Diary of a Confused Dragonkin

Think systems with a high number of fictional introjects are a new phenomena? Kluft's paper on polyfragmented/extremely complex DID from 1988 includes a patient with LOTR introjects, and another based off of Shakespear's Tempest. Fictional introjects have been a thing for a very long time!

Yep! You can find it here.

(also the URL in case tumblr eats that hyperlink like it sometimes does)

We actually love this paper. We got a lot out of it. There's actually a lot more said that fakeclaimers always say is fake. Some key takeaways:

1. very high numbers of alters is very possible. The highest number in this study was over 4,500! 40% had 26-50 alters, 4% had 51-75, 12% had 76-100, 19% had 101-200, 8% had 201-300, and 20% had 300+

2. there's "ad hoc" forming of alters, as in they form frequently and often arbitrarily. "One patient was so apprehensive about her consultation with me that no alter would agree to attend. A new alter was formed for the occasion." Some even "developed a pattern of forming new alters in the face of trivial stressors and inconveniences, or whenever they felt cornered." And there was evidence of forming multiple at once, "almost two-thirds developed complex splitting patterns so that more than one alter emerged on each occasion of the formation of new alters."

3. innerworlds! "Over two-thirds had developed elaborate inner worlds, in which the personalities interacted among themselves". And "in some cases alters appear to have been created to do no more than to fill roles in these inner worlds."

4. yes, fictives, and factives! Some "formed alters based on the therapist." And in fact, "most MPD patients have alters based on identification, internalization, and introjection". And introject-heavy proof: "a small percentage have formed a massive number of alters in this manner as a defence against object loss."

5. there's the phenomenon of essentially cycling through alters, or as the study describes, "with each major life change some or all of the alters were created anew, and their predecessors might either remain active or subside, and become covert or latent."

6. even full alters (not fragments) can be relatively similar to each other: "this patient, with over 4,500 alters, had only 300 alters that were as poorly defined as the alters in Case 19 [(fragments)]. They were remarkably full when they appeared, although many were quite similar to one another. It was as if the same "basic issue" types of alters could be reduplicated readily, and regenerated again and again over the course of the patient's life."

7. the author rejects "splitting" terminology in most cases because "the mind, rather than dividing itself, rather multiplies itself, recopies itself selectively, or rearranges a finite number of elements in patterns of great potential variety." And also, "if one understands the process of alter formation as one of defence reduplication and/or reconfiguration rather than division, the problem of wondering how the mind becomes divided into such complexity ceases to be relevant."

We love this. This study really speaks to us. And it was published in 1988. Amazing.

Image description: The first image is an excerpt from the paper in question. It says, "One patient reconfigured her alters after reading J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and presented a complex cadre of alters based on hobbits, orcs, and wizards; another used Shakespeare's Tempest, a situation that became clear when I encountered an alter named Caliban."

The second image is a screenshot of a Tumblr reply from user blu-cheavy-main, saying: "hey do you have a link to the paper?" End image descriptions.

That's a very interesting paper! A book by the same author, Richard P. Kluft, also talks about fictional introjects. Childhood Antecedents of Multiple Personality, published in 1985 by American Psychiatric Press. You can borrow it from the Archive.org library or use WorldCat to see if you can borrow it from a library near you.

Kluft's book is the earliest academic source-- and earliest source, period-- listed in a booklet of history research by House of Chimeras, A Collection of Mentions of Nonhuman and Fictional-Based Members of Plural Systems. Chimeras's booklet gives this summary of the relevant part of Kluft's book:

"On page 180 while talking about the alters included within a specific case of multiplicity, the author [Kluft] noted one alter in the system was based on a character from The Hulk series and Captain Kirk from Star Trek, another alter had some similarities to Mr. Spock from Star Trek, and two other female alters had the same name as the two female characters from the series The Flintstones."

These are even different characters than the ones that the 1988 paper wrote about. Between the two sources, these tell about three different systems who had fictional introjects in the 1980s.

Ever since I discovered the therian community  in 2017, I've questioned some kind of fox. I've jumped between many ‘fox’ labels, including different species of foxes, foxes from mythology, and fictional foxes. It led me to question why I've been so confused in my identity as a fox.  I've questioned being a fox cladotherian, but that didn't feel quite right either. I don't identify as all foxes. So then, why has my identity felt so ‘fluid’? 

Upon thinking about it last night, I came to the idea I have a fox soul. As a firm believer in reincarnation, I think I’ve lived many past lives, most of which  were of foxes of different species and color morphs. I also believe I’ve incarnated as other animals, some of which influence my current life and manifest as theriotypes, such as my wolf and seal types.

I know what I ‘look’ like as a wolf and seal, and don't really question it. On the other hand, despite it being my most dominant theriotype, how I imagine myself as a fox has always been fluid, not only in coat colors but also in species.

Despite feeling most confident in the red fox label right now, I also feel like Ive had past lives as an arctic fox, and corsac fox that still influence me in a lot of ways.  I feel like this fluidity is something I have to accept as a part of my lived experience, despite it being quite confusing at times. 

There are also some fox-related identities I've held in the past that no longer fit, and I want to acknowledge them as they were still important  in my journey of self-discovery. 

For some time, I identified as a kitsune. I feel like a lot of my experiences came from morphing my human life with my experience as a fox. Whether or not I like it, I have had to adapt to  human society in this life, leaving me feeling strangely part fox and part human. 

Reading about kitsune myths gave me a sense of self, as they often intertwined these two very different aspects of myself. In a lot of ways I still see myself in the kitsune; but I don't feel right identifying as one. 

As someone who has no Japanese descent, and didn't grow up with the myths and legends of the kitsune, I felt like the kitsune was something I would never truly understand in its entirety no matter how much I would read about them. There would always be a disconnect.

 From reading others’ experiences as kitsune, I noticed a deep connection to Japanese culture, even among those who weren’t Japanese. They often knew the language and followed the Shinto religion, which is related to kitsune. While I love and respect Japanese culture and mythology, it didn’t feel right to call myself a kitsune when I couldn’t fully understand the stories and culture they belonged to. When I focused on my own core identity rather than trying to fit my experiences into existing myths and legends, I discovered that I am simply a magic fox and not a kitsune.

I've also identified as some fictional foxes in the past, those being Ninetails from the game Okami, and Nazuna Hiwatashi from the anime Brand New Animal.  Spoilers ahead for both these sources! 

Okami is my biggest comfort game. I always play it when im going through hard times, and I've played through it at least five times, probably more. It makes sense that I feel a sense of home within that game. Ninetails is one of the major bosses featured in the second arc. On the surface and true to its name, Ninetails is a nine-tailed kitsune. However, as the story unfolds, it is revealed that Ninetails' true form consists of nine single-tailed foxes merged together into one. I related to this a lot because I was still figuring out my system at the time. 

 All of my system has fox or fox-related identities. This could stem from us being a median system, a term I did not know at the time that perfectly encapsulates our experience as plural. Most of the time we feel as one, like a singlet, but when under stress, or sometimes with positive triggers, we split apart, a lot like how ninetails splits apart when they are struck Amaterasu, the player character in the game. 

While I still experience the merging and splitting that comes with being a median system, I no longer resonate with this identity on the same level as I used to. During the time I held this identity, I was going through a very difficult period that I'm still trying to process. Okami was my comfort. I think my mind unconsciously made connections between me and Ninetails, which helped me navigate that dark time. Imagining myself as Ninetails made me feel powerful. Although I've since moved on from this identity, Ninetails will always be important to me, and continues to be a comfort character to this day. 

Nazuna Hiwatashi was another fictotype I identified as for some time.  This relates back to an earlier identity of mine: a winged wolf. In the anime, Nazuna pretends to be a silver wolf, a deity revered by the beastmen, anthropomorphic animals struggling to coexist alongside humans. Nazuna is actually a human who was transformed into a beastman due to a wrong blood transfusion. Her ‘true’ beastman form is a fox, but she can shapeshift into a silver, winged wolf. I had recently dropped the winged wolf label because I felt ‘fox’ was more accurate. I couldn’t help but resonate with Nazuna because of this. In hindsight, I believe this identity was more of a hyperfixation than anything else. 

Well, this got a bit long.  I suppose that is to be expected as the road to my identity as a fox has been a long and windy one. TLDR: My identity as a fox is very ‘fluid’ and has presented itself in different ways throughout my life. However, at my core I know I'm a fox. 

📷 Tomáš Malík

*gripping the sink and staring into the mirror* it’s a pointless endeavor to correct every person in fandom joking about a character being a “kin”. You don’t need to do it. No one will like you.

Being the token alterhuman in a fandom

/targeted, but i don’t want to get involved since this is entirely unrelated, n i don’t want to derail those threads

the words “identify as” mean nothing different that the word “is”. absolutely nothing. they are exactly the same. if you identify as xyz, you ARE xyz.

there is no reason to add any stipulations. it is not “only if it’s not apparent at first”. a feminine cis woman who looks like a cis woman still identifies as a woman. even though it might be immediately apparent. it’s not like she IS a woman, but a trans woman who doesn’t pass IDENTIFIES as a woman. they both ARE women, because to identify as is to BE. they are the same thing.

folks who imply or outright say they aren’t the same thing get on my nerves, and are often the kind of people perpetuating “oh, you just identify as that animal? well i actually am that animal”. as if that makes them somehow superior. you are the same! there is no difference!

To be clear, since I recognize that as specific phrasing I use sometimes and used recently - when I say "not apparent at first/to an outside viewer" in association with "identifies as" phrasing, I mean that "identifies as" implies that is the case, not that it is necessarily the case. I fucked up in the most recent post I said it in and did say it like I meant it was an inherent difference, but that was an "I wrote this at 7:30am" phrasing fuckup, not intentional, LOL. I mean that that's often the reason the phrasing of "identifies as [x]" is chosen over "is [x]" in a given sentence (ie, it's a lot more common to see someone say that a trans woman "identifies as a woman" than a cis woman, even though yes, it's true for both and it means the exact same thing as "is a woman"). I misspoke on that one instance; it annoys me just as much as you when people try to say that "identifies as" is somehow less than "is" LOL.

(If you were talking about me, please just ping me next time; I'm usually happy to talk about things like this. :P If you weren't, sorry for butting in LMAO.)

it was you i was thinking about, but not only you (like the last paragraph has nothing to do with you, it’s other people i’ve seen do that). to be honest i considered pinging you or even dming you but i just figured it wasn’t worth it/i didn’t want to bother you. i don’t believe you ever mean any harm, of course, but it’s something i’m sure i’ve seen more than once.

why do you think “identify as” would even imply that to be the case? imo identity labels don’t really have anything to do with appearance at all. if someone identifies as gay, for example, i wouldn’t assume that they don’t “appear” gay, since being gay has nothing to do with how you necessarily look. same for if someone identifies as human, i wouldn’t say it’s implied that they appear nonhuman at first.

i do very much get the “barely awake misworded this post” X) so not holding it against you or anything. just wondering

Idk if this is universal, but at least personally I would almost always rather be bothered than vagued; vaguing almost always comes across as passive-aggressive to me even when I'm pretty sure that's not what was intended (and of course it's already been clarified in this case that that wasn't the intent, so no worries, I'm not offended in this case - only saying it for future reference).

Because in my experience, no one says that cis people "identify as" their gender, or that humans "identify as" human - in theory, yes, of course it applies to them too, but in practice it's a phrase that usually gets applied to identities that aren't the default expectation. Why that is, I'm not exactly sure; maybe something about the fact that "is" is usually a pretty passive verb, where "identifies as" feels a little more active? English is weird. Maybe it's just that it's the verbage that gets pulled out when someone needs to specify their identity, which just isn't usually true for cis people, orthohumans, etc. where the identity is usually what people assume by looking at you.

Or maybe it's just the connotation it carries in my brain personally and this isn't as universal as I think xD That's also very possible. Connotations and subtext are weird little beasts.

/targeted, but i don’t want to get involved since this is entirely unrelated, n i don’t want to derail those threads

the words “identify as” mean nothing different that the word “is”. absolutely nothing. they are exactly the same. if you identify as xyz, you ARE xyz.

there is no reason to add any stipulations. it is not “only if it’s not apparent at first”. a feminine cis woman who looks like a cis woman still identifies as a woman. even though it might be immediately apparent. it’s not like she IS a woman, but a trans woman who doesn’t pass IDENTIFIES as a woman. they both ARE women, because to identify as is to BE. they are the same thing.

folks who imply or outright say they aren’t the same thing get on my nerves, and are often the kind of people perpetuating “oh, you just identify as that animal? well i actually am that animal”. as if that makes them somehow superior. you are the same! there is no difference!

To be clear, since I recognize that as specific phrasing I use sometimes and used recently - when I say "not apparent at first/to an outside viewer" in association with "identifies as" phrasing, I mean that "identifies as" implies that is the case, not that it is necessarily the case. I fucked up in the most recent post I said it in and did say it like I meant it was an inherent difference, but that was an "I wrote this at 7:30am" phrasing fuckup, not intentional, LOL. I mean that that's often the reason the phrasing of "identifies as [x]" is chosen over "is [x]" in a given sentence (ie, it's a lot more common to see someone say that a trans woman "identifies as a woman" than a cis woman, even though yes, it's true for both and it means the exact same thing as "is a woman"). I misspoke on that one instance; it annoys me just as much as you when people try to say that "identifies as" is somehow less than "is" LOL.

(If you were talking about me, please just ping me next time; I'm usually happy to talk about things like this. :P If you weren't, sorry for butting in LMAO.)

Further clarification:

It's fine if people don't use the term theriform and just say a species, if the context is personal and clear there's really no problem and it's not necessary to enforce this optional term.

'Theriform human' is not accurate and please don't phrase it that way. The term was invented with nonhuman animals/creatures/things in mind, potentially fictional humans (in which case fictoform could be used sorry it's not really good for this) and part of the definition specifies that the -form is something which has never been human, raised human or humanoid in this world. I'm sorry that's currently no succinct term for 'humans who are nothing but human' or 'is biologically human only' but theriform is not it.

Thank you!

Orthohuman may be the desired word - though I suppose since that means not alterhuman, not not nonhuman, there are cases where that still won't fill the linguistic gap. Personally I usually just go with solely-human or something similar, which is clunky but gets the point across. (I'm not personally fond of fully-human or 100%-human for reasons of I don't like implying that people like me, who are both human and nonhuman, aren't fully human too.)

Orthohuman as in orthodox human? Or am I misunderstanding. It could be used to mean both, unless the intended meaning specifically states it can't be. But like you said, some humans who are also nonhuman might consider themselves both fully human in an orthodox way. Solely-human is good. Sometimes we don't need a singular word lol I think most still get what you mean if you say solely-human, and if you wanted to consider fictional humans in the community maybe solely-orthohuman too. In other words solely and only orthodoxly human, so can't also be a fictional human because that's not orthodox?

More or less, yes; ortho as in the root word meaning "straight" or "correct," or as it's come to mean colloquially in English "traditional" (from which orthodoxy (literally "correct belief," usually viewed colloquially more like a highly traditional belief system) and other such words come). It's a word that's gotten tossed around some as an antonym to alterhuman - orthohuman is to alterhuman as cisgender is to transgender; you by definition can't be both at once.

So yes, human fictionkin, human otherhearted folks, etc. wouldn't be considered orthohuman - and I don't see why you'd ever need to tack on the solely- if you're already saying orthohuman, because that already excludes everyone who isn't solely human. Basically when I say solely-human I mean people who are not nonhuman (but may be alterhuman in other ways, such as human fictionkin or human otherhearted folks); orthohuman means people who are not alterhuman in any way. Useful in different contexts, at least in theory.

If nothing else. Your “human” body primes you perfectly to feel how soft kitties cats is. Dysphoria be damned

Further clarification:

It's fine if people don't use the term theriform and just say a species, if the context is personal and clear there's really no problem and it's not necessary to enforce this optional term.

'Theriform human' is not accurate and please don't phrase it that way. The term was invented with nonhuman animals/creatures/things in mind, potentially fictional humans (in which case fictoform could be used sorry it's not really good for this) and part of the definition specifies that the -form is something which has never been human, raised human or humanoid in this world. I'm sorry that's currently no succinct term for 'humans who are nothing but human' or 'is biologically human only' but theriform is not it.

Thank you!

Orthohuman may be the desired word - though I suppose since that means not alterhuman, not not nonhuman, there are cases where that still won't fill the linguistic gap. Personally I usually just go with solely-human or something similar, which is clunky but gets the point across. (I'm not personally fond of fully-human or 100%-human for reasons of I don't like implying that people like me, who are both human and nonhuman, aren't fully human too.)

*excited waving* fellow Na'vi!

my partner is not understanding me, its making me want to freak out, and be more confused; i dont know how to communicate with him. he’s just like.. ‘you’re a dog you dont need this trans dog title’ I CANT JUST SAY IM A DOG, IM IN A HUMAN BODY SADLY, I HAVE THESE GOD AWFUL HANDS WHERE THERE ISNT PAWS? I LOOK AT MY BODY WITH BECAUSE I SEE SKIN AND NOW MY FUR? WHAT.. WHAT AM I? I DONT.. I DONT KNOW. ITS MAKING ME SO LOST? I KNOW IM NOT A THERIAN. THATS.. SOME SPIRITUAL THING, IT KEPT BEING PUSHED TO ME THAT I HAD TO SHIFT, I GOT CALLED FAKE CONSTANTLY BECAUSE I WASNT SHIFTING CORRECTLY OR WHATEVER… I AM A DOG.. I HAVE ALWAYS BEEN A DOG??? IM… Help.. me. please. please helo me figure out myself, WHAT label is this? Therian? Otherkin? Otherhearted? Because this is making me BREAK down and i dont NEED to go back to the hospital JUST PLEASE SOMEONE HELP ME UNDERSTAND BETTER! INSTEAD OF JUST ME TRYING TO NAVIGATE WITH PEOPLE THAT DONT UNDERSTAND /SRS — i dont know what to do, i dont know where to go anymore the carrds arent helping me, the tags i go to try and educate myself are just discourse, arguing, or drama. I WANT TO EDUCATE MYSELF TO LOVE MYSELF. is.. is that too hard? my paranoria kicks in badly so i most likely will delete this ramblebark.. i have no friends anymore, this is my way of.. venting to my ‘friends’ now in days asking for advice, i have no one to go to ask for if i truly act like this this and this,, if my characteristics line up.. im shut out, i know i did it to myself, i had to, you have to protect your peace in order to be safe right? i dont know

First off, I'm sorry that the therian community has been so rough on you. There's been a lot of gatekeeping throughout the therian and otherkin communities' history, unfortunately, and sometimes it's still going. I'm sorry the discourse and whatnot have put you off of these communities - it's completely understandable for it to have, unfortunately.

If you're nonhuman and an animal, therian is absolutely a word that belongs to you, shifts or no shifts. All it means is identifying as an animal (and all "identifies as" really means is "is, but it might not be obvious to an outside observer" - to say you identify as a dog is to say you are a dog). There's been words for non-shifting therians for almost as long as the therian community has existed (look into contherian and suntherian sometime when you're in a bit of a better state of mind; you don't have to use those words, obviously, but it might give you that "oh, thank fuck, there are other people like me" relief).

Otherkin, nonhuman, transspecies are all also words that would apply; therianthropy tends to have more of an emphasis on animality than the other three do (therian is specific to animals, the other three all just mean identifying as anything nonhuman with slightly different connotations to each), but it's really up to what you feel fits you best. Use all of them at once if you like.

If you want, I've got some tags that might be useful for feeling out the distinctions between these - "community writings" will contain essays for all of them; unfortunately "otherkin" and "nonhuman" are probably not going to be helpful, but "transspecies" and "therian" both might have some experience essays specific to those labels, and definitely have some discussions about them. "Definitions" has people getting into the nitty-gritty details and debates about where the lines should lie if you're interested in that (for interest's sake, not for "doing it right"'s sake), though like the community writings tag, it'll include stuff for a lot of labels other than the ones you're looking for and you'll have to do some scrolling.

Above all - you're not alone, and as scary as it can be when you've been bitten before, I promise the majority of people aren't gonna bite you if you end up using the wrong word and switching later (and if they do, fuck 'em, they're the assholes in that situation). Take a deep breath. You'll be okay, hon. You're not the first dog who's gotten lost in the sauce and confused about this, and you unfortunately won't be the last, but I promise it does get less scary.

Among the stupider alterhuman song associations I have: I do sometimes like to go watch a clip of Beautiful Creatures from Rio 2 and imagine it but with myself freshly transformed into a dragon and getting to interact with others of my species again for functionally the first time

idk something about the joy and reveling in self-love and a song written for Jewel reconnecting with her own kind again is just really good for that particular fantasy I guess

also the flying dancing is just genuinely really well-done. how physics works? absolutely not. but it manages to make you forget that somehow

On theme with my last few posts, when did it become common to know next to nothing about your theriotype?

I'm not saying you need to be able to spit out a college thesis presentation on them or anything even close to that substantial, but it is kind of baffling to me when people have no idea what their own species actually eats, or how big they are, if they're social or not, where they live, that sort of thing. I don't understand how you know that you are one if you have no idea what they're like? And aren't you curious about your own kind?

I promise it's really rewarding and dysphoria alleviating to learn about your own species and see all the fun little ways that you are alike with them that you may have never thought of or known about otherwise. I know it might feel like you know all you need to know about them because you are one, but just think, an animal raised in captivity by humans with no contact from their species knows next to nothing about their own species! That's how you start out, too. But you can learn. It'll never be the same as having been raised by your own kind, but isn't it the next best thing?

You are in a unique position to learn about your kind and the threats that face them. You could have an impact on their lives even though you've been separated for them, or at the bare minimum, you could not spread misinformation and harmful content about them because you don't know better.