I Still Say MPD Multis Don't Own "System"
Mar. 28th, 2026 08:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeRogan: hungryghosts nerd-sniped me with, of course, multi etymology! Specifically, an anthology that looked like it might contradict my previous posts on the history of the use of "system" in plural space! Richard P. Kluft was the editor; it's Childhood Antecedents of Multiple Personality from 1985!
In my previous posts, I'd noticed that Kluft used the term "system of personalities" or "system of alters" in his later 1988 work "The Phenomenology and Treatment Of Extremely Complex Multiple Personality Disorder." But I was willing to stake a lot on that not being the same as how Richard Schwartz, in "Our Multiple Selves" in 1987, used "system" and "parts" as standalone nouns.
"System" is an extremely general term in English. We have plumbing systems, nervous systems, family systems, computer systems... "system" basically means any group of independent yet interrelated parts that interact with each other in a complex enough way that the system can take on almost an independent life of its own, beyond those parts. (Using a family as an example, sometimes a family will get stuck into a self-defeating behavior pattern that none of the individuals want or like, but also can't seem to break out of or figure out where this pattern came from, or even that it's there.) Because the word is so general-purpose, "system" is a pain in the ass to trace; it's not as simple as just looking to see if someone uses the word "system" to refer to a multiple. It's about the context and framing of the term, the specifics of meaning.
For years now, I've argued that Kluft's use of "system of alters" or "system of personalities" is subtly but significantly different from Schwartz's plain "system" or "[adjective] system," for the simple reason that I can't remember ever hearing a multi say "I'm a system of personalities" or describing "our system of alters." It's always, "we're a system," or "the Elemental System," or "a gateway system," or whatever. And I still will happily stake all my bodily organs (my bodily system, as it were) on how any multi who uses "system" and "parts" in the same breath is pulling from Schwartz, NOT Kluft.
That said, this anthology does use system as a standalone noun in 1985! (And don't you dare stop reading here, I'm not done.) Here are all the times writers use the standalone term "system" or "[adjective] system" in a way that could be connected to how plurals use it now (all page numbers are per the paper book; I also say which author and article it was):
Hey, wow, that sounds very much like how Schwartz uses it, doesn't it? Maybe I owe Braun and Sachs an organ!
Well, this leads to the question: is a psychological system, as Kluft means it, the same as a plural system as nowadays plurals mean it? That's a more complicated question than it appears; language and meaning are squishy, and we're kinda running up against the edge of what English is equipped to describe. More data points needed!
Someone with a strict medical point of view would probably be nodding along and saying, "yes, yes, this is right," but I'm not sure "MPD is a system" and "WE are a system" mean the same thing.
See, this "psychological system" seems more to describe a greater, more gestalt idea of someone's psyche than how plurals these days use "system," which mostly just means "our roster" or maybe "our roster and our headspace."
"System" here is used to describe someone before they become multiple. Plurals these days generally don't refer to "their system" from when they were singlet, even though, if you're talking about a greater psychological thing, it'd be accurate. Singlet or plural, we retain these psychological systems! But that psychological system has a totally different meaning than when a plural calls themselves "a psychological system" (meaning, that they view themselves from a mental science perspective, with no religious or otherordinary aspects).
Yeah, here they're specifically using "system" to mean a complex series of interrelated strategies to keep someone/s from being overwhelmed by their environment. It also doesn't really make room for other traumatized dissociatives, who may not be multi at all. (Remember this is 1985. MPD had only existed for four years as a diagnosis at this point!)
Not sure here whether they mean it in the "roster and/or headspace" way or the greater psychological way.
Again, unsure. But then, I found this one:
AHA! All right, I feel pretty certain now: no plural on earth, none I have ever fucking met or read about, have EVER used the term "single system." Indeed, "system" and "singlet" are treated as antitheses: a singlet isn't a system, by that slang usage! They're a psychological system, sure, but they aren't a PLURAL system, of any type! (EDIT:incorrecthorse has corrected me on this; apparently some folks have used this term to fight the singlet/system binary... but this seems to be a post-2020 thing?) And Frischholz and Braun both came from the University of Illinois, Chicago, while Sachs worked in private practice in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago, so it doesn't seem TOTALLY unreasonable that they may mean roughly the same thing. And gee golly, go figure, Richard Schwartz also worked at the University of Illinois, Chicago (though I'm not sure if he was at this precise moment)! It's not impossible these people influenced each other or the terms they used!
On top of all that, it is plenty possible that plurals mixed and matched Kluft's "system of..." usage and Schwartz's "system" and "parts" usage to come up with their own terminology! Kluft was a pretty big dog, at least back in the day, and Schwartz was being cited by name as a reason for one non-MPD multi's vocabulary in March 1992.
But frankly, even if Frischholz and Braun and Sachs did invent the term system, and even if that did solely prove the term was originally intended solely for MPD (which it doesn't, unless the multis claiming it ALSO want to admit "single system" allows singlets to call themselves systems)... non-MPD systems have been using it since March 1992. That's thirty-four years of common use, and I can testify that during my Livejournal multi days, "system" was considered an inoffensive, common use term in the late 2000s and the early 2010s. It only started becoming "controversial" with tumblr around 2014, with the whole "using medical terms is cultural appropriation" absurdity.
Because, let me emphasize. The whole "cultural appropriation" argument, when used in places like tumblr, usually refers to an oppressed culture having their cherished relics and rites stolen by outsiders. Don't pretend that the language singlet doctors use to refer to us is comparable. It's insulting.
Citations
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, R.P. (Ed.). (1985). Childhood antecedents of multiple personality. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/childhoodanteced00kluf
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
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.)
hungryghosts nerd-sniped me with, of course, multi etymology! Specifically, an anthology that looked like it might contradict my previous posts on the history of the use of "system" in plural space! Richard P. Kluft was the editor; it's Childhood Antecedents of Multiple Personality from 1985!In my previous posts, I'd noticed that Kluft used the term "system of personalities" or "system of alters" in his later 1988 work "The Phenomenology and Treatment Of Extremely Complex Multiple Personality Disorder." But I was willing to stake a lot on that not being the same as how Richard Schwartz, in "Our Multiple Selves" in 1987, used "system" and "parts" as standalone nouns.
"System" is an extremely general term in English. We have plumbing systems, nervous systems, family systems, computer systems... "system" basically means any group of independent yet interrelated parts that interact with each other in a complex enough way that the system can take on almost an independent life of its own, beyond those parts. (Using a family as an example, sometimes a family will get stuck into a self-defeating behavior pattern that none of the individuals want or like, but also can't seem to break out of or figure out where this pattern came from, or even that it's there.) Because the word is so general-purpose, "system" is a pain in the ass to trace; it's not as simple as just looking to see if someone uses the word "system" to refer to a multiple. It's about the context and framing of the term, the specifics of meaning.
For years now, I've argued that Kluft's use of "system of alters" or "system of personalities" is subtly but significantly different from Schwartz's plain "system" or "[adjective] system," for the simple reason that I can't remember ever hearing a multi say "I'm a system of personalities" or describing "our system of alters." It's always, "we're a system," or "the Elemental System," or "a gateway system," or whatever. And I still will happily stake all my bodily organs (my bodily system, as it were) on how any multi who uses "system" and "parts" in the same breath is pulling from Schwartz, NOT Kluft.
That said, this anthology does use system as a standalone noun in 1985! (And don't you dare stop reading here, I'm not done.) Here are all the times writers use the standalone term "system" or "[adjective] system" in a way that could be connected to how plurals use it now (all page numbers are per the paper book; I also say which author and article it was):
"information acquired while one personality is in executive control of the body is still available to the system, although it may not be consciously accessible to other personalities at a given point in time" (pg. 41-42, "The Development of Multiple Personality Disorder: Predisposing, Precipitating, and Perpetuating Factors" by Bennett G. Braun, M.D., M.S. and Roberta G. Sachs)
Hey, wow, that sounds very much like how Schwartz uses it, doesn't it? Maybe I owe Braun and Sachs an organ!
"the psychological system in multiple personality disorder patients in a sense 'created' the alternate personalities." (45-46, ibid)
Well, this leads to the question: is a psychological system, as Kluft means it, the same as a plural system as nowadays plurals mean it? That's a more complicated question than it appears; language and meaning are squishy, and we're kinda running up against the edge of what English is equipped to describe. More data points needed!
"The personalities that appear, and that have a range of emotions, memories, and behaviors, make up a system we call multiple personality disorder." (50, ibid)
Someone with a strict medical point of view would probably be nodding along and saying, "yes, yes, this is right," but I'm not sure "MPD is a system" and "WE are a system" mean the same thing.
"multiple personality disorder patients repeatedly use dissociation as a defense against stress. Since the dissociation usually results in a temporary relief from stress and anxiety, the repeated use of this ability as a coping mechanism leads to its being continuously reinforced. Hence, it becomes the preferred or dominant form of defense in the individual's psychological system." (50, ibid)
See, this "psychological system" seems more to describe a greater, more gestalt idea of someone's psyche than how plurals these days use "system," which mostly just means "our roster" or maybe "our roster and our headspace."
"predisposing factors include both individual (biological capacity to dissociate, individual psychodynamics) and environmental (family dynamics) variables. These factors interact with inconsistent love/abuse or other traumatic stimuli until one particular precipitating event causes an initial split. This is reinforcing because it protects the system from the overwhelming anxiety associated with the event. If sufficient perpetuating phenomena are present to stimulate repeated dissociation, an alternate personality begins to develop." (54, ibid)
"System" here is used to describe someone before they become multiple. Plurals these days generally don't refer to "their system" from when they were singlet, even though, if you're talking about a greater psychological thing, it'd be accurate. Singlet or plural, we retain these psychological systems! But that psychological system has a totally different meaning than when a plural calls themselves "a psychological system" (meaning, that they view themselves from a mental science perspective, with no religious or otherordinary aspects).
"The present model emphasizes that multiple personality disorder only occurs in individuals who have a natural inborn capacity to dissociate, and are exposed to some type of overwhelming anxiety that promotes the continued use of a dissociative defense system." (60, ibid)
Yeah, here they're specifically using "system" to mean a complex series of interrelated strategies to keep someone/s from being overwhelmed by their environment. It also doesn't really make room for other traumatized dissociatives, who may not be multi at all. (Remember this is 1985. MPD had only existed for four years as a diagnosis at this point!)
"Dissociative fragments produced by precipitating events that are not united by a common theme are still present in the system, but do not usually develop into distinct personalities." (60, ibid)
Not sure here whether they mean it in the "roster and/or headspace" way or the greater psychological way.
"we need to know more about how dissociation operates as a psychological defense mechanism in protecting the psychological system from overwhelming anxiety." (109, "The Relationship Among Dissociation, Hypnosis, and Child Abuse in the Development of Multiple Personality Disorder" by Edward J. Frischholz, M.A)
Again, unsure. But then, I found this one:
"The occurrence of the "hidden observer" in multiple personality disorder patients was also found to be closely related to the patients' level of adaptive functioning. Those multiple personality disorder patients who were just beginning treatment all showed a "hidden observer." However, multiple personality disorder patients who had been in treatment for several years showed almost no evidence of this phenomenon. It was almost as if these patients appeared to reject the metaphor of the "hidden observer," perhaps because they were on their way toward integrating their various personalities into a single system." (117, ibid, emphasis mine)
AHA! All right, I feel pretty certain now: no plural on earth, none I have ever fucking met or read about, have EVER used the term "single system." Indeed, "system" and "singlet" are treated as antitheses: a singlet isn't a system, by that slang usage! They're a psychological system, sure, but they aren't a PLURAL system, of any type! (EDIT:
incorrecthorse has corrected me on this; apparently some folks have used this term to fight the singlet/system binary... but this seems to be a post-2020 thing?) And Frischholz and Braun both came from the University of Illinois, Chicago, while Sachs worked in private practice in Highland Park, a suburb of Chicago, so it doesn't seem TOTALLY unreasonable that they may mean roughly the same thing. And gee golly, go figure, Richard Schwartz also worked at the University of Illinois, Chicago (though I'm not sure if he was at this precise moment)! It's not impossible these people influenced each other or the terms they used!On top of all that, it is plenty possible that plurals mixed and matched Kluft's "system of..." usage and Schwartz's "system" and "parts" usage to come up with their own terminology! Kluft was a pretty big dog, at least back in the day, and Schwartz was being cited by name as a reason for one non-MPD multi's vocabulary in March 1992.
But frankly, even if Frischholz and Braun and Sachs did invent the term system, and even if that did solely prove the term was originally intended solely for MPD (which it doesn't, unless the multis claiming it ALSO want to admit "single system" allows singlets to call themselves systems)... non-MPD systems have been using it since March 1992. That's thirty-four years of common use, and I can testify that during my Livejournal multi days, "system" was considered an inoffensive, common use term in the late 2000s and the early 2010s. It only started becoming "controversial" with tumblr around 2014, with the whole "using medical terms is cultural appropriation" absurdity.
Because, let me emphasize. The whole "cultural appropriation" argument, when used in places like tumblr, usually refers to an oppressed culture having their cherished relics and rites stolen by outsiders. Don't pretend that the language singlet doctors use to refer to us is comparable. It's insulting.
Citations
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, R.P. (Ed.). (1985). Childhood antecedents of multiple personality. Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press. Retrieved from https://archive.org/details/childhoodanteced00kluf
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
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.)
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Date: 2026-03-29 04:31 pm (UTC)I've never really thought about how plurals came to use "system" as a term for their "roster and/or headspace," so as always, I appreciate the research you've done (and hungryghosts for nerd-sniping)! As you've made clear, this isn't any sort of definitive proof, but it does offer a possible explanation.
Despite having gotten on Tumblr in 2015 and being all-too familiar with that particular brand of "discourse" (though I only became plural in 2024; Lav and I don't use that framework for our munbonding), I had a blissful moment of confusion thinking the word "system" became controversial in plural spaces because not everymany likes the word for themselves, not because of bullshit claims of "cultural appropriation" (one of those "put this on the high shelf" words that I don't think ever really got put on the high shelf). Ugh. đŽâđ¨
This made me curious about when "plurality" became the preferred umbrella term over "multiplicity" in many non-singlet spaces, so I braved the Plural Identity Wikipedia article. I had no idea there was a cross-community vote on its use!
(I also had no idea the -genic binary was made even more inescapable by being presented at the fucking Plural Positivity World Conference. The invention of those terms really was a Pandora's box, huh. I personally wanna live in the timeline where Emmengard's mix-and-match plural rings categoriesâadaptive, created, spontaneous, unknownâbecame the prominent terms if we must have origin labels, which admittedly may have been inevitable. I do think we were better off moving away from "natural system," at least.)
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Date: 2026-03-29 06:14 pm (UTC)Apparently in China, Emmengardâs rings version is way more popular!
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Date: 2026-03-29 05:16 pm (UTC)we've definitely seen plurals say "singlet system", but just as part of arguments against using "system" as the default word for plural collectives, not to actually refer to singlets in casual conversations
usually it's about avoiding using "system" in general because some plurals are uncomfortable being called that, often because of the psychiatric and psychological associations, but also there's this essay (actually we're not very good at summarizing it so will just quote the paragraphs with "singlet system" mentions, we've also last read it a long time ago and that website isn't easy to read for us. emphasis ours)
(also we have definitely said "singlet systems" ourselves... that also might've been in a "the system/non-system dichotomy is silly because everyone is some kind of system, so it's more a question of whether calling yourself or -selves a system works for you" kind of context)
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Date: 2026-03-29 06:10 pm (UTC)Itâs funny, since âsystemâ was considered NOT a medical term back in my older days; lots of non-medical multis used it as an acceptable substitute.
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Date: 2026-03-29 08:15 pm (UTC)yeah it's still used in non-medical ways a lot too, sometimes you just get bad associations with words
for us it's not really anything we've experienced from medical institutions, but the associations with mainstream social media and the plural culture there and all the wank, some of which is medical, kinda spoiled it, and there are other words that work for us and don't have those associations, so we prefer those instead (usually just a vague "we're plural", "collective" when it feels like we need a noun)
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Date: 2026-03-29 10:38 pm (UTC)We ourself just say we're multi/plural, and if we have to use a collective noun for us, we call ourselves a crew or something. Because vessels have crews!
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Date: 2026-03-30 02:24 am (UTC)funny you mention "household", because this conversation also made us think really hard if any collective nouns really fit us, and we were like "we're basically roommates, and there isn't a noun to refer to roommates", and then we remembered "household". we giggled at the idea of calling ourselves a "headhold" or a "mindhold" or a "brainhold", and were going to look up if there were any real words similarly formed with -hold so we could get inspiration from them but got distracted
just actually looked it up and there actually seems to be no other ones also referring to collectives, but we did discover the wiktionary category "collectives" which is... too many words to fully process, but looking at some random ones and imagining them be used as nouns or names for plurals is funny. also just discovered "multiplet" is a real word through that. we'll probably end up using that in at least some kind of jokey plural context too someday. not sure if it feels silly because it is silly or just because we haven't seen it be used before.
household itself is actually kinda nice, we haven't considered it, but we also live with other people and have people we'd want to live with in the future, so it would probably get confusing
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Date: 2026-04-02 12:02 am (UTC)Funny you mention them being separate, because as far as I can remember, we never even saw anyone there use the term "plurality." It wasn't until 2023, after we left and we were poking around gender stuff in other places that we saw mentions of plurality as a word for this whole being many type deal.
It was like, during our time on the forum, tulpa was kind of a catch-all term for any headmates who weren't the host or soulbonds ("fictive" was a term hardly ever used, it was almost always soulbond). To the point where we called ourselves tulpas, despite not being created, because we had no other framework to interpret our existance. There's also this term used there, "natural tulpa," and I was wondering if it could possibly stem from "natural multiple?" Maybe that implies there's some influences from multi communities at some point?
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Date: 2026-04-16 05:59 pm (UTC)Love to see so many quotes with actual context!
Funny enough, I feel like "integrating their various personalities into a single system" is a phrase people would use these days...but with a completely different meaning from how the 1980s book used it. (As in "a disorganized mess of a plural system becoming a healthier plural system where the members are all connected and well-coordinated," not "a plural system becoming a singlet.")
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Date: 2026-04-16 07:18 pm (UTC)And yeah, apparently people DO use "single system" nowadays, but all the cites I could find for it was post-2020, and I'm pretty sure they weren't using it because of this '85 anthology! They seemed to be coming from a different place, culturally.