Among the great many things which I find repulsive about multiples firmly entrenched in the psychological model, are the curious delusions of grandeur to which a sizable number seem to cling. Now the lives of many of these collectives, on the outset, seem to tell tales of a nearly complete helplessness and submission to the will of a therapist; their lives are little but unending pathos, day upon day of cutting, triggers, flashbacks, abreactions and misery; all of which they bear gladly, even if it offer not the slightest trace of immediate merit, because their exalted "T" has proclaimed it the path to healing (and I find it curious how very many, even those fully cognizant of the existence of abuses in their past, lived quite functionally until they were hauled before a therapist and told they needed to sputter and convulse and twitch about on the floor until they were really well). In short, even given the glumness of our current situation, I should not exchange a single day in our life for one of theirs, and nor, do I think, would any with a pittance of common sense. Perhaps as a sort of wilful deceit to distract themselves from the futility of their current situation, however, a great many such multiples seem prone to delusions of superiority. It must be admitted that this notion is fed in part by New Age clowns like Ralphie Allison and D. Scott Rogo, who among them have claimed plurals to have every supernatural ability under the sun and then some, and by fascinated singlets who believe such rubbish. Nonetheless, it remains still evident that plurals of the more dysfunctional varieties have cheerfully taken this notion of multiple superiority, and ran roughshod with it. Indeed, the book which did the most to promulgate the 'super psychic power' nonsense was written by Truddi Chase, a multiple herself. Much has been made of the fact that it is not uncommon for plural groups to experience differing physical reactions, to a degree, between members; and both singlets and plurals seem altogether enraptured with it at times. Gloria Steinem has expounded gleefully, in several excruciating paragraphs of saccharine rot, about our alleged 'amazing powers,' and concluded-- if I have not fully succeeded in blocking her blather from my memory-- that multiples somehow held the secret to curing every disease and physical ail known to man. Attention-starved collectives will bark and yawp gleefully about it on mailing lists, messageboards, wherever they think themselves to have a ready audience for their miraculous powers, and crow about their shoe sizes and eyeglass prescriptions and waistlines and bra sizes changing when they switch. If any such changes are indeed possible, I do not see how it could really be anything other than an annoyance, and hardly a thing to marvel over. Differing food and medication sensitivities among the lot of us have never really afforded us anything but trouble-- and at any rate, why should they be considered so astounding in the first place? The mind influences the body, for good or ill, and we are but many minds in a singular body. If this presumptuous grandeur were limited to claims of changing underwear sizes, I would be quite a bit less irritated; as it is, multiples have claimed themselves capable of a good many other feats beyond the grasp of the ordinary "singleton" or "monomind." It is still a common claim that a particular minimum level of intelligence is 'required' to be multiple, though a casual jaunt through an "MPD" webring or messageboard should be fully sufficient to remedy any sensible person of the notion, and I remain amazed at the number of plurals who cling blindly to the notion of their own intellectual superiority, though not a one of their number, to the best of my knowledge, has ever produced a singular work of lasting genius. It should be noted that this idea of universal brilliance among plurals was borne from a misconception on the part of psychology. If, as the popular reasoning went, all multiplicity was the end-product of a singular mind 'splitting' into pieces, then if a variety of talents and skills were to be evinced among a collective's members-- why, then, it must mean that the 'original self' possessed all these gifts at once. Never mind the first-hand testimonials of multiples who did manage to integrate (temporarily) and found that the integrated self did not retain in full and complete measure those skills once individually possessed by the members of the systems; no, doctors were entranced by the notion of all these pudgy middle-aged women waddling into doctors' offices carrying within them the broken shards of a supreme genius. Now psychology having long since granted its official blessing to integration therapy as the expected cure for "MPD/DID", one might perhaps be forgiven for expecting that, as these fractured da Vincis arrived en masse in therapists' offices to be put back together, we would be now witnessing a blossoming of these repaired geniuses, who would be applying their extraordinary mental powers to the tasks of ending hunger and curing disease and bringing about world peace and so forth, or at the least writing great novels and solving complex mathematical equations. I must confess that those few multiples I have run across who have claimed integration, do not impress themselves onto me as being particularly capable or brilliant, and certainly none have achieved anything worthy of note in artistic or scientific communities. What now remains to be concluded, other than that these grandiose claims of genius do not pan out? Many a group, back in the diagnostic heyday, was heard to boast that its members were capable of simultaneously walking and chewing gum and talking on the phone and writing the Great American Novel and solving Fermat's Last Theorem and picking their nose and so forth, and yet in the years since, all of these super-multiples seem curiously to have thoroughly vanished from public view and attention, and not a one has produced any work worthy of their proclaimed capabilities. I suppose that nowadays, they are probably invoking their many conspiracy theories to explain this absence, but frankly I do not care enough to research it any further. I have my talents, though they may be meagre ones; and so too do others here, just as you and your best friend likely have between you an array of differing skills. You seek no other explanation for this, other than that you and your friend are different people; and why ought we, as plurals, be expected to do otherwise? I have got different skills from Azusa, for instance, because we are different people; and if there are enough people contributing their skills through a single interface it may be sufficient to give the illusion of someone who is extraordinarily capable, but in truth you are seeing merely a group's effort's put forth. If I were forced suddenly to perform in a capacity in which another member of my collective is more able than I-- to take a mathematics exam, for instance-- then the limits of my own skills would be exposed. As it is, we have both the advantages and disadvantages entailed by group effort. Now certainly, I know if I were to raise the banner of plural superiority, and to bark about the fact that I get sick from eating fast food when no one else in here does, it would afford me some immediate benefits-- a boost to my ego, if nothing else, which I am told I certainly do not need; I might be able, at least temporarily, to sit smug and content in the notion that I was really superior after all when the annoyance of sharing a body began to grate upon me. But in the end, how would it serve me to believe and perpetuate that idea of superiority? As long as it remains emplaced, so too will that damned mystique of plurality; we shall remain an untouchable Other, gazed upon with pity and awe at once. So long as multiplicity is touted as some 'next step' in evolution, people shall continue-- and not without reason-- to scoff and snort at this absurd notion which psychology has concocted. Do the promulgators of plural-superiority ever pause to reflect upon this, or would they prefer to be hailed and lauded as a thing above the majority of humankind, even if it meant being never treated as a person? That is why I cannot tolerate this absurd notion, however much it may flatter my ego to believe myself some manner of superior life-form. At heart I cannot deny the fact that, aside from the fact of being in a shared body, I am really quite ordinary in most ways. Thanks to Shaytar and Astraea for providing inspiration for this rant. Back |