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Multiplicity, also called plurality or polypsychism, is an online subculture of people identifying as having or using multiple personalities,[1][2][3] or as having multiple people occupying one mind and body. Multiplicity communities mostly exist online through social media platforms.[3]
The coinage multiplicity describes people displaying or experiencing multiple personalities, selves, or identities in one mind and body, each with their own thoughts, emotional reactions, preferences, behavior, memory and sense of self.[4][5][6][7][8][9][1][excessive citations]
- Psychological conditions like dissociative identity disorder.
- Tulpas.[10]
- Experiences and/or displays of multiple identities due to unspecified (non-traumagenic)[11] causes.[3]
In contrast to dissociative identity disorder, the social movement of people who identify as "multiple" is under-researched.[1]
Resources dedicated to multiplicity started to appear early in the internet's history.[10] According to a member of the community interviewed by Vice Magazine, the multiplicity subculture and related vocabulary originated in mailing lists of the 1980s.[3] Playing video games has also been cited as a context in which people engage with multiplicity.[12]
Vice suggests that aspects of the online multiplicity community were also found in Haitian Vodou, spirit possession and the Tibetan practice of tulpamancy.[3] Nowadays, an online subculture dedicated to tulpamancy also exists, where practitioners willfully create and engage with tulpas which has been described as an online multiplicity space.[10]
Multiplicity communities exist online through social media blogging sites like LiveJournal, Tumblr,[13][14] and more recently, TikTok, Reddit, and YouTube.[2][15] Composing their members are "systems" of multiple distinct identities or personalities in the same body. Those identities are often called "headmates", "systemmates", and sometimes "alters", and can have different names, ages, genders, sexualities, and personalities from one another.[13][16][10] Some other jargon used within multiplicity communities includes:
- "Fronter", the headmate currently controlling the body.
- "Fronting", the act of controlling the body.[3]
- "Co-fronting", when one or more headmates are fronting simultaneously.
- "Switching", when the fronting headmate switches out to another headmate.[2]
- "Plural" or "Plurality", other terms for multiplicity.[17]
- "Headspace" or "inner world", the concept of a mental space in which headmates interact together.[13][3]
- "Singlet", referring to a person that does not experience plurality.[1][3][9]
- "Traumagenic", a form of plurality caused by or rooted in psychological trauma.[10]
- "Endogenic", a form of plurality that has non-traumagenic roots.[10]
Role as a support community
Participating in online multiplicity communities can remedy social isolation.[1][15] Ribáry et al. found that for participants, adopting a plural identity helps them cope with identity disorders and that discovering the notion of multiplicity and participating in related communities "is helpful and therapeutic".[1] According to The Plural Association (a Netherlands-based nonprofit founded to "empower Plurals, no matter the words or labels they use to define their unique and individual experiences"[18]), "Denying the existence of separate experiences can be harmful and may not facilitate healing. Acknowledging and respecting the multiplicity-plurality of individuals with DID [Dissociative Identity Disorder] is essential for promoting understanding, acceptance, and support."[19]
In personality research, the term plurality can also refer to personality style defined as "an individual's relatively consistent inclinations and preferences across contexts".[20]
Stephen E. Braude and Rita Carter use a different definition of personality style, defining "personality style" as "personality" and proposing that a person may have multiple selves and not have any relatively consistent inclinations and preferences in personality. This may happen as an adaptation to a change of environment and role within a person's life and may be consciously adopted or encouraged, in a similar way to acting or role-playing.[21] For example, a woman may adopt a kind, nurturing personality when dealing with her children but change to a more aggressive, forceful personality when going to work as a high-flying executive as her responsibilities change.[22]
- Demonic possession#Medicine and psychology – Purported control of a human body by spirits, ghosts, demons, or gods
- Hypostatic model of personality – view asserting that the human person presents herself in many different aspects or hypostases
- Otherkin – People who identify as not entirely human
- Personality style – Psychological characteristics of an individual
- Post-traumatic stress disorder – Mental disorder associated with trauma
- Social media and mental health
- Subpersonality – Personality mode allowing a person to cope with psychosocial situations
- Walk-in (concept) – New Age concept
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