Collective identity... estabilished identity?

nameless/Morgan (host) (he/him) | posted 27.05.2025 | translated 14.10.2026

Many systems who lay closer to the singular end of the plurality spectrum have something called a collective identity. This means that although individual headmates or parts have different individual traits, they all identify with a shared system identity. For example, they don't mind being called by one name, even if they also have their own names, or they all regard the system's partner as their wife, even if she serves only as a friend or caretaker to some of them. Personally, within my subsystem, I have a collective identity only in specific areas. For example, regardless of who's fronting, I will say that I have a paraphilic disorder, because although only some of my personalities experience any sexual feelings, it is something that has had a profound impact on me as a whole and on societal perception of me. Similarly, I always regard Guide to Plurality as my project, even if the current personality is not involved in working on it, and all my stuff as my stuff, even if only some of my personalities ever use some of it (like jewellery or toys).

In other areas, even as simple as a name, I don't have anything that could be universally applied to all my personalities. I've been unable to settle on a subsystem name for a long time, so I always sign as just the host. And I've noticed an interesting phenomenon in myself (particularly pronounced before I started to understand how my subsystem works better), which I for now call an estabilished identity. It is defined as having a certain set of traits, preferences, and so on, which may at a first glance look like a collective identity. The difference is that with a collective identity, you genuinely feel comfortable talking about collective traits as if they were your own, whereas with an estabilished identity, you don't. It also differs from being forced to impersonate the host or a nonexistent singlet, because in this case, every headmate believes that these traits genuinely apply to them. You could say that an estabilished identity is a subtype of masking in which you deceive not only society, but also yourself, by ignoring or denying various signals or dissociating from your emotions. I imagine quite a few singlets also experience something similar sometimes, but the plural experience stands out in that individual aspects of an estabilished identity are true for at least one headmate. I think this kind of experience may even be common among systems that are yet before their syscovery, or are still in the process.

My earliest memories related to this topic go back to the upper years of primary school, when my personalities were not yet very differentiated. I came to the conclusion that they were already present back then, based on clues such as changes in my handwriting. I think I had an estabilished identity when it came to my feelings about a few school subjects, but what I remember most clearly is PE. I thought of myself as someone who hated PE, and although the personality that held this hatred may have formed to fit in with the other girls, my frequent complaints alongside them in the changing room were entirely sincere. Getting changed, especially on a cold day, and then exercising or playing pointless team games in a way too small gym was not on the list of things I would willingly do. But when it came down to it in the class, I always gave it my all. Whether it was jumping over the vaulting buck or running laps around the field, I always tried to achieve the best result possible and did my best to contribute to my team, even though I was generally awful at team sports. I enjoyed physical activity. I cared about winning. But if someone had asked me about it while I was in that sporty personality, I would still have denied it. This situation continued until almost the end of the secondary school. Once, a friend pointed out to me that I completely didn't behave like someone who disliked PE. By then, I had already discovered my system, but I was still in the phase of attributing everything that didn't fit my estabilished identity to the passive influence of my headmates. I had already understood that the competitive spirit and the satisfaction of overcoming my physical limitations were genuine emotions, but I still couldn't accept that they could belong to me.

I had the same problem with gender identity. For a short time, I identified as genderfluid (although the term never quite sit right), but then I forgot about it and, in one of my male personalities, decided that I was 100% a trans guy. My experience was different from the example I described in my article about distinguishing genderfluidity from plurality, because in my female personalities I tried to ignore and not think about any feelings of femininity (not to mention that I completely ignored the fact that I had shown no signs of discomfort about being a girl throughout my entire childhood). Whenever I had to admit that those feelings were actually there, I would blame them on passive influence again. Natalka, Scarlet, and probably a few other headmates whose names I can't remember now, formed so that I could find someone responsible for those feelings, but it turned out they had very little to do with them. Towards the end of secondary school, I somehow managed to understand that I had multiple personalities and that those "foreign" feelings were my own, just dissociated. However, when Aleks started being much more active, I regressed a little in my understanding. I had to accept all over again that I also had female personalities and needed to take them into account when planning for my transition.

Other examples include my name, which I've already mentioned. It took me a while to admit to myself that most of my personalities hate the name Natasha, and it was only a little over six months ago that I stopped forcing myself to use it as the collective name of my subsystem. Another example is mental age. In a younger personality, I came to the conclusion that I was mentally a child, and the rest of my personalities kept repeating this conclusion for months, until I realised that most of them prefer to be perceived as adults or teenagers. Taste preferences are another example. Eating many things is generally difficult for me because of my eating disorder, and my perception of taste doesn't seem to differ much between personalities. However, some personalities consider certain things more worth the suffering than others (e.g. healthy food for Aleks and sweets for my youngest personality), and this sometimes even affects the level of nausea I struggle with afterwards. Orientation as well. I was convinced that I had a collective orientation, but it turns out that not only would some of my personalities be unable to date someone of a particular gender, but they sometimes also differ in the specific type of person they're attracted to (as if finding a potential partner wasn't already difficult enough). Sexuality is similar, because although I was aware that most of my personalities were functionally asexual, I was convinced that the personalities dedicated to dealing with such matters all shared one and the same sexuality. It turns out that not only has it changed somewhat over the years with the personalities holding it (I finally stopped telling myself that, as a child, I simply didn't know what I really liked yet), but the current personality responsible for holding it is actually divided into at least a dozen subpersonalities, each with a very narrow range of fantasies, some of which go beyond what I thought was even possible in my situation (it would be nice if I could distinguish between them on top of that, but simply being aware that they exist has helped me somewhat to stop repeatedly hurting myself with things that don't work for the current personality).

I can see quite a few potential reasons why I tend to do this, even now that I understand how the mechanism works. In the past, it was probably mainly a combination of not knowing about plurality and trying to meet the expectations of my suroudings. Because you obviously can't like something sometimes and dislike it at other times. And you can't like everything, either. I had to choose which subjects were my favourites and which I hated, so I ended up with an estabilished identity based on the preferences of whichever personality came to a conclusion on the matter first. I still have a fairly strong sense of being one person, so it's sometimes difficult for me to reconcile that with the extent of the variation of traits between personalities. Perhaps this is part of the reason why I haven't yet fully developed a habit of checking whether what I want and how I feel at a given moment actually matches what I think I want and feel. I've managed to do this in some areas, but when I don't expect any differences to exist in a particular area, I won't look for them there. That was the case with sexuality, for example. It was only about six months ago that I fully understood the extent of those differences, even though they may have been present as much as two years earlier. During that time, I repeatedly got frustrated and couldn't understand why something that worked yesterday no longer worked today. But I imagine there's also the fact that sometimes I don't want those differences to exist. I don't want to pursue complete fusion, but I can't deny that it would be much more convenient if I could simply make a decision without wondering whether I'd regret it after switching to another personality. If I didn't have to somehow reconcile conflicting desires. I'll go through transition, and the female personalities will be unhappy. I won't, and the male ones will be unhappy. I'll go through only some aspects of it, and all of them will be somewhat unhappy. I like being plural, but some aspects are difficult.

I hope that, besides satisfying your curiosity, this post will also help you understand that an estabilished identity is inherently harmful. Regardless of the reasons behind it, denying and ignoring your own feelings will not do you any good in the long run. Even if you want to pursue final fusion, you can't simply skip all the neccessary steps involved in developing system cooperation and taking care of everyone's needs. From the outside, an estabilished identity may look like good cooperation, because you don't have any conflicts, but in reality it prevents progress in this area, because it only serves the needs of selected headmates rather than seeking compromises and treating everyone equally. As my example shows, getting rid of an approach so deeply rooted in the subconscious is not easy, but recognising that the problem exists is the first step on that path. If you relate to my experience, I hope you'll be able to accept all your emotions and aspects of your identity. Even those that make people around you, or yourselves, uncomfortable.

Disclaimer: to speed up the process and allow us to provide you with more resources, this post was translated with the help of ChatGPT. We carefully reviewed and redacted the whole text before publishing. No part of the original post was created with genAI.