Thread by @TheCrisses

What do Jung's Archetypes, illuminated manuscripts, passing notes in class, and Abe Lincoln have to do with young plural & DID systems making videos on TikTok? Stick around, and try to laugh along with us…

#pluralgang #dissociadid #DIDchat #DIDOSDD

Jung was a very interesting fellow. He was heavily influenced by classical scholarship, read many languages, was interested in spiritism (seances, mediumship, channeling), studied mythology, the Bible, etc. These are the things he followed avidly.

Then he went on these inner world journeys. An idea he picked up from the spiritist movement where they would autowrite and go journeying and make elaborate accounts of their experiences. Thus The Red Book. But Jung didn't just write an account.

He went all out. The Black Books are the original journals of his experiences. He distilled The Red Book from the original journals. It's a work of art, but more…an illuminated manuscript. He ground his own pigments for H sake! It's a tome. Almost a spellbook.

In it he documents his journeys across a mythic landscape. Meeting mythic and ancient beings. Scholars. His soul of 3 parts, a trinity. He eventually called them "archetypes" as if they were from mythology. But it's not that headmates are from myths—

it's that Jung's favorite media was myths. These were Jung's fictives. Fictional introjects from Jung's choice of media: ancient works, mythology, The Bible, and spiritism. They filled the roles in his system. Had he studied more history they would have been factives.

Like those folk in stereotyped old TV shows who claim to be Abe Lincoln, or Caesar. There are people who don't take in as much fiction. Whose internalized role models come from history as written by the winners. Jung dipped quills, later people wrote in notebooks.

Ours in the early 80s were longform letters, and ball point pens. Page after page of notes to our best friend in our class. The classic 6-page note — 3 sheets looseleaf, both sides, neatly folded and passed in class, all our blathering from the night before.

Autowritten accounts before we knew we were plural from Ruth our dragon headmate, recounting her visions, and her thoughts — or accounts of what we saw when we went into trances, and asked questions of the folk we met in our inner world.

We continued writing, whether on BBSes or hand-written letters, or sometimes typed & printed letters, to friends and lovers for many years. We found ElfQuest elves in our system, we had a sorceress from Melnibone, Sidhe like from The Dreamstone…

A prankster something like Robin Williams, a childhood classmate, etc. Because our media was shool, NYC streets, TV, comics, Piers Anthony & other novels. LoTR, AD&D, A Distant Soil, Girl Who Owned a City. Star Wars. Mork & Mindy. Sesame St & The Muppet Show.

Jung had Archetypes, we had Dragons, Elves, Monsters & Mork. Damn skippy. And no regrets either.

What the heck does this have to do with TikTok, Crisses?

Well, to be a geezer: "Sigh — Kids nowadays!"

What would Jung think of us? Dafuk Crisses you have a head full of people you could have rolled up in a TTRPG, right? Of course we do. That was our media. That was the culture we immersed ourselves in. We wrote A LOT because that was the form of expression at the time.

Jung had an illuminated manuscript, we had class notes. His paper was big, his inks painstakingly crafted, his pen nibs sharpened & pigments hand-ground. Our paper was cheap and our pens literally disposable. And we were like 13 years old.

Why so many TikTokers talking about DID? That's today's medium. That's their vlog, their passing class notes to their mates. That's progress. A video nowadays is like our looseleaf paper — endless cloud storage — and cameras are like cheap disposable pens.

Unlike spiritists in the late 1800s, or Jung in the 1910s and expensive notebooks & paper — or us writing about journeys & our inner world in class notes in the 1980s, kids are talking it out, face-on-camera, full-on verbal expression and good for them!

Are they going to get it all right? No of course not! But they need to explore. They need to explain, and talk and paint pictures with words and graphic design programs like Jung made headmaps with homemade paint.

We don't need to chastise them or say "How dare you do it this newfangled way I don't understand!" I didn't need Jung telling me I ought not waste paper, and why was I using a Bic Roller. I'd have rightly told him, NYC accent & all, to fuck right off.

I'm not policing these kids. I'm not so old at 53 that I forget being 13. If they have heads full of fictives — maybe I do too. And so did Jung. So what? We fill our brains and subconscious with media, and that's today's media. So go go gadget next gen plurals.

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