Despite this level of internal cooperation, disagreements
 
can be aired in public. Two alters post that their "host"
 
personality is trying to shut them out. They are crying out
 
for help. Another poster (with no alter signature and the

subject "I quit!") complains that she doesn't want to be a
 
multiple any more. That she is going to ignore the voices

in her head. Others advise her that that method is
 
doomed to fail. 



If multiplicity is not a disorder, but just another flavor of being
 
human, why do I always come away from my readings in ASD
 
with a pervasive feeling of sadness? Many multiples have no
 
problems with their condition, I am reminded. Those posting in
 
these support groups are not, after all, a representative sample,

but rather, those in need of support. However, this argument
 
ignores the origins of the phenomenon.






The splitting into separate selves occurs most often in childhood as

a response to unbearable and repeated trauma. It is not just a

coincidence that a large proportion of posts to ASD are cross-posts

to ASAR--alt.sexual.abuse.recovery. Childhood is the time when

the self is still in the process of being formed. A child unable to

remain in the room emotionally when an assault is occurring

learns
to space out--technically, to dissociate. Typically, with repetition, the

dissociated state becomes a different self and is designated to deal

with what the first self refuses to acknowledge ever happened.

Once this skill is learned, it can be applied to other, ordinarily less

intractable problems. Some multiples end up with several hundred

selves. Others have just a few.

 



It is incredibly affecting to read the posts of those just beginning

to deal with surfacing memories of abuse; reading their struggle

over whether a confused and incomplete memory is real when

their parents claim there was never any abuse. Some, when

they meet resistance out in the world, even begin to doubt their

multiplicity. Still others have managed to live into their mid-forties

before they discover that there are other selves within them. On

ASD, those further along these paths do their best to help make

the journey for the newcomer endurable. Though the idea of

sharing a body amongst competing or even cooperating alters
 

may feel like science fiction, when it comes to suffering, 

we have no trouble recognizing our common humanity.






Is its origin in trauma reason enough to classify multiplicity as a

disorder? Or are even we "singles," as some psychoanalysts

contend, constructed as we are in order to stave off knowledge

that we find unacceptable? I don't find the establishment of

standards for normality a particularly useful endeavor. I am

suspicious that it masks a wish to declare invalid all those who

experience themselves differently. That it is really claiming that

the other selves experienced by multiples aren't real. That they

are akin to hallucinations. I emphatically reject that claim. And

to those who accept it, I ask, how ever do you know? 



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