ABSTRACT
A multiple's experience of life is very different from that of someone who has never been multiple. Often relatives and friends of a multiple, as well as support people and even therapists and other professionals, are unclear about how to talk to such a person. Although a multiple might not be visibly different from anyone else, the way he or she thinks is incredibly different, at least as different as the way someone thinks who comes from a completely different culture. Many well-adapted multiples, whose parts cooperate well, prefer to stay as a community of coordinated selves rather than become a single self. They feel that they would be lonely without insiders to talk with. Alter personalities hold memories only of the experiences in the person's life which those parts have actually lived. Talking to a multiple is like being on the phone to someone in a large house.
