>May I ask why this variant of gestalt consciousness was undertaken by your thoughtforms?
[Joy] Bear had nothing to do with it so he asked me to answer. At the time, December 2019, we had just spent nearly a year as a system of seven. At the time, Darlene (who became SheShe) myself, Gwen, Ashley, Misha, Ren and Bear were all active to some extent and Bear hated to neglect any of us or have to come up with schemes to keep us associated with one thing or another and he was struggling. We considered things such as integration and combinations, such as a permanent merge, but none of us wanted that. We also considered rotation but that effectively put one or more of us in dormancy for long periods of time and that was exactly what Bear wanted to avoid. Subsystems didn't solve anything either. So there didn't seem to be a valid solution that Bear would accept.
>How did SheShe discover its effectiveness? Moreover, how do the constituent aspects of this merge retain their individually discrete identities whilst also being part of this collective?
Because of Bear's stubbornness, Darlene and I worked in secret to consider other options and together we tested a simultaneous experience theory where a merge could be an aspect we both could share or at least associate memories with. It worked better than we expected and we informed him about SheShe on January 1st 2020. At first we told him she was a hub, and so like a merge, but eventually he understood SheShe was in fact Darlene and it didn't matter who was acting as the aspect for it to work. No contrived shared aspect was necessary nor wanted, we each can represent a shared aspect for any constituent who participates. It was the perfect solution.
>Would you say that your methodology could be used in a therapeutic or genuinely experimental manner by hosts?
Potentially it could be but switching is more effective in our experience. That was done to accomplish exposure therapy in a way that's much easier than the potentially traumatizing and triggering direct force of the affected headmate(s).
>dimorphic traits
In terms of gender, fortunately we're all feminine female gendered aside from Bear, having masculine headmates in the lock-merge may cause dysphoric thoughts.
In terms of a separate aspect for the merge, Aleshe prefers that and doesn't consider herself separate from any of us as we do from SheShe. So for instance I wouldn't need to have a discussion with Aleshe, I would merely think of what Aleshe would want or say and make my own decisions pertaining to something on our shared behalf.
