve never noticed any particular personality discontinuities any more extreme than “well, sometimes people have different moods”, which applies to everyone. But of course that says nothing about what it feels like to be in their actual head.
4

I think many of us do this, even without any unusual psychological issues. On some sites I have multiple accounts (not the dope of course), and those accounts are often “played” differently.

Regarding split personalities, I’m skeptical that entire personalities can exist in one brain, but I don’t see that it does any harm (or is any of my business) to act as though they are separate identities.

5

I think it was more commonly accepted in earlier “Romantic” views of the nature of the human spirit and some such. Here, for example, is L.M. Montgomery’s quite mainstream classic-fiction-pop-culture character Anne Shirley, in a 1936 sequel to the international bestseller Anne of Green Gables, discussing an intriguing “quaint” “original” child next door:

Personally, I’ve always found the sugary whimsies of Anne of Green Gables philosophizing a bit nauseating, but the basic acceptance of the idea of one individual acknowledging and enacting somewhat separate personalities with somewhat separate identities seems reasonable and sympathetic.

6

I don’t see that as being the same thing. I’ve never read the book, but it looks like it’s simply a case of a child acting different parts, or taking different versions of her own name to indicate different moods.

 
There are cases of different personalities who don’t share memories, and this is not voluntary.

The medical version is

 
Apparently some people claim a non-pathological version of multiple personalities, but this thread is the first time I’ve come across the concept.

7

Back when I worked at a clinic in the mid-1990’s I did meet someone who was officially diagnosed with DID. It went way beyond play-acting or “mood”. We didn’t have to ask which “alter” was present, the three personalities were very distinct.

My experience with on-line claimed “multiples” is that these people don’t know what the frack they’re talking about.

Of course, I am not a qualified therapist, psychologist, psychiatrist, doctor, or anyone else able to actually diagnose such a thing. Which is one reason I avoid getting confrontational with such people. I could be the one in the wrong.

My (admittedly limited) understanding is that DID arises out of some very bad stuff that happens to a person early in life that, while it does function as a defense mechanism of sorts, has a lot of negative consequences and problems.

If someone did have actual DID and wanted to post on line as different individuals they could do so by having separate password/accounts. That might run into problems on a site like this which prohibits multiple accounts for one body, but life is not perfect.

I’m not sure what would compel someone with actual DID to identify as such on line outside of a support group but if anyone does know please enlighten me. Such a claim will, invariably, be met with extreme skepticism.

8

I admit that I had thoughts along these lines which I thought better not to express. Yes, we all have moods, but we recognize them as moods. And the platform this happened on is commonly used for games, although this particular community was not for gaming. So I am very familiar with the pleasures of role-playing. My unspoken thought was “do you have a diagnosis for this condition?”

9

Think of the implications. These are two different people. That means you cannot hold one accountable for the actions of the other. What if you were in an intimate situation with that person and trying to decide whether to use a barrier protection and you asked about ēs sexual history to gauge risk? Ultimately would this person assert that E cannot be punished for crimes that a different “alter” committed?

10

Courts in the US have rejected most claims of that nature, though there was one case where the defendant was ruled insane.

See this article:

Dissociative identity disorder: No excuse for criminal activity

Bottom Line

A defense of not guilty by reason of insanity due to dissociative identity disorder
rarely has been successful. Courts generally have found that although an individual
may have distinct personalities that control his or her behavior, the condition does
not preclude criminal responsibility.

11

Sure, that’s the current state of criminal law, but I’m speculating on what a movement of plural persons might advocate for. And what they might demand from personal interactions.

12

Why don’t you ask them? Some of those sites may allow you to post questions.

13

Frankly, I don’t really want to get in a conversation with someone who is heavily invested in this idea. I’m not ready to ask questions like this from someone who is passionate about the answers. I’ve already been told that they find it insulting to be compared to role players. I imagine most of my questions will seem insulting. And I still don’t really take the idea seriously. I don’t want that my skepticism to come across to someone who is asserting that this is true.

14

I think comparing it to trans is instructive. Ask yourself: what would it mean to accommodate this person without believing they’re correct?

For trans folk, the accommodations are overwhelmingly trivial: you use different pronouns, you don’t fuss when they use different bathrooms, you don’t share your unasked-for opinions about gender norms.

For “systems,” though, the accommodations would be overwhelming. How do you hold someone accountable for actions they take in a body they share with someone who didn’t take those actions?

15

Unless you know you’re dealing with someone with a diagnosed mental illness, why should this idiosyncracy be viewed as anything more than a delusional affectation or some sort of voluntary reality avoidance and escapism mechanism.

16

We are all plural people. Even at the physical level, your brain is separated into 2 hemispheres that are often only pretending to work together.

If you want to try on a new identity in real life, you just start saying it and doing it for a while. Maybe you convert to the new you, maybe you abandon it as if it never happened, maybe you maintain both lives separately. It’s how a growing person lives and grows in a society that pressures us to be all things to all people, and where our identity may be pretty badly mangled right out of the gate in childhood.

When an online system compels you to pin yourself to exactly one identity and preserve all your documents in amber so that an authority can keep you pigeonholed in the same identity forever, that’s a technical artifice that doesn’t remotely resemble how identity works in real life.

Note that I’m not advocating for socking or alts here. There are certain abuses inherent to online discussion, and limiting of alts is one option to help manage that (though increasingly, many forums judge it as irrelevant). I’m just saying it shouldn’t be regarded as some exotic online phenomenon; it’s a thing that many people do in life without ever even thinking about it.

17

I don’t think anybody here is denying that many people who self-identify as “multiple” in some way, including classic fictional characters like Little Elizabeth, don’t in fact qualify for a clinical diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder.

I think the issue here is more about whether and to what extent and in what circumstances those peoples’ claims of multiple identities, even if they don’t qualify as an actual pathology like DID, make sense and can be accommodated.

Again, though, how does this parallel transgender identity claims? Do we require transgender-identifying people to have a clinical diagnosis of gender dysphoria before we’re willing to give their identified gender any acknowledgement at all, even socially and informally? Should we demand that self-identified “multiples” have full-blown diagnosed DID before we acknowledge them as such?

I am absolutely not advocating for any legal recognition of multiple identities based on such claims (or maybe not even on any basis whatsoever, given the hassles of treating the same physical individual as both responsible and not responsible for the actions of one of their “selves”). But I don’t think the informal social use of, say, different names for the same physical individual as requested at different times is necessarily pernicious or unfairly burdensome.

Back to transgender parallels: There are some self-identified nonbinary or genderqueer people who sometimes identify as male and sometimes as female. Some of them switch up their gender presentation from time to time in accordance with their currently identified gender, and people who know them switch up their pronouns, and perhaps even names, accordingly.

Is there any reason we couldn’t or shouldn’t do the same sort of thing, at least to a limited extent in certain circumstances, with names of different identities of someone who self-identifies as multiple?

Yup, this.

18

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is not the only is not the only mental disorder that results in apparent multiple personalities. Depersonalization-derealization Disorder (DPDR, DPD) can produce similar symptoms as people detach from their ‘self’. This disorder shares the same root cause of childhood trauma as in DID as a common factor. There are plenty of other ways in which separation of personalities manifest through disorders and the ordinary compartmentalization of behavior that most people exhibit. I am pretty damn sure one mind can hold distinct personalities, I certainly have them and fear a decreasing ability to maintain order among them as I grow older. So if someone says they are ‘plural’, whatever that may mean, I don’t reject it out of hand, I’m sure there is a spectrum of such conditions that people deal with. The ‘Sybil’ type manifestation of DID, if ever real at all, would represent an extreme end of that spectrum.

19

An article I came across a few weeks ago, that looks at this from a software perspective:
A model for identity in software

20

I think this differs in comparisons to gender fluidity or trans in one important way and that is there is no abdication of responsibility for expression or action based on which personality happens to be presenting at any given time. A trans person without this multiple personality identity issue is going to remain consistent in being accountable for the things they say and do.