The Empowered Multiple

We have been enjoying discussion on the Dark Personalities list and in surfing the Dark Personalities site, and in both these places there is a new catch-phrase for a particular approach to multiplicity called the empowered multiple. The Anacronic Army extended a call for essays to examine this phrase and so here is ours.

I do not mean to judge Jean de Brébeuf.... Everything he did, he did with the best of intentions. And yet this is exactly what disturbs me when I consider his life among the Hurons: that with complete purity of motive and satisfaction of conscience he was able to injure their deepest beliefs, their pride, their social structure, their very humanity, by treating them as crude and expendable vessels of the souls it was his business to save.
- Tobias Wolff, "Second Thoughts on Certainty: Saint Jean de Brébeuf among the Hurons"

We have our own view of what it is to be an empowered multiple.

It disturbs us to have seen multiple systems fall under the weight of certainty that the medical/therapeutic community has around multiplicity. It is assumed that a multiple is not going to be able to function for a long time, until he or she has coughed up all the trauma that got them to where they are now, and the therapist has helped them to process the trauma, and worked through the process of integration.

We have seen people who probably were coping fairly well with their lives become hysterical because someone wrote "therapist" in email and not "T***." We do not want to negate people's experience with being triggered - we have been triggered deeply. But at the same time we have to wonder what kind of experience a person has to go through before they're not able to read an email without expecting the person at the other end to anticipate that "therapist" will upset them and eliminate most of the letters.

We believe that the medical community - and some of the therapeutic community - encourages dependence on experts and pills and hospitals and, essentially, external controls on multiples, simply because they are multiple. And we believe that some multiples fall for it. We believe that they sacrifice their many capabilities and talents to the idea that they are sick, and will be sick until they conform to a single, integrated viewpoint in life. We believe this is treating the multiple system as an expendable vessel of the societal view of "normal."

Being a multiple is a challenge. There is only one body and 24 hours in a day and most people have never considered multiplicity at all and really do expect a particular body to have the same person in it all the time. Having to navigate all this makes for a lot of problems. Some of these can be debilitating, particularly in the current environment. Others are more of a nuisance.

Along with the challenges of multiplicity come joys and opportunities for growth. To accept diversity in one's one circle is also to learn to accept it in others. Many multiples are intensely creative, capable of bringing to completion "joint projects" that a single person would find difficult.

We believe that multiplicity is a natural process - whether a process in response to something like trauma or not is not something that we are prepared to debate at this time. However, we would like to compare it to a responsive natural process - grief. Grieving is a natural process - it is not fun and it is not "reasonable" all the time, but it is natural. Some people run into problems when they won't grieve, or won't recognize that they are grieving. Other people get stuck in grief and never progress through the stages of grieving in a way that lets them handle the grief. But there is nothing fundamentally pathological about grieving.

If you took someone that was grieving over the death of a parent and angry about death, and told them that they had to get over the anger fast, and gave them pills to do it, and advised them to stay away from anything that reminded them of their parents, they would probably go a bit nuts.

Now take a multiple system and tell each person - that will listen anyway - that they have a huge problem being multiple and they need to get over it (integrate) and take pills and stay away from things that make them switch between people, and then see how well they do.

We believe that empowered multiples take responsibility for their multiplicity as a natural process. They recognize it and learn to move through/with it. They do not sacrifice individual parts or themselves to the belief that multiplicity is bad or sick. Nor do they sacrifice the concept of wholeness to a kind of reactionary belief that singleness is bad or sick. Multiple systems remain open to their own needs and possibilities whether they lead to integration or not.

Empowered multiples do not make up memories or trauma in order to explain either the multiplicity or individuals within their systems. However they do not reject system members' voices if those inform them of trauma. If members of a multiple system are exhibiting negative behaviour - eating disorders, self-injury, or sexual acting out to name a few - an empowered multiple system takes steps to help its members to change these behaviours, whether this means examining the past or dealing with the present.

An empowered multiple stays aware of the twin dangers of blind acceptance and denial.

Empowered multiples take seriously their responsibility as human beings in society. They do not allow their multiplicity to become an excuse for harm they may knowingly or unknowingly cause to others, while still recognizing without shame that multiplicity may result in mixed messages. If a lack of internal communication or switching is causing problems at work, home, or in the community, empowered multiple systems look for ways to improve communication or lower switching thresholds.

An empowered multiple system may well reach points in their life when they need to use social supports such as disability, but does not accept this as a permanent side effect of multiplicity.

An empowered multiple continues to grow and learn about their own system and their niche in the world regardless of the labels others would like to put on them - which is really the most powerful thing.

Written by Teresa and JJ, possibly in 2001.
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