By Tess |
January 21, 2026
IFS, tulpamancy, DID, fiction writing, acting, empathy, talking to people in dreams, making up a guy to get mad at,
are very different, but I argue are all part of the wider plurality spectrum. humans have the ability to simulate other humans in various ways, and this is critical for culture, entertainment and personal success. I think a lot of people would benefit from pushing their abilities in this domain, and exploring corners of the spectrum they haven't previously considered.
hard distinctions are often drawn between types of thoughtforms (a thoughtform being any entity in your head distinct from you). but when an author writes a character making choices the author would never make, is what they're doing really that different from trying to understand a loved one with a very different lifestyle? is "what would Jesus do?" not a kind of parts work?
in particular there's a lot of alpha in tulpamancy—having a persistent imaginary friend. companionship, guidance, and many other benefits of human connection can be achieved internally (ideally as an augmentation not replacement, but whomst among us has achieved perfect satisfaction with their irl relationships?). people are scared of letting their personal ontologies drift too far from the mainstream, but if there's one theme of this blog it's that Overton windows are for pussies.
a lot of writing about tulpamancy treats it as it's own unique practice, but I argue it shares the same low-level cognitive infrastructure with much of the rest of the spectrum. thus it follows that practicing tulpamancy feeds back into improvements in empathy, writing, etc. subjectively, I've certainly found this to be the case.
DID is something I'm less sure about, not having personal experience with it. the reason I include it in the spectrum is it seems to be on a continuum with the plural community, which itself blends into tulpamancy. it would also be very strange if the brain had multiple non-overlapping fundamental methods of running multiple identities. people with DID certainly have a very different experience, lacking control over or memories from different identities, but maybe we can all relate to this somewhat via dreams? hard to say.
I find the plural spectrum, as a concept, useful to point to when talking about novel phenomena. customer service voice? pluralspec. Sense8? pluralspec (also you should watch it). a person? that's just a thoughtform to an egregore. I don't mean to imply any of this is particularly deep, but I find it a nice concept and it would be cool if it was more widely used.