In fact, humans have long had an awareness of different selves, divided in many different ways. Some are biological, others more spiritual or psychological. I've seen "system" used to describe such sets, but it'd take a lot of digging to find which ones.
Some you might find worth exploring:
* The human brain / ape brain / lizard brain division has several variations and deals in the evolutionary layers of development in the neural system. The lizard brain is the oldest and deals with survival needs like eating or fleeing from predators. The ape brain is next and deals with emotions and basic social relationships like parent/child. The human brain is youngest, a rather thin veneer that allows logical thought, sophisticated language, and planning for the future. And they're in that order of dominance, which is why the lizard brain can hijack your legs to run you out of trouble or yank your hand off a hot stove: you don't have time to think, only to react. It is sometimes simplified to hindbrain / forebrain. These all have basis in the physical structures of the brain.
This set has great relevance to plural people because many multiple systems have roles relating to survival, feelings, and thoughts. If the first two interfere with the third, they can be shunted to those earlier parts of the brain -- like three people in a house might choose to work in different rooms to avoid distracting each other, and any one of them could go answer the doorbell.
Less common, but I've seen this quite dramatically, is that not everyone has an ape brain. Some have the imprint of some other species -- a wolf brain, a horse brain, or whatever. This is most common in the furry / therian / anthropomorphic communities but crosses over with multiple systems whose members are not all the same species. We all have DNA from Earth's very checkered past, and sometimes different stuff manifests. For people with otherlife experience, different genders or species previously experienced may come through with no physical underpinning at all. That's okay. But if you don't know how or why it's happening, that can really fuck you up. It often helps to study the type of creature you feel a relation to, because instructions for an ape brain you don't have are likely to be no use or even worse than useless. :/ They might need to assemble something like an African mixed herd where zebras, giraffes, wildebeests, etc. live together so they can capitalize on each species' best senses to avoid predators and find food or water. Human psychology is no use for that, but there are pretty good descriptions in zoology.
* The left brain / right brain division deals with the two physical hemispheres of the brain and their bridge. Some physical and mental functions have a dedicated area on only one side, while others appear on both. This is why brain damage can wreck one thing while leaving others untouched. Generally the left side deals in logic and the right side in intuition. Nobody is all one way or all the other, but people often find one style easier than the other.
In a multiple system, some members may be more thinking and others more feeling. They typically have diverse skills. Many systems have one or more nonverbal or low-verbal members.
* Jungian psychology recognizes a variety of archetypes including the anima / animus and the shadow. He didn't get as far -- likely because psychology tends to fixate on less-functional people -- that these don't have to be unconscious. They can be conscious and fluent, so that a self-aware person can examine one issue from a masculine, feminine, primal, or other perspective to see which is most useful.
Many multiple systems include masculine, feminine, and other genders. There is very often a shadow self who deals with hidden or difficult things.
* The Egyptian vocabulary for body-mind-spirit is quite complex. They felt that every person had these different parts that worked together and in some ways could act independently. They didn't really have this modern concept of a person being one "single" thing. Nor were the parts disjunct, dysfunctional, or caused by trauma. It was just like how a person has a bunch of organs inside a body because they are born that way and each organ has a different job to do -- which is very much how some multiple systems feel, they are not broken apart and they work together smoothly.
While it's possible for trauma to shatter a personality into disconnected parts, it's also possible for someone to have different connected parts that function just fine while doing different things. I don't think the medical industry has a good grasp of that, but well, most of them have silo training instead of having looked at a dozen or so different models of personality or cosmology. It's nice to see the multiple culture exploring more widely in search of vocabular and models they find helpful.
Re: Thank you!
In fact, humans have long had an awareness of different selves, divided in many different ways. Some are biological, others more spiritual or psychological. I've seen "system" used to describe such sets, but it'd take a lot of digging to find which ones.
Some you might find worth exploring:
* The human brain / ape brain / lizard brain division has several variations and deals in the evolutionary layers of development in the neural system. The lizard brain is the oldest and deals with survival needs like eating or fleeing from predators. The ape brain is next and deals with emotions and basic social relationships like parent/child. The human brain is youngest, a rather thin veneer that allows logical thought, sophisticated language, and planning for the future. And they're in that order of dominance, which is why the lizard brain can hijack your legs to run you out of trouble or yank your hand off a hot stove: you don't have time to think, only to react. It is sometimes simplified to hindbrain / forebrain. These all have basis in the physical structures of the brain.
This set has great relevance to plural people because many multiple systems have roles relating to survival, feelings, and thoughts. If the first two interfere with the third, they can be shunted to those earlier parts of the brain -- like three people in a house might choose to work in different rooms to avoid distracting each other, and any one of them could go answer the doorbell.
Less common, but I've seen this quite dramatically, is that not everyone has an ape brain. Some have the imprint of some other species -- a wolf brain, a horse brain, or whatever. This is most common in the furry / therian / anthropomorphic communities but crosses over with multiple systems whose members are not all the same species. We all have DNA from Earth's very checkered past, and sometimes different stuff manifests. For people with otherlife experience, different genders or species previously experienced may come through with no physical underpinning at all. That's okay. But if you don't know how or why it's happening, that can really fuck you up. It often helps to study the type of creature you feel a relation to, because instructions for an ape brain you don't have are likely to be no use or even worse than useless. :/ They might need to assemble something like an African mixed herd where zebras, giraffes, wildebeests, etc. live together so they can capitalize on each species' best senses to avoid predators and find food or water. Human psychology is no use for that, but there are pretty good descriptions in zoology.
* The left brain / right brain division deals with the two physical hemispheres of the brain and their bridge. Some physical and mental functions have a dedicated area on only one side, while others appear on both. This is why brain damage can wreck one thing while leaving others untouched. Generally the left side deals in logic and the right side in intuition. Nobody is all one way or all the other, but people often find one style easier than the other.
In a multiple system, some members may be more thinking and others more feeling. They typically have diverse skills. Many systems have one or more nonverbal or low-verbal members.
* Jungian psychology recognizes a variety of archetypes including the anima / animus and the shadow. He didn't get as far -- likely because psychology tends to fixate on less-functional people -- that these don't have to be unconscious. They can be conscious and fluent, so that a self-aware person can examine one issue from a masculine, feminine, primal, or other perspective to see which is most useful.
Many multiple systems include masculine, feminine, and other genders. There is very often a shadow self who deals with hidden or difficult things.
* The Egyptian vocabulary for body-mind-spirit is quite complex. They felt that every person had these different parts that worked together and in some ways could act independently. They didn't really have this modern concept of a person being one "single" thing. Nor were the parts disjunct, dysfunctional, or caused by trauma. It was just like how a person has a bunch of organs inside a body because they are born that way and each organ has a different job to do -- which is very much how some multiple systems feel, they are not broken apart and they work together smoothly.
While it's possible for trauma to shatter a personality into disconnected parts, it's also possible for someone to have different connected parts that function just fine while doing different things. I don't think the medical industry has a good grasp of that, but well, most of them have silo training instead of having looked at a dozen or so different models of personality or cosmology. It's nice to see the multiple culture exploring more widely in search of vocabular and models they find helpful.