for example, the term "host". "host" refers to a person who has either guests, or tapeworms, at least in the english language. perhaps the intention is to indicate that the person is like the "host" in a restaurant, who seats the customers, and makes them feel welcome ("hi, i'm paul, the maitre d' of system pwyll, tonights special is intellectual conversation, your wait-personality will be with you in a moment, would you like a cup of small talk while you wait?:). if so, we have an even bigger problem, like, we aren't selling anything, and as much as we love some of our outside people, they are definitely NOT invited into us, usually. and anyway,if *i'm* the host, who's the dishwasher?

then there's "parts". this is america right, so parts is parts, right?, interchangable, right?( anybody got a 3/4-sullen-teenaged-bitch-alter we can borrow?) am i just a transmission? or are they trying to imply that we're all just pieces of some "greater" whole. but then how come some of us are whole people, with the full range of feelings and memories that go back further than this body?

"alter" is another classic. the word implies that the rest of me are alternative versions of some "original" person. who, exactly?, and how can someone of a different race and or gender be an alternative version of a self? or are we all members of the same baseball team, ya know, 2 primary selves,and a bunch of alternates in case someone gets ill (well it's the bottm of the 9th,and the other teams been doing well, time to switch in a pinch-feeling-alter). this seems, at first to be a little closer to reality, but then, who decides, and does that mean the rest of us aren't "really" me? we think NOT

not to be forgotten is 'multiple personality disorder". is it automatic that if there's more than one of you, you're sick? some of us are extremely functional, and this world is confusing and full of enough double and triple binds to make multiplicity one of the few viable alternatives. even Dr. Ross talks about treating people to "integration", and having them come out "a single person with posttraumatic stress disorder, which cannot then be cured". did he do them any good?. personally we'd much rather be a happy system than a traumatically stressed singleton.

so anyway, thats the language we've got,and maybe it's time we started thinking in terms of making up some of our own.

Titania Miyamoto