Intergalactic Collective

I love you otherhearted

I love you otherlinks

I love you Paleotherians

I love you Copinglinks

I love you Fictionkins

I love you synpaths

I love you constelics

I love you plurals

I love you plantkins

I love you conceptkins

If someone is asking whether a phenomenon is a recognized mental disorder, then clinical psychology and psychiatry are the appropriate places to look. If someone is asking about a social identity, a community, a cultural phenomenon, or how people describe and understand their own experiences, then sociology, anthropology, ethnography, and related social sciences are also relevant.

For example, most people understand that alterhuman communities aren't explained by clinical zoanthropy. They're different phenomena that happen to share some superficial similarities. In a similar vein, discussions about endogenic plurality as a social or identity phenomenon aren't fully answered by literature on dissociative disorders. You will have to look at other sciences.

What frustrates me the most is when people dismiss social science sources as "not real science" simply because they aren't clinical studies. Social sciences are still sciences, and they're often the most appropriate for studying communities, identities, and cultural/spiritual/religious phenomena... Like endogenic plurality.

But... I will admit... if you're looking for the field most directly concerned with explaining the underlying mechanisms of subjective experiences... I'd probably point to psychology and cognitive science. There's just... not much there yet. What we do have are reports, interpretations, community frameworks, maybe some relevant psychological theories, and a LOT of unanswered questions.