Multiplicity and Positive Disintegration: An Autoethnography

Plurality as a developmental dynamism and intrapersonal communication as autopsychotherapy

This article assumes some prior knowledge of Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration (TPD), as I want the freedom to delve into more nuance, phenomenology, and my own autoethnography without having to define the theory at length. If you’re unfamiliar and would like a general overview before coming back to this post, there’s a helpful summary here.

As part of therapy and autopsychotherapy over the last few years, I discovered I have multiplicity. I experience structural dissociation with a fairly high degree of differentiation between parts of myself, with some separation (mostly emotional amnesia). I don’t experience having a core self but instead feel that I am usually one of several main parts or sometimes a blend of parts in the external world. Some parts I feel like I fully become in an embodied way; others remain internal. The ones who can front externally tend to be more internally complex. I haven’t pursued formal diagnosis, but I believe my experience likely fits Otherwise Specified Dissociative Disorder (OSDD), or at least sits somewhere along the dissociation continuum shaped by complex trauma.

This is a work of autoethnography, sharing my phenomenology and relating it to TPD. I’m not attempting to speak for all people with multiplicity. Many people identify with having parts to varying degrees, even without significant dissociation. Parts-based therapies such as Internal Family Systems (IFS) have popularised the idea that everyone has internal subpersonalities. Some of what I describe may feel relatable even to people without trauma. At the same time, I know my experience differs from someone with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), who may experience more rigid boundaries and amnesia between parts. I feel fortunate that my system has developed strong internal communication and that connecting with my parts has felt relatively intuitive.

I’m not a Dabrowski scholar, though I’ve understood the basics of his theory for quite some time and have found it deeply resonant. I feel I’m currently at the tail end of a fairly major disintegration, so now seems like a fitting moment to reflect on how my phenomenology might map onto the theory, and what personality development might look like when it’s occurring in a system with multiplicity. From my reading of Dabrowski, his model is more inclusive of plural experience than people might assume. There’s no requirement to fuse parts into a singular ego state in order to reach the personality ideal. That alone may be comforting to those who don’t see fusion as their healing goal. More than that, I think there’s an argument to be made that multiplicity, particularly with good communication between parts, might actually enhance and support the disintegration process. It may even function as a developmental dynamism in its own right.

Integration and Fragmentation

TPD wasn’t created as a theory of dissociative multiplicity, but it does offer a transdiagnostic framework, one that reframes many trauma-related adaptations as meaningful psychological processes on the path to growth. In TPD, Level I is termed primary integration. It’s a state where the self is unconflicted and conforms to biological drives, social norms, and external pressures. Disintegration begins at Level II (unilevel disintegration), progressing through further stages until secondary integration at Level V. Fragmentation is described as inner conflict, inconsistency, and being pulled in contradictory directions by competing impulses, values, and ideas.

The descriptions of fragmentation and inner conflict likely sound very familiar for many plural systems, especially at the stage where communication between parts is established but there can be significant disagreement between parts. When I first became aware of my parts, there was a lot of dislike, shaming and invalidation between them and some parts that feared each other. Largely this discord was occurring due to parts having different attachment styles, values, needs and possessing unique trauma responses when underlying core beliefs were activated.

A tension arises, however, in how Level I is conceived. TPD assumes that primary integration precedes disintegration. But for those who have always experienced internal multiplicity, this can feel like a mismatch. If someone was never “integrated” in the sense of having a unified self, does that mean they were never truly at Level I?

This is where newer developmental and trauma research helps. The structural dissociation model (van der Hart, Nijenhuis & Steel 2006), for example, suggests that all people begin life with differentiated self-states. In typical development, these gradually coalesce into a cohesive sense of self by ages 6–9 through consistent attunement, coregulation, and mirroring from caregivers. But early trauma can arrest or disrupt this process. If these early parts become increasingly elaborated and are separated by dissociative barriers, multiplicity can develop. Ongoing trauma can create new parts in response.

Dabrowski (1964) actually did note early signs of disintegration in infants:

“We may observe distinct signs of [disintegration] in infants, both at about 18 months and at 2½ years of age. Capriciousness, dissipated attention, periods of artificiality, animism, and magical thinking are closely connected with a wavering nervous system and unstable psychic structure.”

Dabrowski’s theory acknowledges that some individuals may disintegrate and develop early, especially if they possess strong developmental potential. Yet, there is still an implicit assumption that people begin from a unified, socialised self. That assumption may need to be challenged, particularly by systems who never recall feeling integrated.

However, it’s possible to resolve this tension by considering Level I not as an actual state of structural integration, but as a kind of unconsciousness of differentiation, which developmental psychology now suggests not only applies to dissociated systems but all people in early development at least in early childhood. In other words, what defines Level I is not having no parts, but not being aware of having parts, and having no internal conflict because the inner experience has not yet become reflexive. This reframing brings TPD into better alignment with trauma-informed models and allows for plural systems to be included more naturally.

Personally, I’ve found this resonates. I did not know I had parts until my late 30s and until then I had little awareness of my unconscious drivers, and even my trauma. I have also noticed that this applies at different scales. I’ve recently become aware that some of my parts seem to have their own subparts, sometimes creating intra-part inner conflict. This raises a fascinating proposition that perhaps the TPD may apply not only to a whole person and their overall development, also in varying scales with network interaction.

Multiplicity and The Personality Ideal

When Dabrowski talks about personality development, he discusses a trajectory towards increasing integration and internal coherence towards the ‘personality ideal’. Dabrowski (1970) describes the personality ideal as:

“a consciously elaborated image of what one ought to be… a structure built on autonomous, self-determined choice and inner psychic transformation.”

“a self-chosen, self-educating mental structure… a harmonious and stable organization of highly refined basic mental qualities and functions.”

It’s noteworthy that Dabrowski describes this ideal as a structure rather than a singular, unified self. This opens the door for plural interpretations. The personality ideal need not be a higher-order ego. It could be a system of coordinated capacities, emotional, cognitive, instinctual, and volitional, that work together toward ethical development. For plural systems, this is an affirming possibility. It means that the personality ideal could be realised in a system where parts cooperate, communicate, and share values, rather than requiring fusion into one being.

In my own system, I have found that communication and cooperation has gradually improved between my parts. At this point all my parts usually get along, trust and even love each other. While in the past these differing perspectives caused conflict, there is open dialogue between them and a shared understanding, values and goals.

For me, the personality ideal is not a destination but a dynamic process. It unfolds through ongoing internal dialogue, ethical friction, and recursive self-awareness. It is not about perfection or becoming a singular self, but about living in alignment with chosen values while navigating complexity and contradiction with increasing coherence.

This view also aligns with Piechowski’s phenomenological research, which captured gifted individuals describing themselves as internally multiple, using inner dialogue as a means of striving, reflection, and growth. It demonstrates that this experience has broader relevance beyond dissociative systems.

“I experience myself as fragmented and multiple.”

—Gifted artist, emotionally intense and creatively driven, still struggling with integration (Piechowski & Cunningham, 1985)

“I began to recognize myself as not one person but many…”

“I talk to different parts of myself.”

—Gifted adult with advanced inner development (Piechowski, 1993)

Through these accounts, Piechowski highlighted that multiplicity is not only normal but beneficial for personality development, including within directed multilevel disintegration.

Multiplicity as Neurodivergence and Distributed Intelligence: Overexcitabilities and Developmental Potential

While I’ve so far framed multiplicity as a broader human phenomenon, I now want to focus more specifically on plural systems, like my own, on the dissociative spectrum that are formed by complex trauma. In this context, multiplicity can be understood as a legitimate form of neurodivergence. I also want to suggest that, under certain conditions, it may offer increased developmental potential and greater access to Dabrowskian dynamisms.

Dissociative systems often form in response to early, sustained trauma. Yet not everyone exposed to trauma becomes dissociative. There is growing evidence that innate overexcitabilities (OEs), particularly imaginational OE, may predispose some individuals to dissociate. As Bremner and Figley (2023) write:

“Children’s capacity for vivid fantasy and imaginative play—traits often lauded as signs of intelligence or creativity—may also make them more vulnerable to dissociation. In the face of overwhelming emotional experience or neglect, these same traits can become the basis for developing dissociated self-states as adaptive but ultimately fragmenting coping mechanisms.”

Other forms of OE, such as emotional, intellectual and psychomotor, may also be more prevalent in dissociative systems through the common co-occurrence of other forms of neurodivergence. There seems to be a particularly high prevalence of autism and/or ADHD among people with DID and OSDD and the increased rate of intellectual giftedness amongst Autistic people.

While research in this area is still emerging (Reuben and Parish, 2022), the intersection between ADHD /autism and DID/OSDD is widely acknowledged both within plural communities and by clinicians such as Dr Mark Lloyd. It is believed that the heightened sensitivity of autistic and ADHD nervous systems, combined with a greater frequency of adverse experiences, increases the likelihood of developing trauma-related conditions including dissociation. Thus, for many systems, dissociation is highly intersectional. It may involve heightened OEs, co-occur with other forms of neurodivergence, and emerge through chronic exposure to traumatic environments. These same conditions not only shape the psychic structure toward multiplicity but also align with several key components of developmental potential as identified by Dabrowski.

In my own case, I sit at this intersection. I am multiply neurodivergent and identify with many OEs. Several of my parts seem to hold distinct cognitive-emotional profiles, as if each carries a different constellation of OEs. Over time, as communication has improved, we’ve learned to use this to our advantage, what I’ve come to understand as a kind of distributed intelligence.

My system holds multiple abilities and perspectives that would be difficult to access simultaneously. These functions often feel incompatible and require full cognitive or emotional immersion to operate well. For example, I can be in a situation best suited to my more intellectual, intuitive, systems-oriented part and focus entirely on performing at my best. Later, if that same situation involved interpersonal nuance, I’ll often become my more relationally attuned part, who noticed a completely different layer of interaction. I don’t think I could hold both streams of awareness at once. But because we can share perspectives afterward, I benefit from both.

Likewise, the trauma that shaped my multiplicity has also shaped my developmental potential. I once held a core belief that I didn’t exist, likely formed through early attachment trauma and dissociation. That belief, and the altered states of reality that accompanied it, seem to have played a foundational role in shaping my drives and forms of intelligence, particularly existential and intrapersonal. My OEs likely intensified these tendencies. Long before I knew I was different, I had an intense fascination with philosophy, psychology, self-reflection, and healing.

Like many other traumatised, neurodivergent people, I feel I developed a heightened sense of empathy and justice sensitivity. I’ve often felt like an anthropologist in society, observing from the outside. When you live that far outside the norm, there may be fewer opportunities for enculturation into social norms, a key element of Level I primary integration.

TPD, to me, describes my healing and transformation more accurately than most trauma models. It accounts for the paradox: that even while I carried many unmet developmental needs, the very traits that hurt me, when combined with my OEs, became the conditions for healing. Because for me, healing and personality development have never been separate.

Multiplicity, Development Dynamisms, Autopsychotherapy and Memory Reconsolidation: An Autoethnography

As I don’t want to overgeneralise the experience of multiplicity or development, I’ll now turn to autoethnography. There are many variations, trajectories, and ways of experiencing multiplicity, healing, and growth, but this is my phenomenology and how I see it reflected within TPD.

Looking back, I suspect I had some multilevel development in my teenage years. I recall a kind of rebelling that involved forming strong values that diverged from social norms and my upbringing, alongside a lot of third factor drivenness. However, those characteristics were mostly concentrated in one specific part of me: Sam, who I believe only came into existence around age 12. It was almost as though a disintegration brought on by puberty and changing schools led to the emergence of this part. I made a conscious choice to be more authentic and stop trying to fit in (which I’d already decided I had failed at anyway). Sam concentrated this developmental energy. Dissociation helped too, this part was separated from most of my anxiety, which allowed me to do things I would otherwise have been held back from. At the time, I wasn’t aware of having parts and was confused by my variability, but I believe I was consciously trying to construct an identity based on values. This was also likely a compensatory response to an unconscious core belief that I didn’t exist.

The progress I made then was derailed in my early twenties and thirties. This reflects the non-linear nature of growth that Dabrowski acknowledged can be profoundly shaped by life events. After further traumatic experiences, I was left with suppressed memories, suppressed parts, no inner monologue, brain fog, and severe psychosomatic pain. My memory of that time remains patchy, but I suspect I returned to unilevel disintegration with associated dynamisms like ambitendencies, ambivalence, and mood fluctuations.

In my late thirties, I began therapy seeking help for pain and confusing emotional flashbacks. Within a few months, my mind began to spontaneously unearth forgotten memories. Parts emerged from suppression. Suddenly I had an inner monologue again, sharper cognition, and a sense of drivenness reminiscent of my teen years. I was introduced to some parts-based models, none of which quite fit. But they inspired me to connect with my parts in my own way, and to stay truly open to who they were, rather than imposing fixed roles like many models suggest.

At first, there was a lot of conflict between my parts. I became aware of the enormous shame I carried, including shame that parts held toward each other for their particular ways of being in the world and their trauma responses. Dabrowski describes developmental shame as a dynamism, arising from internal comparisons between who one is and who one feels they ought to be, rooted in the emergence of values and an authentic self-ideal. This is distinct from socially conditioned or toxic shame. In my case, both kinds were present. Sometimes shame that began as internalised trauma became a catalyst toward self-authored values. Even the experience of toxic shame could signal a feeling of inferiority toward oneself, an internal disquiet, and a longing to become someone with greater self-acceptance. During this period of intense disintegration, I often felt endlessly driven to fix myself, not just for me, but for my family.

Developing good communication between parts was essential to my healing, and luckily came somewhat naturally. Internal dialogue gave me access to far more of my psyche. It became a core part of autopsychotherapy and helped me understand myself better. Some parts seemed to know things the rest of me didn’t. All I had to do was ask. One part in particular seemed to understand the dynamics between other parts and could explain unconscious patterns that even those parts weren’t fully aware of. When you have parts that can communicate, subject-object in oneself becomes second nature. Not in the IFS sense of a singular Self talking to parts, but parts talking to each other directly.

Most of this internal dialogue has been facilitated by Sam, who has carried much of the third factor’s drivenness toward healing. She’s focused on ethics and values, and because she concentrates my intuitive and intellectual strengths, she is extremely metacognitive. Sam also became the part who consciously learned to use memory reconsolidation, especially when emotionally triggered, to access and shift core beliefs. I believe this was by far the most powerful driver of my healing and a central process in my autopsychotherapeutic journey.

Memory reconsolidation is a neurobiological mechanism that allows updating of the predictive models underlying learning, including unconscious core beliefs (Ecker et al 2012). It’s a valuable process for transforming trauma-based or socially conditioned beliefs that have become maladaptive, distressing, or inconsistent with current values. In multilevel disintegration, many of the emotional conflicts described in TPD may stem from the tension between old implicit learnings (driving reactive behaviours) and a newly emerging value system shaped by the third factor.

For a long time, I was distressed by how often I acted in ways that didn’t align with who I wanted to be. I didn’t understand that those behaviours and emotional overreactions were often trauma responses or driven by other parts of me. That confusion underpinned many of the developmental dynamisms I experienced: astonishment at myself, hierarchisation, mood fluctuations, shame, and disquiet with my own actions and impulses.

I’ve described the phenomenology of using emotional triggers for reconsolidation in a previous post, so I won’t go into depth here, but the process has been transformative. Having multiplicity with some degree of co-consciousness made it even more effective. Over time, I learned to co-regulate with my parts and work through reconsolidation even while others were in distress.

What I found is that with each successful reconsolidation, alignment between my parts improved. When a part acted in ways that felt out of sync with our values, it was almost always rooted in fear or distress tied to an outdated belief. Updating that belief with new, lived emotional knowledge reduced internal conflict and made room for more self-compassion.

Functional Multiplicity as Harmonious Psychic Structure

These days I believe I’ve reached a state of functional multiplicity, which is a term used within the plural community to refer to an alignment, cooperation and open communication of parts. While some people with OSDD or DID choose to aim for fusion of their parts, functional multiplicity is an alternative goal or endpoint to dissociative trauma healing. For me, I see having parts as mostly beneficial now. The distributed intelligence I experience with my parts means that I feel, rightly or wrongly, I might lose some capacity if I were to aim for any greater state of integration than I currently have.

After many memory reconsolidations, including some extremely foundational core beliefs, and what feels like a major disintegration over the last couple of years, my parts are more fluid than they were. Sometimes I’m a combination of a few of them, but I can still be just one of them. Attachment trauma has made up much of what I have been healing, and an outcome of this has been the development of strong internal secure attachments between my parts. There is real love and real trust between them. We understand the strengths of each, who might be best for a particular job, and whose perspective should hold more weight in specific situations. There is leadership in my system, but that doesn’t come with hierarchy. Sam, the part that often does the most leading and has stronger metacognitive abilities, has also learnt that detached observation is usually less connected to truth than insights informed by emotion, which my other parts tend to have greater access to. Interestingly, this mirrors Dabrowski’s (1970) own conclusion:

“Ultimate direction and control is at every level located in the emotional function rather than in the intellectual. Emotional functions give the individual the proper attitude toward himself and his environment… the developmental course of an individual depends primarily on the structure of his emotions.”

Thus, all parts are equal. All parts are welcome to have a say, though often many won’t. They still have different communication styles, focuses and strategies, but all generally align to the same overall values and goals. One of those values is egalitarianism and acceptance of each other in their wholeness, and we wish to live that both inside and out.

That acceptance also extends to the fact that there is some asynchronicity in development and healing between my parts. While it feels like there’s an overall structure and influence from the healing I’ve done so far that impacts all parts, there are still some differences between them. For example, shame is now a minor issue for me overall, but there is still one part in particular that struggles with this and seems to still react to and hold a trauma-based core belief that other parts are no longer impacted by. But the positive of this is that my parts can now co-regulate each other, so triggers are, as of my recent shift, much less impactful.

Final Words

What I hope I have achieved in this rather dense autoethnography is to offer an example of positive disintegration in the context of dissociative multiplicity, and to show that Dabrowski’s Theory of Positive Disintegration is, in fact, a model that can be inclusive of plural systems. I’ve explored some of the ways developmental dynamisms may manifest in this context, and how multiplicity itself, along with the conditions that shaped it, can be deeply tied to developmental potential and seen as a legitimate form of neurodivergence.

I believe TPD benefits from integration with contemporary insights from trauma neurobiology and attachment theory, which I’ve brought in here not as contradictions but as mechanisms that help describe the same processes with greater specificity. These additions, to me, don’t create conflict with TPD. They enrich its capacity to speak to present-day phenomena.

Finally, while I don’t claim to have reached any kind of pinnacle stage in the model, I do think my experience suggests that healing, personality development and integration for plural systems need not depend on fusion. Functional, values-aligned and ethically coherent multiplicity can also represent a legitimate expression of the personality ideal.

The essence of positive disintegration: To reach beauty, integration, and growth, you sometimes have to be shattered first. The rebuilding doesn’t erase the cracks, it gilds them.

References

Bremner, J. D., & Figley, C. R. (2023). Dissociation and the dynamics of personality: The effects of trauma and attachment on personality development and functioning. Springer.

Dabrowski, K. (1964). Positive disintegration. Little, Brown and Company.

Dabrowski, K. (1970). Mental growth through positive disintegration. Gryf Publications.

Ecker, B., Ticic, R., & Hulley, L. (2012). Unlocking the emotional brain: Eliminating symptoms at their roots using memory reconsolidation. Routledge.

Piechowski, M. M. (1993). Is inner transformation a creative process? In G. B. Dudek (Ed.), Creativity and developmental psychology (pp. 89–100). Quebec: Laval University Press.

Piechowski, M. M., & Cunningham, D. A. (1985). Patterns of overexcitabilities in a group of artists. In J. Brody & J. Wallace (Eds.), New directions in gifted education: The gifted and the creative (pp. 65–75). Trillium Press.

Reuben, K. E., & Parish, C. (2022). Exploring the overlap between dissociative disorders and neurodevelopmental conditions: A scoping review. Psychology and Psychotherapy: Theory, Research and Practice, 95(4), 943–961. https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12383

van der Hart, O., Nijenhuis, E. R. S., & Steele, K. (2006). The haunted self: Structural dissociation and the treatment of chronic traumatization. W. W. Norton & Company.