User:Tamzin/Plurality and multiplicity FAQ

This is an essay. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. This page is not an encyclopedia article, nor is it one of Wikipedia's policies or guidelines, as it has not been thoroughly vetted by the community. Some essays represent widespread norms; others only represent minority viewpoints.

Plurality is the phenomenon of multiple conscious entities existing in a single body and brain. In clinical contexts, this is most associated with dissociative identity disorder, other specified dissociative disorder, and unspecified dissociative disorder. Less discussed, but equally valid, schizophrenia and related conditions such as schizoaffective disorder and schizotypal personality disorder may lead to a form of plurality. Those articles, as well as the article on multiplicity (psychology) give explanations (of varying levels of quality, caveat lector) of the clinical side; this FAQ will largely avoid clinical terms, as its purpose is to explain how plural and multiple systems interact with Wikipedia, not serve as a diagnostic guide.

Multiplicity is a subset of plurality where the conscious entities are fully distinct. Medianness is a subset where the entities view themselves as, in some ways at least, the same person, but are still meaningfully distinct. At least, that's how I'm defining them. Some people use "multiplicity" the way I'm using "plurality", or they draw the line in some other way.