Home > Work > The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality
21 " It's like I'm carrying around this huge secret that I'm never supposed to tell. But since I don't remember just what I'm supposed to keep secret, I'm afraid I'll tell it by mistake. "
― , The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality
22 " Are any of these anxieties or beliefs about my past real? Maybe I'm just making them up⎯re-creating the past.I have to smile as I look at what I just wrote. I can tell when my solitary exploration becomes too threatening, or when I'm treading close to a memory too frightening to be remembered. Rather than push through unfamiliar brush, I stomp the well-worn path of "Maybe I'm making all of this up." But retreating there no longer makes sense to me. "
23 " Rusty visualized his mind as being like a fishing net. The only thing he could remember were the little drops that clung to his mental netting. "
24 " The Flock required only four or five hours of sleep a night. That a lot of time for work. And the amnesia that in the past had crippled us became an advantage. Our production multiplied because each personalfty could focus on a separate task. Jo, for example, worked for many hours researching and writing a paper, unaware of what else needed to be done. When I pushed Jo aside to fulfill my graduate-assistant duties, I didn't worry about the progress of the paper. When Jo came back to work, she picked up precisely where she had left off, with no concern about her "lost time". She had near-perfect recall of all that she experienced. This was augmented by her near-perfect amnesia for all the time that elapsed between her points of consciousness. Being a multiple apparently created more efficient use of my conscious and semiconscious mind. I didn't want to give up my greater productivity to become just like everyone else. "
25 " I had never before considered that people near me might have problems that were not caused by me. I had been created to please people. If the people around me weren't happy, I must be doing something wrong. Lynn helped me see that I lacked the power to make other people feel anything. "
26 " I was just thinking that I started off OK," Jo said. "There wasn't anything different or wrong with me when I was born. I wasn't inherently bad or freakish."That's right, Jo," Lynn said."Other people—my mother and father—did things to me that made me feel all wrong about myself," Jo said, another warm wave of new, sure knowledge washing over her. "
27 " I was just thinking that I started off OK," Jo said. "There wasn't anything different or wrong with me when I was born. I wasn't inherently bad or freakish. "
28 " Everyone seemed to be getting healthier, happier, and more productive... I now felt that I was sharing this body, this physical space, with a whole group of very interesting and worthwhile people. "
29 " When the Jo personality first told him of the diagnosis, he called MPD "clinical bullshit." Then, seeing Jo's stricken look, he softened and showed her how the possibility of many personalities in a single body was philosophically untenable. MPD did not fit into Steve's system of beliefs, and therefore it did not exist. "
30 " Steve said he was glad that I trusted him to develop relationships with the other personalities. He knew that my acceptance of them was a sign of greater health, but he really liked me best and wanted to know when I'd be integrated—when the other personalities would be gone. "Look, Steve," I said, "whether you like it or not, all of the personalities are part of this entity. No personality is ever going to disappear.""What about Robin and Reagen? Little Joe?" he asked. "Those personalities were absorbed, not exiled. No one inside will ever disappear. We're all real. We all matter. "
31 " It bothers me that you should have to look for someone special, as though I'm some sort of freak," I said. "Some psychiatrists don't believe in multiple personalities." she reminded me. "They don't believe in multiple personalities" Kendra mimicked as we left Dr. Brandenberg's office. "Since when does one have to have faith in a mental disorder? "
32 " A few days later, I waited outside Dr. Brandenberg's door and realized that I was tired of excusing the medical community for "not knowing anything about multiples." MPD had been recognized as a disorder for at least a hundred years. It had been brought to the attention of the professional and public communities through Three Faces of Eve in the 1950s and again by Sybil in the 1970s. Literature related to the disorder had snowballed in the clinical journals. I could understand that not every mental-health professional had treated a case, but I couldn't accept that mental-health professionals knew so little about it. At the very least, the doctors had access to the journals that had provided Jo with her wealth of information on the topic. "
33 " Steve said he was glad that I trusted him to develop relationships with the other personalities. He knew that my acceptance of them was a sign of greater health, but he really liked me best and wanted to know when I'd be integrated—when the other personalities would be gone. "Look, Steve," I said, "whether you like it or not, all of the personalities are part of this entity. No personality is ever going to disappear. "
34 " Jo and I were becoming friends, and I realized that I loved the rest of my Flock as well. Missy was a fun-loving, artistic kid. Rusty had a droll sense of humor. Everyone seemed to be getting healthier, happier, and more productive. When I wasn't putting stress on the Flock by fighting with Lynn, I now felt that I was sharing this body, this physical space, with a whole group of very interesting and worthwhile people. "
35 " Why didn't I feel that I belonged to my parents? How could I have known that I was not right? I think it has always been part of me. Can a newborn sense her parents' disappointment and feelings of frustration at not being able to change the unchangeable? "
36 " It's as though I'm sitting in the audience caught up in a well-made film. "
37 " Robin and Reagan are unique in that they date their creation not to a single traumatic event but to the need of the group to maintain a nonconficted, nonabreactive memory trace. The other past-keepers are both reactive and information-providing personalities-they appear in my office to give me information the system seems to think I need, or in response to my touching a critical nerve in the Jo, Missy, Joan Frances, or Renee personalities. "
38 " What is it, sweetie," I asked."Hair, said a voice that wasn't Missy's. It was Little Joe, a two-year-old personality, and his fingers played in my waist-length hair just as my own babies had many years ago.My skin prickled as I realized how complete my experience was of being touched by a toddler. "
39 " Somehow this disorder hooks into all kinds of fears and insecurities in many clinicians. "
40 " I have often tried to imagine how I might have acted differently. Always I end up in the same place. "