So I'm ~two~ three days late to this, but I might as well say my piece. This is a very personal topic to me, and I will be talking about a demographic much larger than tulpa itself to hopefully create a better view of the whole and where I fit into this. This demographic will fall under the umbrella term of "plurality". For the sake of clarity, I am a primary member of a healthy plural system that has no first-hand experience with tulpa, but we are very involved in it's community and many other larger-plural communities and I will refer to the assistance of many personal friends with more experience in tulpa than myself throughout this post. I wish for all those who read this to be open-minded, as I am happy to see many of you have been throughout this thread.
First, some vocabulary (with a sprinkle of history on top), I'll be using many plural-centric terms throughout this post, so a brief vocab-section might be in order.
Plurality is a widely-used umbrella term for any form of phenomena where multiple consciousness share the same body, and a system is a more personal term referring to the specific group of consciousness sharing a body. Not all plurality/multiplicity is DID. DID/DDNOS are clinical labels for disordered plurality–however, plurality/multiplicity is not innately a disorder.
Multiplicity refers to the state of having system members who are strongly separate from each other, each possessing a self-identity distinct from the others in the system. In contrast, median refers to system members who are varyingly different under a single, centric identity. Multiple facets of the same face, if you will.
Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) hit big around the early '80s. As now, as always, there lived many plurals. Some of them were disordered, some were not, but they all were seen regardless as “broken” under MPD and needing to integrate. Many, disordered and non-disordered alike, resented this and formed their own culture in opposition to this idea, advocating for healthy systems to be left alone and for disordered systems to be given treatment options that do not mandate integration, and for plurality overall to be viewed as a variation in neurology and not a pathology. This is essentially the grounding of how the multiplicity/plurality community started.
I will be using these diagnostic criteria for DID, taken directly from the DSM-V, the official diagnostic manual.
A. Disruption of identity characterized by two or more distinct personality states, which may be described in some cultures as an experience of possession. The disruption in identity involves marked discontinuity in sense of self and sense of agency, accompanied by related alterations in affect, behavior, consciousness, memory, perception, cognition, and/or sensory-motor functioning. These signs and symptoms may be observed by others or reported by the individual.
B. Recurrent gaps in the recall of everyday events, important personal information, and/ or traumatic events that are inconsistent with ordinary forgetting.
C. The symptoms cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning.
D. The disturbance is not a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice.
Note: In children, the symptoms are not better explained by imaginary playmates or other fantasy play.
E. The symptoms are not attributable to the physiological effects of a substance (e.g., blackouts or chaotic behavior during alcohol intoxication) or another medical condition (e.g., complex partial seizures).
The crucial points separating DID plurality and non-DID plurality are points B and C. If one does not fit point B, but fits all other criteria, they would be diagnosed as "dissociative disorder not otherwise specified" (DDNOS). DDNOS, as excerpted from the DSM-V is:
This category applies to presentations in which symptoms characteristic of a dissociative disorder that cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning predominate but do not meet the full criteria for any of the disorders in the dissociative disorders diagnostic class. The unspecified dissociative disorder category is used in situations in which the clinician chooses not to specify the reason that the criteria are not met for a specific dissociative disorder, and includes presentations for which there is insufficient information to make a more specific diagnosis (e.g., in emergency room settings).
Note the bolded criterion of this excerpt. Like in the criterion for DID, this is the most important criterion here. Under this criterion, a system cannot be declared mentally ill if their plurality does not cause any issues or dysfunction. This ties into the 4 Ds of abnormal psychology. I will quote an acquaintance's brilliant description on this topic:
In order for something to qualify as a mental illness, a behavior must fit at least two of the 4Ds of abnormal psychology, which are:
Deviance: this term describes the idea that specific thoughts, behaviours and emotions are considered deviant when they are unacceptable or not common in society. Clinicians must, however, remember that minority groups are not always deemed deviant just because they may not have anything in common with other groups. Therefore, we define an individual’s actions as deviant or abnormal when his or her behaviour is deemed unacceptable by the culture he or she belongs to.
Distress: this term accounts for negative feelings by the individual with the disorder. He or she may feel deeply troubled and affected by their illness.
Dysfunction: this term involves maladaptive behaviour that impairs the individual’s ability to perform normal daily functions, such as getting ready for work in the morning, or driving a car. Such maladaptive behaviours prevent the individual from living a normal, healthy lifestyle. However, dysfunctional behaviour is not always caused by a disorder; it may be voluntary, such as engaging in a hunger strike.
Danger: this term involves dangerous or violent behaviour directed at the individual, or others in the environment. An example of dangerous behaviour that may suggest a psychological disorder is engaging in suicidal activity.
I would go into the mootness of deviance and and arbitrarity of normality, but basically, for something to count as a mental illness it must fit into one of the last 3 Ds. To plug ourselves as an example, we are all perfectly happy with the life we live, operate optimally and do not suffer any dysfunctional problems from our plurality, and are in no way a harm to ourselves or others (yet 
). Thus, by the definitions and criterion in place, we are not mentally-ill and live a perfectly healthy plural life.
With that integral distinction made, I will get into the meat of this post: Plurality as a whole, what it is, what it's not, and the more general and personal aspects of plural systems beyond "if it's real". Consider this a "part 2".
As I will now be dealing more with what plurality is and how it works, it's time for some more relevant vocabulary:
A systemmate refers to a singular member of a larger system, similar to how a "teammate" refers to a singular member of a larger team.
A tulpa is essentially a systemmate created through long periods of meditation, with time becoming just as real as any other systemmate. Just like how a traumatic experience can create a systemmate or walk-ins can just appear randomly on their own after the physical body's birth, a tulpa can be created through long periods of meditation and grow into just as much of a person as any other plural.
A singlet is the opposite of a plural. One person in one brain.
Fronting refers to the act of being in direct control of the physical body and using it. More than one systemmate can be fronting at once-this is called co-fronting (If you think this is impossible, think of it like multi-tasking; Talking on the phone, watching TV, and voting to Lynch Gentleman of Dread all at the same time). Switching refers to the change of who is in front.
First off, yes, plurality is physically verifiable and scientifically proven to exist. Numerous scientific studies have confirmed the existence of plurality, here are a few resources and excerpts if you're interested:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2766827/
For example, case reports have described people who have changed their handedness or have spoken foreign languages during their dissociative states.
http://www.nytimes.com/1988/06/28/scien ... ality.html
When Timmy drinks orange juice he has no problem. But Timmy is just one of close to a dozen personalities who alternate control over a patient with multiple personality disorder. And if those other personalities drink orange juice, the result is a case of hives.
The hives will occur even if Timmy drinks orange juice and another personality appears while the juice is still being digested. What’s more, if Timmy comes back while the allergic reaction is present, the itching of the hives will cease immediately, and the water-filled blisters will begin to subside.
[…]
One of the problems for psychiatrists trying to treat patients with multiple personalities is that, depending which personality is in control, a patient can have drastically different reactions to a given psychiatric medication. For instance, it is almost always the case that one or several of the personalities of a given patient will be that of a child. And the differences in responses to drugs among the sub-personalities often parallel those ordinarily found when the same drug at the same dose is given to a child, rather than an adult.
In a recent book, ”The Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder,” published by the American Psychiatric Press, Dr. Braun describes several instances in which different personalities in the same body responded differently to a given dose of the same medication. A tranquilizer, for instance, made a childish personality of one patient sleepy and relaxed, but gave adult personalities confusion and racing thoughts. An anti-convulsant prescribed for epilepsy that was given another patient had no effect on the personalities except those under the age of 12.
In another patient, 5 milligrams of diazepam, a tranquilizer, sedated one personality, while 100 milligrams had little effect on another personality.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17611729
We present a patient with dissociative identity disorder (DID) who after 15 years of diagnosed cortical blindness gradually regained sight during psychotherapeutic treatment. At first only a few personality states regained vision, whereas others remained blind. This was confirmed by electrophysiological measurement, in which visual evoked potentials (VEP) were absent in the blind personality states but normal and stable in the seeing states.
(Multiple Personality Disorder; An Alternative Theory - RC Psych (resource no longer available)
An especially interesting study was recently done by neuropsychologist Joseph Ciociari at Swinburne University of Technology in Australia. The study took five patients with DID and five age matched professional actors and asked them to do simple cognitive tests while using EEG to monitor their brainwaves.
In the course of this monitoring, the actors performed the tasks as themselves and then as a series of pretended personalities. The brain waves of the DID patients’ host personalities (the core personalities) were monitored and then the alternate personalities, or ‘alters’ were invited to ‘come out’ and participate in the tasks and were also monitored. The Swinburne Media release stated that:
Swinburne has shown clearly different brain patterns between the Dissociative Identity Disorder host and each personality or alter, a finding that could not be reproduced by professional actors emulating the child alters. Previous EEG studies into the disorder observed the results at individual brain locations. This latest study used and compared the EEG signal parameters between different areas; i.e. it applied EEG coherence analysis. In The Psychotherapy Networker, Gary Cooper explains that EEG coherence analysis ‘simultaneously measures different parts of the brain to assess how they work in synchrony. Ciociari’s study is the first Dissociative Identity Disorder study to use EEG coherence analysis.
The Swinburne media report goes on to state that there were significant differences observed in the EEG coherence analysis between the core personalities and their alters, but not between the actor’s true personalities and their pretended personalities. Ciociari of Swinburne states that this lends credibility to the existence of this disorder and militates against the belief that it is fabricated in all cases.
http://daemonpage.com/socrates-daimon.php
An intriguing concept that Socrates unintentionally inspired was that of the dæmon (or daimon). The philosopher spoke often of his ‘internal oracle’ whose injunctions he followed. This voice of guidance gave only negative admonitions (such as ‘don’t do that’ or ‘don’t say that’), and would warn that certain actions or events would lead to disaster – making it most synonymous with Socrates’ conscience. However, the oracle only spoke its mind, but never tried to coerce Socrates into following its advice. H. P. Blavatsky wrote that “the Daimonion of Socrates is the god or Divine Entity which inspired him all his life.” Socrates himself said, “The favor of the gods has given me a marvelous gift, which has never left me since my childhood. It is a voice which, when it makes itself heard, deters me from what I am about to do and never urges me on.”
He spoke familiarly of this daimon, joked about it and obeyed blindly the indications it gave. Eventually, his friends never took an important step without consulting it. But the daimon had its sympathies, and when it was unfavorable to the questioner it remained absolutely silent; in that event it was quite impossible for Socrates to make it speak.
The fact that the daimon had preferences among Socrates’ friends and those who asked for advice (that it chose between them) seems to show that its intelligence was different from that of Socrates himself. And he would always listen to its wisdom – sometimes standing motionless for a full day, unaffected by a hard frost, listening to the daimon’s recommendations.
(From Carl Jung's (Google him) autobiography:)
“Philemon and figures of my fantasies brought home to me the crucial insight that there are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own life. Philemon represented a force which was not myself. In my fantasies I held conversations with him, and he said things which I had not consciously thought. For I observed clearly that it was he who spoke, not I. He said I treated thoughts as if I generated them myself, but in his view thoughts were like animals in the forest, or people in a room, or birds in the air, and added, “If you should see people in a room, you would not think that you had made those people, or that you were responsible for them.” It was he who taught me psychic objectivity, the reality of the psyche. Through him the distinction was clarified between myself and the object of my thought. He confronted me in an objective manner, and I understood that there is something in me which can say things that I do not know and do not intend, things which may even be directed against me.
Psychologically, Philemon represented superior insight. He was a mysterious figure to me. At times he seemed to me quite real, as if he were a living personality. I went walking up and down the garden with him, and to me he was what the Indians call a guru.” (Memories, Dreams, Reflections 183)
A few common misconceptions of plurality are that "all members of a plural system are just parts of one person". While medians, as defined above, do often share a centric identity and persona, functioning as different parts and facets of one person, this is not inherently true for all multiple systems. It depends on who you ask, but what really matters here is what you define as a person. Many members of a system can show a variety of emotions, thoughts, and opinions completely separate or even contrary to the emotions, thoughts, and opinions of other members of the same system. System members can differ in interests, goals, opinions, morals, dreams, and ambitions, they might not even get along with each other. If these systemmates all had separate bodies and stood in the same room, they would immediately be recognized as different people entirely. Is not having a body what keeps them from being different people? Well, if a mind and body are both essential parts of what makes us a person, then I'll ask this question; if a prince and a frog swap and the prince wakes to find themselves in the frog's body, who is the prince and who is the frog? The generally accepted answer is that the prince is inside the frog's body. This alone should show that the construct of personhood is not so tightly tied to the physical body as some may initially think. Now, take this a step further and say the frog never moved while the prince was transferred into the frog's body, allowing them to co-exist within the singular body of the frog. Where is the prince and where is the frog? The answer is inside the frog's body. Thus, we have plurality.
And to provide another metaphor–recall that computers are capable of having multiple operating systems installed on one device. While it can be difficult (though not impossible) to run two operating systems at the same time on a computer, there is nothing preventing a computer from running first one operating system, then another. Now recall that the human brain is essentially an immensely complex chemical computer, and that personality can essentially be broken down into a system of patterns–“X makes me happy, Y angers me, I value Z, I identify as A”–and hence, mapped onto the “hardware” of the brain as a sort of “software.” Some may protest that it is impossible for a brain to store more than one person–I remind those critics of how a brain is able to shift handedness, language, sightedness, brainwave patterns, etc in the above studies, how immense facts like fifty-one digits of pi and all the capitals of the world can be memorized and stored outside of conscious thought, and how authors are able to both write and converse with convincing and highly independent characters. Now, in place of “computer”, substitute “brain”, and in place of “operating system”, substitute “system member”. Suddenly, the idea of “one brain, one person” is no longer as simple as it seems.
Personhood is impossible to prove, no scientist has ever been able to prove that someone, singlet nor plural, is a "person" or "sentient". The first and foremost issue is that sentience (in the colloquial sense, encompassing both sentience and sapience) has no clear definition. No one has been able to agree on a set of criteria for sentience. No one has been able to draw a line between non-sentience and sentience, or “proved” sentience in non-humans. Is a being sentient if it has free will? Psychology has shown that “free will,” too, is nebulous—humans are highly susceptible to their instincts and their environment, more than we would like to admit. Is a being sentient if it exhibits emotion? Then dogs, dolphins, and many other animals are sentient. Yet the sentience of animals is still being debated. Is a being sentient if it can solve abstract problems? Then octopi and tool-using animals are sentient. Is a being sentient if it is self-aware? Then elephants, parrots, and any other animals that can recognize themselves in a mirror are sentient. And yet again, their sentience is still under debate. So as you can see, defining and qualifying sentience is extremely troublesome, especially from an anthropocentric viewpoint. (It is also worth noting that a systemmate satisfies all four of the above criteria, in addition to other aspects making them indistinguishable from a singlet.)
However, there are some things science has been able to measure. As you might recall, when members of a DID system switch, their brain patterns change drastically in ways that actors cannot emulate. In addition, different members of a plural system can have drastically different skills, with some even having different handedness or speaking languages that other members do not know. They can develop different allergies, may have different eyesight, and even have different reactions to medication. Should you take each of these members out of their shared brain, and insert each of them into their own bodies, each would function completely normally as their own person. And to the outsider, they would in all certainty be identified as their own persons.
It's not uncommon for plural systems to fear what they look like to society, pretending to be someone they aren't and hiding away to not be told "You're not real","You're mentally ill","You shouldn't exist". Nowhere is this fear more prevalent than in interactions with psychology. In the past, it was thought that all plurals needed to “integrate”–that is, be merged into one person–and that this would be the only way for them to function successfully. Not only is this incredibly inaccurate in that many plurals can and do function successfully as plurals, it is also inaccurate in that in most cases, integration does not work. Only in a minority of cases do plural systems remain integrated–in most cases, the integrated individual will only split apart into each different member again. In addition, many plurals do not want to integrate, seeing it essentially as being told to murder each other in the name of psychology–some plurals will, in fact, fake integration to escape a psychologist. Others who attempt integration are, akin to victims of “conversion therapies” that presume to “cure” transgender people by forcing them to identify as their assigned gender, severely traumatized by the experience or suffer major identity crises down the road.
Examples of the traumas that can result from being pushed to integrate are provided in this scathing anti-integration piece by an anonymous multiple system:
http://astraeasweb.net/plural/f_integration.html
We’ve seen countless multiples online go from being fairly alright to becoming a sobbing, blithering, useless mess after going to therapy. A lot of them end up having issues with the members who end up believing “Oh, it’s sad we’re multiple, we need to work on integrating” fighting with those who say “NO! I don’t want to die!”. We know of one system where a big [adult systemmate] takes meds to constantly keep the others asleep and gets so angry when a little [child systemmate] manages to fight her way to the front and throw away the meds. The big does this to be “normal” by society’s standards.
A little fighting to live: how absolutely appalling! No child, chronological or otherwise, should have to fight just to be allowed to live.
Some systems whom were abused do need therapy to help them. What we’re talking about here is when multiples head off to therapy just because multiples are supposedly supposed to get therapy, or the multiples who seek therapy and don’t get what they actually need. If a system is functioning, don’t tamper with them and how they run. We’ve heard stories of systems dragged off to shrinks when their family found a little playing childishly, and other systems sent to the nuthouse because one’s partner freaked out about it. We’re sick and tired of words and terms intended to belittle and put members in their place. Alters? Parts? Those words are used to ensure the members of a system believe they aren’t people so they don’t resist being killed off during “integration.
Multiples need to be able to seek therapy for other issues irrelevant to being multiple. If a system shows up for therapy, the therapist tends to go after the multiplicity. We know a system with a member in need of help, but they don’t seek it for fear of being shoved into integrating. So, that member suffers in silence. That is unacceptable.
I have seen people cite, in defense of how plurals are treated, the authority of psychology. At this, I remind them that medicine is and always has been a flawed field, and that psychology is no different. As recently as the 1950s, LGBT individuals were considered in psychology to be mentally ill, until massive protesting finally prompted psychologists to reclassify LGBT orientations as identities. Asexuality suffered similarly, though it has recently won a major battle by being reclassified as an orientation in the DSM-V. Treatment of transgender identities by psychology is still problematic in that being transgender is classified as a type of mental illness, under “gender identity disorder”–however, even that is changing. And so too are psychological views on plurality changing–increasingly, therapists and academics have been advocating for alternatives to integration, acknowledging that it is entirely possible, and perhaps even in many cases desirable, for a plural system to function in society as plural.
I'd love to make another post some other time going into more personal aspects of plural systems, such as further explaining the concepts of fronting and switching I described earlier, but I feel what I've written is all that's relevant to this thread in particular. I guess this was a bit of our way of "coming out of the closet", so to speak, and I appreciate all of you for being such open-minded and wonderful people.
Statistics: Posted by QQQQQQQ7777777 — Mon Nov 30, 2015 11:20 pm