Iāve seen a post today thatās been circulating the plural spaces for quite a while. I will not respond to it directly as I respect the users DNI, but I will talk about it here.
The claim is that early plural terminology like āmedianā or later endogenic-related language ācame from a hate groupā is not supported by the actual material people keep citing. Itās a rhetorical framing being used to discredit endogenic systems by association, not a historically accurate conclusion. I read the entire post and all of the sources and my findings donāt find anything that aligns of a āhate-group.ā
What the archives actually show is something much less dramatic: early 2000s online plural communities arguing about models of identity, psychiatric classification, and terminology. That includes Astraeaās Web, The Lancers, Pavilion Hall, and related spaces. These were not clinical bodies, not organized hate groups, and not coordinated anti-DID campaigns in the way that term is being used today. They were internet forums and activist blogs engaging in anti-psychiatry critique and identity theory discussions.
I am going to go over several of the sources discussed in the post I saw:
It is my deeply held conviction that we need to disengage the concept of multiplicity from the mental health milieu altogether. As I have mentioned before, the Western world attaches a stigma to "mental illness" which amounts to the ostracism of anyone who differs from a preconceived norm. An increasing number of everyday life problems and personal characteristics are labeled as disorders, until the ambience of the mental health system begins to resemble a 1930s eugenics programme. With the current push to regulate everything "for our own good" -- from mandatory seat belts to heavy taxes on fast food -- it is entirely possible that not too long from now we will see attempts to impose further restrictions on individuals who have been diagnosed with one of these so-called mental disorders. But we don't have a mental disorder; we're multiple, that's not a mental disorder. It's a psychoneurological fact. A household can be in disarray, members of a household can have emotional problems, but multiplicity itself is not a disorder. There is no "MPD" except in the minds of doctors who cannot understand that multiplicity is as natural to us as being a singlet is to them. Calling multiples "disordered" for having many selves is like calling Native Americans "disordered" for having a culture and language different from those of the white man. It is just as prejudicial. It is a denial of our existence. But the mental health community, and the public at large, still see us as powerless, out of control, victims. A lot of people -- including doctors -- still think "multiple = "mental disorder" = "crazy". We are still seen as incompetent at best and dangerous at worst. I feel the only answer is to demystify multiplicity by getting it out of the doctor's office. I'm not saying discontinue therapy if it's helping you organise your household, communicate with each other, and fulfill yourselves as individuals. I'm saying it might be a damned good idea if we multiples did not limit our thoughts about multiplicity in the areas where we do have some control -- our personal worlds, and our online expressions. If we stopped using the medical terms "MPD" or "DID" to refer to multiplicity. If we took that DSM-IV quote off our webpages. If we stopped portraying ourselves to the general public online as people with a mental disorder. We have a legitimate claim to social rights as individuals. While we can show case law precedent for members of households as individual persons, we must also define ourselves in everyday society. Multiplicity must be seen, and it must lose its aura of occult mystery. It must become no more startling than differences in ethnicity, nationality, or abilities. We are not multiple because a doctor says so: we are multiple because we are.
This is a section of No More by Astraeās Web. I was surprised to see that this was being interpreted as a hate group thing. I think this interpretation misreads what the passage is actually doing. What this passage is, first and foremost, is an anti-psychiatry argument. It is not an argument against DID systems as people. It is an argument against:
the authority of psychiatric classification
the framing of multiplicity as inherently pathological
and the idea that diagnostic categories should define social legitimacy
You can disagree with that position, but you cannot jump to āhate groupā rhetoric or āableismā without significantly flattening its meaning.
A central claim in this text is that multiplicity should be ādisengaged from the mental health milieu.ā That is a political and philosophical stance about diagnostic power, not a statement that DID systems are fake or that they should be harmed.
In fact, the author explicitly says:
āIām not saying discontinue therapy if itās helping youā¦ā
That alone should be enough to disqualify the idea that this is anti-treatment or anti-system advocacy in the modern āanti-DIDā sense. The argument is not āsystems should not exist,ā but rather āsystems should not be defined solely through psychiatry.ā This is not unique to plural discourse. It is structurally identical to many other identity movements that reject medical classification as the primary lens (for example, some disability, neurodivergent, or queer frameworks depending on context and era). You donāt have to agree with that reframing, but it is not inherently hostile. It is theoretical disagreement with a diagnostic model, not an attack on people diagnosed within that model. That is not analysis. That is flattening complexity to win a modern argument. Nowhere in the material being circulated is there actual evidence of a āhate groupā in any meaningful sense. What exists is ideological opposition to the medical model of dissociation and competing theories about what plurality is. Those are not the same thing as targeted hatred toward DID systems, nor do they justify treating the entire lineage of plural terminology as illegitimate.
This is especially important because the framing is not neutral. It is being used as a discrediting tactic: if you can retroactively poison the origin of a term or concept, you donāt have to engage with it on its own terms. That is exactly what is happening with endogenic discourse. Instead of arguing against current endogenic claims, people are reaching for loosely interpreted archival material to imply moral contamination by association.
It also conveniently ignores that psychiatric models themselves are not neutral, fixed truth. Anti-psychiatry critique exists because diagnostic frameworks have historically changed, been contested, and often reflect institutional bias rather than pure objective reality. Pointing that out is not āanti-DID,ā it is engaging with how psychiatry actually works.
Removing Diagnostic Labels by Astraeās Web
The worst thing that ever happened to multiple households was when the American Psychological Association declared multiplicity an official "mental disorder" worthy of inclusion in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. They did this partly at the behest of well-meaning feminists and child-welfare crusaders who honestly believed Connie Wilbur's ludicrous theory that multiplicity was always a form of dissociation caused by severe, often sexual, child abuse. They were anxious to do something to stop child abuse and help those suffering from its aftereffects years later. What would have made more sense in retrospect is to expand the category of delayed stress or post-traumatic stress disorder to include the unique difficulties suffered by adults and children who have been abused, and leave multiplicity out of it.. or better yet, to create a separate category for multiples who are in disarray and need help organising things. Instead, multiples, singlets, and abuse survivors fell prey to overzealous crusaders like Elizabeth Humenansky, cultmeisters like Bennet Braun and Colin Ross, and the despicable False Memory Syndrome Foundation. Sincere doctors suffered as well. Those who made attempts at genuine help for disordered households, or any kind of serious study of multiplicity, have fallen into disfavour. It is now modish to dismiss multiplicity as an hysterical media-generated fantasy, and the label's been changed from "MPD" to "DID", to appease the white males who run the psychiatric industry. Now, multiple households who need or want treatment have a harder time than ever trying to get it. I've heard the argument that the diagnostic label was supposed to ensure that multiples who needed therapy could get it, and for their insurance to cover the cost of treatment. I get many more emails from multiples who were told "there is no such thing", "no real multiple knows that she is or will admit it if she knows", and at least one who reported his therapist was fired merely for giving him a DID diagnosis. Since the DSM-IV is also a legal reference guide for state of mind in criminal cases, one would think that including multiple personality in the DSM was a good way to protect multiple systems in which one or more members have run afoul of the law. Generally, a multiple-personality defense is indistinguishable from the standard Not Guilty By Reason of Insanity plea. Multiplicity is not insanity, and it should not be a legal defense for criminal behaviour. Members of multiple households need to be organized enough to create a working system that ensures responsible behaviour. Realistically, there will always be systems in chaos who could benefit from a course in household management. What would make much more sense is to create a category, specifically, of disordered multiples, not simply to define all multiples as disordered. When homosexuality was deleted from the Big Red Book after the industry finally accepted the reality that it's not a mental disease, it was replaced with "ego-dystonic homosexuality", so that the few gay people who did view it as a disorder could still receive help. I suggest something similar for multiplicity, to be taken seriously and not as a "junk" diagnosis. In this way, multiples who see themselves as conforming to the Wilburian pattern and who may wish to be integrated, can seek appropriate services; and systems in chaos whose out-of-control selves commit serious crimes can receive treatment that will benefit the group, and ultimately, society-at-large.
This entire article isnāt denying the existence of people with CDDās or saying that they are dangerous or invalid. What it is doing is a strongly opinionated critique of the psychiatric classification of the decision to include multiplicity within the DSM as a trauma based disorder. The core argument is that multiplicity should not be exclusively reduced to pathology, and that diagnostic systems may not fully capture the range of plural experiences.
The text is making four claims and I feel as OP didnāt do the original posts justice or clarify what they were actually saying, so everyone missed the points:
The DSM-V classification of multiplicity is socially and historically constructed, not purely objective
that trauma based models of DID are too narrow to describe all plural experiences
that treatment should still exist, but be differentiated based on need and functioning.
that multiplicity may exist outside of diagnostic categories entirely
None of those points require denying DID. In fact, the passage repeatedly assumes that some systems do need treatment and support, and even discusses how services could be structured for people who are distressed or impaired.
This only reflects anti-psychiatry discourse and identity theory.
Why We Are Not MPD/DID by Dark Personalities
Many people have written to us and asked us why we don't call ourselves MPD/DID. Why don't we call it a disorder? Why don't we call ourselves personalities? Why not make use of the more well-known term? I'm going to attempt to answer that question by examining what the DSM-IV says about the diagnostic criteria are for DID. There are four diagnostic criteria for this in the DSM-IV for Dissociative Identity Disorder. I found these listed on Trauma Disorders Glossary. The first diagnostic criterion is: "The presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states". First of all, it is derogatory to refer to us as mere identities or "personality states". Such terms are used to make multiples appear delusional. A line like this comes across as one person "thinking" they are more than one person, rather than the reality of several people being in one body.nThe diagnosis of MPD was changed to DID because those on the panel deciding what should be written for the DSM-IV decided that there couldn't possibly be more than one person in a body! In some other countries other than the United States of America, the diagnosis is still MPD. Second criterion: "At least two of these identities or personality states recurrently take control of the person's behavior". Again, there is the strong implication that there is one person with several "personality states" which take control of him or her. It implies that there is one core or real person underneath it all who is the victim of delusions. An attitude like this would cause many to see a patient as "suffering" from multiplicity, rather than it being a gift or a natural state. The third states: "Inability to recall important personal information that is too extensive to be explained by ordinary forgetfulness". This is one that is found in many multiples, but not all - especially after a system has been spending years working together towards coconsciousness and/or cooperation. Many multiples do not lose time as much or even at all if they work together well. Does this mean they are no longer multiple just because they are more efficient? Finally, "The disturbance is not due to the direct physiological effects of a substance or a general medical condition." This is a given. If you become "someone else" while you are drunk or high that is not the same as sharing a body with several other people. Let's have a look at another site on MPD/DID. Pysch Central: Dissociative Identity Disorder Treatment.
"Psychotherapy is the treatment of choice for individuals suffering from any type of dissociative disorder. Approaches vary widely, but generally take an individual modality (as opposed to family, group or couples therapy) and emphasize the integration of the various personality states into one, cohesive whole personality. First of all, this paragraph is encouraging therapists to treat a multiple in therapy as one person. (I suppose this is because to do otherwise would be encouraging his or her "delusions".) Secondly, this paragraph says to focus on integration. It is the automatic view that it is unnatural and disorderly and delusional to be multiple. People who call multiplicity MPD/DID either do not know the implications of the diagnostic label, or they do not believe that there is any beauty and wonder in sharing a body with several others. I have some suspicions that the belief that there should only be one mind, one soul, one body is rooted in Western religion. At one point in time, children were force to switch writing from one hand to the other if they happened to be left-handed. At one point in time, being gay was seen as a mental disorder. It is the same with being multiple. Encouraging multiples to integrate is forcing them to switch hands. Any multiple who wishes to integrate should arrive at that decision on their own, collectively and unanimously. No therapist should pressure multiples into integration. The page also says (if you had any doubt that DID=delusional) "It should be noted that while it's convenient to talk of people who suffer from this disorder as having "multiple personalities," this is just a theoretical construct. People who suffer from this disorder believe they have multiple personalities which then take on a life of their own within the individual (perhaps reinforced by the belief)." Everyone is entitled to their beliefs. Therapists are entitled to believe that we are not real people if it helps them to sleep better at night, but it isn't our truth. We, the Anachronic Army, work efficiently and well together. Any time in the past we denied the existence of each other, it resulted in chaos. This page also says that multiplicity is the result of abuse or traumatic events. We have met multiples with no abuse history at all, or who have abuse AFTER they existed collectively in the body. (We are in the latter category.) This major point puts us outside of the DSM-IV criterion. In conclusion, we do not call ourselves MPD/DID because it is does not describe who we are. We were not created by abuse. We work well as a group rather than being crippled by a "disorder". We are people - not parts, alters, personalities, or ego states. Each of us has our own hopes and dreams, our own range of feelings, our own ideals. We are not puzzle pieces of some greater whole. We are a nation. We are a people. We work full time in a job we love. We pay our bills. We have a loving relationship with a spouse who accepts each one of us as we are. What is so disorderly about that? The only universal experience of all multiples is the experience of having more than one person in a body. Nothing more, nothing less.
This essay is not denying that DID systems exist, and it is not arguing that they are fake or delusional. It is a critique of how the DSM frames multiplicity, specifically the assumption of a single ācore selfā with subordinate āpersonality states,ā and the idea that integration is a universal therapeutic goal.
In other words, the argument is about classification and interpretation, not about denying peopleās existence.
Stripped down, once again the claims are:
DSM language frames plurality in a way the author disagrees with
integration should not be imposed as a universal expectation
not all plural experiences fit trauma-only models of DID
multiplicity should not be defined solely through disorder categories
people should be able to self-define outside clinical framing
One of the next articles listed is āWe Donāt Have Multiple Personality Disorderā by The Shire.
This passage is best understood as a personal account of navigating identity through conflicting psychiatric literature, not an argument against DID systems or their existence. The core issue being described is how reading diagnostic and clinical material shaped the authorās self-understanding in restrictive ways. None of this requires denying DID or claiming systems are fake. It is a critique of how diagnostic models are presented and internalized, and how that can affect self-perception. As always.
Terminology by Those Who Walk
The word system, from the beginning of our journey into accepting our multiplicity, has always been irritating. To us, it describes some organised group of objects, all having a role or job to play to keep the system working. Each part of a system has a purpose, not of their own but rather of the system as a whole. For us the word system negates the individuality of the people involved, reducing them to aspects or roles. System to me seemed a clinical description, a way to break us down to a disorder, or a psychological way of being. We were more than that, we were ... and that was the problem for a long time, we didn't know what we were, how to talk about ourselves, what term to use. We had rejected system as our term, but now looked for another one, but all those we found either irritated us or just didn't fit. For a long time we believed system was a word place upon multiples by the professional, medical community. It was, we believed a word to make us less real, to reduce us to a disorder. But recently I have spoken to two multiples that use the word system, it fits them, they are highly structured and regimented. We realise now, that our annoyance at the term system, was about us. It came from the feeling we should be something we weren't. When we use it, we felt wrong, like we weren't good enough, which quickly lead into denial. The Shire is far from organised, at best we are disheveled, at worse chaotic. It's the way we are, no organised lines of functioning, we are a community of people with complex relationships. So we have thrown out the word system in relation to us, it just didn't belong, instead we now call ourselves a community.
This excerpt is primarily about language, identity, and self-definition within plural communities, not about denying DID systems or rejecting their existence. The focus is on how terminology is experienced and how people relate differently to the words used to describe plurality.
The essay is also very explicit about something important that gets ignored in modern reinterpretations: it acknowledges that different systems will use different frameworks and that there is no single universal way to describe plurality. That is not an anti-DID position. It is a plurality-as-diverse-experience position, which includes the idea that people will disagree on terminology without that disagreement meaning invalidation.
Iāve gone through a number of early plural writings that are often cited in current discourse as āevidenceā that endogenic terminology or related plural frameworks come from a āhate groupā or are inherently anti-DID. It would be exhaustive to examine all articles here closely. After reading them directly, I donāt think that interpretation is accurate, and I also donāt think it reflects what these texts are actually doing. Across all of these excerpts, the consistent theme is not denial of DID systems, not hostility toward plural people, and not any coordinated anti-system agenda. What is consistent is something much more specific: early internet-era plural communities grappling with how to understand and describe their experiences outside of psychiatric frameworks.
These articles repeatedly focus on: rejecting or questioning the DSM framing of multiplicity as purely pathological, critiquing the assumption that plurality must be trauma defined, exploring identity language outside of clinical terminology and emphasizing self identifying and variation across all systems.
Links to the remaining sources I saw:
None of this requires the conclusion that DID is fake or that DID systems are invalid. It is a set of anti-pathologization and language-reform arguments, not anti-DID arguments.
You can agree or disagree with their conclusions. You can critique their framing of DID, psychiatry, or terminology. But it is not accurate to retroactively label this entire body of discourse as āanti-DID hate ideology,ā nor does it function as strong evidence against modern endogenic systems by origin association.
This is a case of contested history being used as a rhetorical tool in current discourse, not a clear-cut origin story of harm.
