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A Quick'n'Dirty History of "System" as Plural Slang
"System" in the plural slang sense is used as a stand-alone noun (or, less often in my circles, in the specific phrasing, "a multiple system" or "plural system"). People will ask us, "are you a system?" or "have you heard about systems?" In this context, a "system" roughly describes the gestalt entity that is formed by the mix of a plural's vessel, internal populace, headspace, and other internal forces at work.
So far, here is my timeline for the use of "system" in a plural context.
Therapeutic Uses
So, I'm not completely sure, but I think the "system" term (though not the philosophy) originated with Internal Family Systems. According to the Foundation of Self Leadership (2020), which is devoted to IFS, Richard C. Schwartz published his first paper about what would become the model in 1987, with Our Multiple Selves: Applying Systems Thinking to the Inner Family. Most of the time, Schwarz uses "system" with an adjective modifying it--like "family system," or "inner system." However, he does use "system" as a standalone noun a few times, like, "When any one part/sub-self takes over the direction of the system, it is likely to become increasingly rigid, and the person will conceive of only a narrow range of ways of viewing and responding to the world." (PDF pg. 9)
Schwartz is also very clear that when he uses these terms, he does NOT mean strictly MPD; he separates a greater sense of plurality from it. "In a sense, we are all multiple personalities. The condition we call multiple personality disorder only represents an extremely disengaged and polarized version of the ordinary operation of our internal system." (PDF pg. 3)
I'm not sure if it was Schwartz himself who spread the ideas to MPD therapists, or if a broader systems theory bled through, but regardless, in December 1988, we have this citation from Richard Kluft's "The Phenomenology And Treatment Of Extremely Complex Multiple Personality Disorder" where he refers to "a system of alters." The specific "system of alters" term shows up later in the therapeutic literature in 1995, in Stephen Braude's "First Person Plural: Multiple Personality and the Philosophy of Mind," (pg. 127), Krakauer's "Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder: The Power of the Collective Heart" from 2001, and many, many others. Just google "system of alters" and you will find plenty.
Schwartz DEFINITELY inspired the terms used in 1998's Amongst Ourselves: A Self-Help Guide to Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder, by Tracy Alderman and Karen Marshall (two married therapists, one of whom is multiple). The combo of "system" and "parts" are a dead giveaway. They mostly use system as a standalone noun, as in "If children are being abused or harmed, their angry ones cannot come out, because their systems (the children and their alters) know that they will be placing themselves in further danger." (pg. 10)
Right now, my best guess as to what happened is, therapists started using "system" with their patients, either influenced by Richard Schwartz's "Inner Family Systems" model or broader systems theory. Plural patients then appropriated and adapted the terms for their own use, but Schwartz clearly never intended the terms to be strictly for MPD (or later, DID) patients.
Plural Uses
My records of plural community start in 1988, with the Many Voices newsletter, and the earliest use of the stand-alone word "system" in the plural slang sense that I've been able to find so far is in the December 1990 edition, on page eight: "I'm the part of the system called Terry and Friends." That's less than four years after "Our Multiple Selves."
By 1992, I see the term more often. First on March 12, on alt.sexual.abuse.recovery, by a poster going by Hineni. They also, very conveniently for me, cite Schwartz's work: "I adhere to the 'Internal Family Systems Model' (which title is quite misleading) that asserts instead of a monolithic personality (ie one 'I' as our 'ego'), we all have a multiplicity of parts inside (and one unique part called a 'Self'). [...] We all have a number of different parts (or subpersonalities) which coexist in an ecological system. [...] in my view we all have multiple personalities; only extremely polarized systems qualify for the term MPD (which term I dislike anyway)." So there you have it, non-MPD/DID plurals have been using the term system for over thirty years.
It's used again in the August 1992 issue of Many Voices, on page 10, in a little comic by Jessie and Helpers, AKA Jessie (part of Penny). It reads, "When memories get too overwhelming for me and everyone else in the system we draw pictures of a peaceful safe place." Many Voices was made for "people with MPD or a dissociative disorder," so it seems the word worked for them as well.
There are also September 1992 BBS records, which come latest and are also the weakest--I got them in plain-text from Astraea, back before the whole moving truck fiasco. Since I have to trust Astraea that the text files are true, I feel uncomfortable relying too heavily on them, but I was able to independently corroborate statements in the September 1992 BBS record of the existence of the Rockielynn System, who joined both alt.sexual.abuse.recovery and alt.support.dissociation in 1994. Other people in the Sept. 1992 BBS record also use the term "system" in the standalone, familiar way it is still used now: "We refer to ourselves as a system... and sometimes the system works, and sometimes it does not." One system's singlet wife says, "I care very much for - and love - everyone in the System."
A decent number of BBS users join alt.support.dissociation and alt.sexual.abuse.recovery, and "system" does as well. The term is used in Discord (RIP) and Sapphire Gazelles's alt.support.dissociation Insider FAQ, made in August 1994, the month of ASD's creation. The FAQ offers the following definition of "multiple system": "someone who has multiple persons/personalities living inside of one body. These are referred to here as alters. (As of the DSM-IV, this condition is called Dissociative Identity Disorder, but most people here will probably not use the official term.)"
Even though ASD was made for dissociatives, even in 1994, they stated that trauma was not the be-all, end-all of plural experience. In part 3 of the FAQ, there is this:
From Usenet (and probably also still from therapists), the term disseminated further. By October 2000, the Anachronic Army was using it on their site, Dark Personalities: "We are the Anachronic Army, having over 5000 in our system." They dismissed MPD as "An inaccurate label." In 2001, "system" is in their glossary, with the definition, "An alternate term for a multiple. The following are also alternates to the term multiple: tribe, household, group, collective, house, clan." Pavilion Hall will yoink this definition in their own glossary in 2002, practically unchanged, and Astraea will yoink that definition in turn; it's still up on their own glossary. Blackbirds, members of Pavilion Hall, will also use the term in the May 2002-era Laymen's Guide to Multiplicity. Seeing as Pavilion Hall debated whether people with MPD/DID even got to call themselves plural, it seems safe to presume they would never have used "system" if they associated the term with the diagnosis.
"System" was being used by May 2001 on the Livejournal multiplicity community; one plural's post of a (honestly, pretty upsetting) fight between them and their girlfriend has the line, "In order to preserve overall peace between our Systems this declaimer seemed necisary [sic]." It's used again and again by many different kinds of plural.
ATW also uses IFS terminology in their 2005 selves-help book, got parts? It's right there in the title and disclaimer: "The ideas, concepts, phrasing, wordings, and lay-definitions contained in this book are ones used by myself, my System, my therapist, and various persons from my DID groups, past and present." (pg. 5).
By the time we joined the LJ multiplicity and soulbonding comms in 2007, "system" had most definitely generalized into general plural use on that site, independently of therapists. We used the term in our first comic, MPD for You and Me, which we created that year. Livejournal's code has rotted, so that the names of comm members can no longer be seen, but we still have from our own records a few usernames with "system" in them that date back to this period, such as mysidia_system from 2006 (who followed soulbonding comms) and elementalsystem from 2008, who are a "trauma-induced system" who also state, "We believe in healthy multiplicity. We are not insane."
"System" became such a general purpose word, in fact, that it spawned other words based off of it, like "gateway system," (a metaphysical multi term, and the first record I can find of it is from Astraea in October 2005) and "in-system relationship," (used by Plures House in 2012).
So yeah. "System" may have originated from medical personnel, but it was not originated for MPD/DID folks or dissociatives. Even if they had, plurals appropriated it over thirty years ago, and at most conservative estimate, it was used by all kinds of plurals (traumatized and not, medicalized or not, anti-psych or not, metaphysical or not) by 1992. The term seems to have spread from BBS, to Usenet, to darkpersonalities.com and Livejournal, to tumblr, and it was only there that it became a bone of political contention, as far as I know.
2014: Suddenly System Is A Bone Of Contention
On August 7, 2014, TrashCanCollective posted on tumblr a question about the history of the terms "multiple" and "multiple system." No clue who it was who said this to them, but TCC quote someone claiming TCC don't get to use either term, because:
"Why do you think you have a right to a term that was created by dissociative people as a way to separate ourselves from the stigma attached to DID, and then contribute to that stigma by denying the reality of mental illness? Why do you invite yourself into spaces for disordered people but reject the disorder?
Shouldn’t we, dissociative people, be able to determine whether you’re allowed to identify with us?
Whether you’re allowed to come into our space, use our terms that we invented to cope positively with a disorder that you don’t even have?
[...]
Comfortable terminology was our way of coping. It was our safe space. How dare non-disordered people delegitimize our disorder. Words like “multiplicity” and “multiple system” aren’t attributed to the disordered - they belong to us.” [emphasis theirs]
It's refreshingly transparent and factually incorrect. "Dissociative people" are not a homogenous culture, and neither are the terms and language used. A fair number of people with DID or dissociative disorders don't use the term! I went to the Ivory Garden Trauma and Dissociation Conference in 2015, did a panel there, and nobody knew what I was banging on about when I used the word "system." It just wasn't used there, not around me anyway.
Sources:
Alderman and Marshall. (1998). Amongst Ourselves: A Self-Help Guide to Living With Dissociative Identity Disorder. Oakland: New Harbinger Publications.
Anachronic Army. (2000, October 2). Dark Personalities – The Dark Side of Multiplicity [web page] http://www.darkpersonalities.com:80/index2.html Internet Archive. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20001002094513/http://www.darkpersonalities.com:80/index2.html
Anachronic Army. (2001, May 19). Terminology [web page]. http://www.darkpersonalities.com/terminology.htm Internet Archive. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20010519115202/http://darkpersonalities.com/terminology.htm
Astraea. (2003, January 11). Glossary [web page]. http://astraeasweb.net/plural/glossary.html Internet Archive. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20030111103116/http://astraeasweb.net/plural/glossary.html
Astraea. (2005, October 23). Glossary [web page]. http://astraeasweb.net/plural/glossary.html Internet Archive. Retrieved from web.archive.org/web/20051023034816/http://astraeasweb.net:80/plural/glossary.html
ATW. (2005). got parts? An Insider's Guide to Managing Life Successfully with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Ann Arbor: Loving Healing Press.
Blackbirds. (2002). The Laymen's Guide to Multiplicity. Retrieved from http://www.karitas.net/blackbirds/layman/brochure_pluralv1.1.pdf
Braude, Stephen. (1995). First Person Plural: Multiple Personality and the Philosophy of Mind. Rowman & Littlefield. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=DzkjTO1OkYMC&pg=PA127&lpg=PA127&dq=%22system+of+alters%22&source=bl&ots=pjjD23sQ40&sig=cYTNRgwDBA7vxgMkcI4J2vucLbk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiq8tHTkK3WAhXFJiYKHQgKBWsQ6AEISzAK#v=onepage&q=%22system%20of%20alters%22&f=false
brentmisato. (2001). Case in Point [Livejournal post]. Retrieved from https://multiplicity.livejournal.com/2651.html
Discord and Sapphire Gazelles. (1994, September 7). alt.support.dissociation FAQ 3/4 [Usenet message]. Retrieved from https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.support.dissociation/syXW3KkhIZA/gM5TsFZmt2sJ
Discord and Sapphire Gazelles. (1995, May 14). alt.support.dissociation FAQ 3/4 [Usenet message]. Retrieved 3/10/19 from http://faqs.cs.uu.nl/na-dir/dissoc-faq/part3.html
Elemental System. (n.d.). The Elements - Home [web page]. Retrieved from https://elementalsystem.weebly.com/index.html
Elemental System. (n.d.). Personal Life - The Elements [web page]. Retrieved from https://elementalsystem.weebly.com/personal-life.html
Foundation for Self Leadership. (2020). First Published Article on IFS Identified. Retrieved from https://foundationifs.org/news/179-outlook-shorts-december-2020
Hineni. (1992). posted for asar.47 (Hineni)/Internal Family Model [Usenet post]. Retrieved from https://groups.google.com/g/alt.sexual.abuse.recovery/c/6f2Mi_sRV9w/m/oSkO-JkPskcJ
Kluft, Richard. (1988). The Phenomenology And Treatment Of Extremely Complex Multiple Personality Disorder. Dissociation, Vol. 1, No. 4. Retrieved from https://scholarsbank.uoregon.edu/xmlui/bitstream/handle/1794/1396/Diss_1_4_8_OCR_rev.pdf?sequence=4
Krakauer, Sarah. (2001). Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder: The Power of the Collective Heart. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=jDo7Edmljp4C&pg=PA56&lpg=PA56&dq=%22system+of+alters%22&source=bl&ots=Roq7GN0V3t&sig=Q81b-VbTMKZ2coP8zXVeFredd88&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjHp4O5k63WAhXJSyYKHePcCQMQ6AEIRTAI#v=onepage&q=%22system%20of%20alters%22&f=false
Lee, LB. (2007). MPD for You and Me. Retrieved from https://healthymultiplicity.com/loonybrain/Comics/MPD/MPD01.html
Lee, LB. (2017). Earliest Date I can Find for "Multiple is DID-only; all others are appropriating!" [blog post]. Retrieved from https://lb-lee.dreamwidth.org/885669.html
Many Voices Press. (December 1990). Many Voices: Words of Hope for Clients with MPD and Dissociative Disorders. Vol. II, No. 6. Retrieved from http://manyvoicespress.org/backissues-pdf/1990_12.pdf
Many Voices Press. (June 1992). Many Voices: Words of Hope for Clients with MPD and Dissociative Disorders. Vol. IV, No. 3. Retrieved from http://manyvoicespress.org/backissues-pdf/1992_06.pdf
Many Voices Press. (August 1992). Many Voices: Words of Hope for Clients with MPD and Dissociative Disorders. Vol. IV, No. 4. Retrieved from http://manyvoicespress.org/backissues-pdf/1992_08.pdf
Pavilion Hall. (2003). Terminology [web page]. http://www.tanuki.cx:80/pavilion/policies/glossary.html Internet Archive Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20030725121142/http://www.tanuki.cx:80/pavilion/policies/glossary.html
Pavilion Hall. (2002). Overview : Addressing the MPD/DID Issue [web page]. http://www.tanuki.cx:80/pavilion/codex/overview/mpd.html Internet Archive. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20021008150653/http://www.tanuki.cx:80/pavilion/codex/overview/mpd.html
Plures House. (2012). In-System Relationships: Fact and Fiction [web page]. Retrieved from https://www.exunoplures.org/main/articles/systemrelationships/
RockieLynn. (1994, November 28). Introduction, betrayal, anger [Usenet post]. Retrieved from groups.google.com/g/alt.support.dissociation/c/6daUymBAMA8/m/aB5qDXZrumMJ
Schwartz, Richard. (1987). Our Multiple Selves: applying systems thinking to the inner family. Family Therapy Networker, 11, 24-31, 80-83. Retrieved from https://foundationifs.org/images/Schwartz_1987_Our_Multiple_Selves.pdf (Sorry, not screen-reader-able.)
Trash Can Collective [not-your-fucking-pet]. (2014, August 7). Fellow plural people? [tumblr post]. Retrieved from http://not-your-fucking-pet.tumblr.com/post/94111819808/fellow-plural-people
So far, here is my timeline for the use of "system" in a plural context.
Therapeutic Uses
So, I'm not completely sure, but I think the "system" term (though not the philosophy) originated with Internal Family Systems. According to the Foundation of Self Leadership (2020), which is devoted to IFS, Richard C. Schwartz published his first paper about what would become the model in 1987, with Our Multiple Selves: Applying Systems Thinking to the Inner Family. Most of the time, Schwarz uses "system" with an adjective modifying it--like "family system," or "inner system." However, he does use "system" as a standalone noun a few times, like, "When any one part/sub-self takes over the direction of the system, it is likely to become increasingly rigid, and the person will conceive of only a narrow range of ways of viewing and responding to the world." (PDF pg. 9)
Schwartz is also very clear that when he uses these terms, he does NOT mean strictly MPD; he separates a greater sense of plurality from it. "In a sense, we are all multiple personalities. The condition we call multiple personality disorder only represents an extremely disengaged and polarized version of the ordinary operation of our internal system." (PDF pg. 3)
I'm not sure if it was Schwartz himself who spread the ideas to MPD therapists, or if a broader systems theory bled through, but regardless, in December 1988, we have this citation from Richard Kluft's "The Phenomenology And Treatment Of Extremely Complex Multiple Personality Disorder" where he refers to "a system of alters." The specific "system of alters" term shows up later in the therapeutic literature in 1995, in Stephen Braude's "First Person Plural: Multiple Personality and the Philosophy of Mind," (pg. 127), Krakauer's "Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder: The Power of the Collective Heart" from 2001, and many, many others. Just google "system of alters" and you will find plenty.
Schwartz DEFINITELY inspired the terms used in 1998's Amongst Ourselves: A Self-Help Guide to Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder, by Tracy Alderman and Karen Marshall (two married therapists, one of whom is multiple). The combo of "system" and "parts" are a dead giveaway. They mostly use system as a standalone noun, as in "If children are being abused or harmed, their angry ones cannot come out, because their systems (the children and their alters) know that they will be placing themselves in further danger." (pg. 10)
Right now, my best guess as to what happened is, therapists started using "system" with their patients, either influenced by Richard Schwartz's "Inner Family Systems" model or broader systems theory. Plural patients then appropriated and adapted the terms for their own use, but Schwartz clearly never intended the terms to be strictly for MPD (or later, DID) patients.
Plural Uses
My records of plural community start in 1988, with the Many Voices newsletter, and the earliest use of the stand-alone word "system" in the plural slang sense that I've been able to find so far is in the December 1990 edition, on page eight: "I'm the part of the system called Terry and Friends." That's less than four years after "Our Multiple Selves."
By 1992, I see the term more often. First on March 12, on alt.sexual.abuse.recovery, by a poster going by Hineni. They also, very conveniently for me, cite Schwartz's work: "I adhere to the 'Internal Family Systems Model' (which title is quite misleading) that asserts instead of a monolithic personality (ie one 'I' as our 'ego'), we all have a multiplicity of parts inside (and one unique part called a 'Self'). [...] We all have a number of different parts (or subpersonalities) which coexist in an ecological system. [...] in my view we all have multiple personalities; only extremely polarized systems qualify for the term MPD (which term I dislike anyway)." So there you have it, non-MPD/DID plurals have been using the term system for over thirty years.
It's used again in the August 1992 issue of Many Voices, on page 10, in a little comic by Jessie and Helpers, AKA Jessie (part of Penny). It reads, "When memories get too overwhelming for me and everyone else in the system we draw pictures of a peaceful safe place." Many Voices was made for "people with MPD or a dissociative disorder," so it seems the word worked for them as well.
There are also September 1992 BBS records, which come latest and are also the weakest--I got them in plain-text from Astraea, back before the whole moving truck fiasco. Since I have to trust Astraea that the text files are true, I feel uncomfortable relying too heavily on them, but I was able to independently corroborate statements in the September 1992 BBS record of the existence of the Rockielynn System, who joined both alt.sexual.abuse.recovery and alt.support.dissociation in 1994. Other people in the Sept. 1992 BBS record also use the term "system" in the standalone, familiar way it is still used now: "We refer to ourselves as a system... and sometimes the system works, and sometimes it does not." One system's singlet wife says, "I care very much for - and love - everyone in the System."
A decent number of BBS users join alt.support.dissociation and alt.sexual.abuse.recovery, and "system" does as well. The term is used in Discord (RIP) and Sapphire Gazelles's alt.support.dissociation Insider FAQ, made in August 1994, the month of ASD's creation. The FAQ offers the following definition of "multiple system": "someone who has multiple persons/personalities living inside of one body. These are referred to here as alters. (As of the DSM-IV, this condition is called Dissociative Identity Disorder, but most people here will probably not use the official term.)"
Even though ASD was made for dissociatives, even in 1994, they stated that trauma was not the be-all, end-all of plural experience. In part 3 of the FAQ, there is this:
"Q: "Are there cases where there was no trauma involved, where the person
became multiple at a later age, or both?"
"Yes. A friend of Maelstrom's who she has known for many years recently told
her he was multiple. In his case, the initial split came during high
school, and there was no trauma (or, to be specific, there is nothing he
considered traumatic) that preceded it.
"And, as mentioned above, children who had a dissociative role model, but
who were not abused, may themselves become multiple."
From Usenet (and probably also still from therapists), the term disseminated further. By October 2000, the Anachronic Army was using it on their site, Dark Personalities: "We are the Anachronic Army, having over 5000 in our system." They dismissed MPD as "An inaccurate label." In 2001, "system" is in their glossary, with the definition, "An alternate term for a multiple. The following are also alternates to the term multiple: tribe, household, group, collective, house, clan." Pavilion Hall will yoink this definition in their own glossary in 2002, practically unchanged, and Astraea will yoink that definition in turn; it's still up on their own glossary. Blackbirds, members of Pavilion Hall, will also use the term in the May 2002-era Laymen's Guide to Multiplicity. Seeing as Pavilion Hall debated whether people with MPD/DID even got to call themselves plural, it seems safe to presume they would never have used "system" if they associated the term with the diagnosis.
"System" was being used by May 2001 on the Livejournal multiplicity community; one plural's post of a (honestly, pretty upsetting) fight between them and their girlfriend has the line, "In order to preserve overall peace between our Systems this declaimer seemed necisary [sic]." It's used again and again by many different kinds of plural.
ATW also uses IFS terminology in their 2005 selves-help book, got parts? It's right there in the title and disclaimer: "The ideas, concepts, phrasing, wordings, and lay-definitions contained in this book are ones used by myself, my System, my therapist, and various persons from my DID groups, past and present." (pg. 5).
By the time we joined the LJ multiplicity and soulbonding comms in 2007, "system" had most definitely generalized into general plural use on that site, independently of therapists. We used the term in our first comic, MPD for You and Me, which we created that year. Livejournal's code has rotted, so that the names of comm members can no longer be seen, but we still have from our own records a few usernames with "system" in them that date back to this period, such as mysidia_system from 2006 (who followed soulbonding comms) and elementalsystem from 2008, who are a "trauma-induced system" who also state, "We believe in healthy multiplicity. We are not insane."
"System" became such a general purpose word, in fact, that it spawned other words based off of it, like "gateway system," (a metaphysical multi term, and the first record I can find of it is from Astraea in October 2005) and "in-system relationship," (used by Plures House in 2012).
So yeah. "System" may have originated from medical personnel, but it was not originated for MPD/DID folks or dissociatives. Even if they had, plurals appropriated it over thirty years ago, and at most conservative estimate, it was used by all kinds of plurals (traumatized and not, medicalized or not, anti-psych or not, metaphysical or not) by 1992. The term seems to have spread from BBS, to Usenet, to darkpersonalities.com and Livejournal, to tumblr, and it was only there that it became a bone of political contention, as far as I know.
2014: Suddenly System Is A Bone Of Contention
On August 7, 2014, TrashCanCollective posted on tumblr a question about the history of the terms "multiple" and "multiple system." No clue who it was who said this to them, but TCC quote someone claiming TCC don't get to use either term, because:
"Why do you think you have a right to a term that was created by dissociative people as a way to separate ourselves from the stigma attached to DID, and then contribute to that stigma by denying the reality of mental illness? Why do you invite yourself into spaces for disordered people but reject the disorder?
Shouldn’t we, dissociative people, be able to determine whether you’re allowed to identify with us?
Whether you’re allowed to come into our space, use our terms that we invented to cope positively with a disorder that you don’t even have?
[...]
Comfortable terminology was our way of coping. It was our safe space. How dare non-disordered people delegitimize our disorder. Words like “multiplicity” and “multiple system” aren’t attributed to the disordered - they belong to us.” [emphasis theirs]
It's refreshingly transparent and factually incorrect. "Dissociative people" are not a homogenous culture, and neither are the terms and language used. A fair number of people with DID or dissociative disorders don't use the term! I went to the Ivory Garden Trauma and Dissociation Conference in 2015, did a panel there, and nobody knew what I was banging on about when I used the word "system." It just wasn't used there, not around me anyway.
Sources:
Alderman and Marshall. (1998). Amongst Ourselves: A Self-Help Guide to Living With Dissociative Identity Disorder. Oakland: New Harbinger Publications.
Anachronic Army. (2000, October 2). Dark Personalities – The Dark Side of Multiplicity [web page] http://www.darkpersonalities.com:80/index2.html Internet Archive. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20001002094513/http://www.darkpersonalities.com:80/index2.html
Anachronic Army. (2001, May 19). Terminology [web page]. http://www.darkpersonalities.com/terminology.htm Internet Archive. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20010519115202/http://darkpersonalities.com/terminology.htm
Astraea. (2003, January 11). Glossary [web page]. http://astraeasweb.net/plural/glossary.html Internet Archive. Retrieved from https://web.archive.org/web/20030111103116/http://astraeasweb.net/plural/glossary.html
Astraea. (2005, October 23). Glossary [web page]. http://astraeasweb.net/plural/glossary.html Internet Archive. Retrieved from web.archive.org/web/20051023034816/http://astraeasweb.net:80/plural/glossary.html
ATW. (2005). got parts? An Insider's Guide to Managing Life Successfully with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Ann Arbor: Loving Healing Press.
Blackbirds. (2002). The Laymen's Guide to Multiplicity. Retrieved from http://www.karitas.net/blackbirds/layman/brochure_pluralv1.1.pdf
Braude, Stephen. (1995). First Person Plural: Multiple Personality and the Philosophy of Mind. Rowman & Littlefield. Retrieved from https://books.google.com/books?id=DzkjTO1OkYMC&pg=PA127&lpg=PA127&dq=%22system+of+alters%22&source=bl&ots=pjjD23sQ40&sig=cYTNRgwDBA7vxgMkcI4J2vucLbk&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiq8tHTkK3WAhXFJiYKHQgKBWsQ6AEISzAK#v=onepage&q=%22system%20of%20alters%22&f=false
brentmisato. (2001). Case in Point [Livejournal post]. Retrieved from https://multiplicity.livejournal.com/2651.html
Discord and Sapphire Gazelles. (1994, September 7). alt.support.dissociation FAQ 3/4 [Usenet message]. Retrieved from https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt.support.dissociation/syXW3KkhIZA/gM5TsFZmt2sJ
Discord and Sapphire Gazelles. (1995, May 14). alt.support.dissociation FAQ 3/4 [Usenet message]. Retrieved 3/10/19 from http://faqs.cs.uu.nl/na-dir/dissoc-faq/part3.html
Elemental System. (n.d.). The Elements - Home [web page]. Retrieved from https://elementalsystem.weebly.com/index.html
Elemental System. (n.d.). Personal Life - The Elements [web page]. Retrieved from https://elementalsystem.weebly.com/personal-life.html
Foundation for Self Leadership. (2020). First Published Article on IFS Identified. Retrieved from https://foundationifs.org/news/179-outlook-shorts-december-2020
Hineni. (1992). posted for asar.47 (Hineni)/Internal Family Model [Usenet post]. Retrieved from https://groups.google.com/g/alt.sexual.abuse.recovery/c/6f2Mi_sRV9w/m/oSkO-JkPskcJ
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"System" used by "fakers"
Fantastic read! Thank you so much for doing this work!
Something we've come across mentioned a few times, that I'm wondering if y'all might have come across is, we've been told that prior to around 2012-2014 exclusionists would say that the term system was only used by people faking multiplicity. Have you come across that yourselves and/or do you have some references we could dig into?
Re: "System" used by "fakers"
Re: "System" used by "fakers"
Re: "System" used by "fakers"