hungryghosts | Regarding system roles: history and commentary (Reply)

[By Lark. Crossposted from /r/Plural.]

In an earlier thread about system roles, it was brought up that much of the history around roles has been buried. There is no reference for who came up with the concept of roles or where the older roles like "protector" originated. My system is in contact with LB Lee, who are an older system with a great dedication to researching and documenting plural history. We reached out to them to ask if they had any knowledge regarding the origins of system roles, and they wrote a post about their findings.

The post itself is extremely well-cited: it delves through medical texts and biographies from as far back as the 1970s. It is worth your time if you have an interest in plural history. But I think the most important takeaways come from these paragraphs:

[...]of all these other terms, all of them come from medical contexts. If they aren't outright, obviously created by therapists themselves (Ralph Allison, Cornelia Wilbur), they're cited in books that they were involved in--like Sybil or the Minds of Billy Milligan. These are terms created by medical personnel to compartmentalize and organize headmates like a stamp collection... and often deny us the right to self-determine or grow. There's an icky historical context there; there's a reason these terms were considered unfashionable tools of the oppressor when we came on the scene in 2007!

These therapists are not little tin gods you should worship. There's a reason Allison, Ross, and Wilbur have controversies about them! [...]

To be clear, I am not sharing this to shame systems for using roles. Nor am I sharing this to claim that roles are for trauma-formed systems only and that it is appropriation for other systems to have roles. Please do not use this post as grounds to start yet another exclusionary slapfight.

What I do want us, as a community, to do instead:

We should question the assumption that system member roles are an innate part of plurality, especially when it comes to systems who do not fit within medical models. If we are to be a truly inclusive community, then we must refrain from making assumptions about how a "normal" system works.

We should think carefully about how we are using roles. Roles, if they are used, should be descriptive, not prescriptive. It is okay for a role to be important to you, but it is also important to recognize when it is a vehicle for unkind expectations. It should not be the end-all, be-all of your identity. To every system member out there: you, individually, deserve to exist without having to justify your existence with a role.

In general, we should be aware of which terms and assumptions come from clinical contexts, think carefully about the contexts in which they arose, and avoid applying them by default to all systems. Again, I do not mean this in an exclusionary sense; I am not making an argument that we should divide these things into "all systems allowed" and "trauma-formed systems only." Rather, I am calling upon us to remember that, while it is true that people benefit from competent psychiatric care, it is also true that psychiatry is not infallible. Both on the institutional level and on the level of individual doctors, it is as vulnerable to the prejudices of greater society as other professions are. Many marginalized communities had to fight to be treated with respect by psychiatry - and even now, abusive forms of "therapy" persist, diagnoses are used to minimize the trauma of people of color, and official publications talk about disabled people as less-than. The plural community is no exception to the struggle. We should not uncritically adopt psychiatry's assumptions about us. We should not center singlet outsiders in discussions of our lived experiences, our validity, our lives.

What does this look like? Many things: this is a mindset, not a set of rules. But, if it helps to have examples...

When meeting new systems, we can refrain from asking them what roles their members have. Likewise, if we ourselves have roles, we can choose whether to disclose them or to keep them private.
If we learn that someone has a certain role, we can refrain from making assumptions about them based upon the role. We can ask them what the role means to them if we have questions.
If applicable, we can look at the roles that are present in our own systems, and ask: "Are any of these stifling our individual growth? Does this role bring the member who holds it joy, grief, or both?"
We can refrain from assigning roles to other members, and instead allow them to choose their role. (Including no role at all, if that's their choice!) We can also give them time and space to explore who they are before choosing a role, and make it clear that it is always okay to put down a role, and that they will be loved and valued nonetheless.
If we do not feel that roles are working for us, we can try living without them to see if having no roles works better.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If any of you are feeling stuck because of your roles, I hope that it inspires you to find a new way forward.