by Truddi Chase
Therapy with Truddi was an exploration of various experiences that went beyond the traditional one-on-one sessions. In order for “multiples” to admit and accept that they express themselves in multiplicity, I believe they must recognize that they are not alone. Therefore, I introduced her to other students and clients who were experiencing or who had experienced multiple personalities. Such meetings provided the opportunity for excited recognition and the affirming realization that they are not the only ones who have their experiences and to discover that their experiences could be considered “normal” within the context of multiple personalities.
In an early experiment, Truddi was placed in a group for women who had been sexually abused as children but who were not multiples. This proved to be an inappropriate mode of treatment for Truddi, but it did expose her deep hatred of women. She expressed her belief that women as a group were worthy only of hatred and disdain, and that their passivity made them doormats for anyone to step on. She was overwhelmed with her outrage at the vulnerability of women. The Troops, who included women, realized that they had to do something to shape themselves up. I realized that Truddi’s antipathy toward women must have its root cause in her relationship with her mother, and we began to explore that relationship in her therapy. As further memories were evoked we found that some Troop members recalled both physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her mother. That, together with the vulnerability of Truddi as a little girl, accounted for an immense amount of rage.
As more memories were called up the realization came that much of the negative reaction to sexuality and the negative feelings about herself were the result of Truddi’s mother’s constant criticism of her child. The message was very clear: Sex is wrong, and good girls neither engage in nor think about sexual activities; bad girls bring bad things on themselves, and therefore it must be the girl’s fault. Truddi should be a good girl, but that seemed impossible; therefore, Truddi was bad. In addition, the mother criticized Truddi constantly for being unappreciative (“You owe me for the breath of life”), clumsy, and unattractive (“You may not be pretty but you can be neat”). The stepfather did all that he could to make Truddi feel responsible for the sexual activities and berated her for being dumb. These reactions to her did much to lower an already low self-image. Truddi began to believe that she was bad, ugly, and could do nothing right. The conflict about sexuality intensified because at times she was sexually aroused and had pleasurable feelings, which she interpreted as proof that she was bad. Thus the Troops stepped in, so that only a few had memories of anything sexual. When I attempted to take a sexual history, I discovered no memories—because the one to whom I was speaking was not present during any sexual activities.
Perhaps the most controversial aspect of my treatment of Truddi was when I invited her to speak about her experiences to two groups of men who had sexually abused their children and who were in therapy with me. I was attempting to confront the fathers with the damage their behavior had caused to their children, and to enable Truddi to confront the problem of sexual abuse in a concrete way.
The result was a most valuable and positive experience for both the offenders and the Troop members. The Troops learned that some of the men had been abused as children, and that even these men had reacted with an overwhelming fear of their tormentors. They saw a tall, muscular man talk about how afraid he was of his grandfather, who had abused him when he was five. The disgust of Troop members at this man and at others in the group for what they had done to their own children diminished somewhat in the face of a newfound, more human perspective.
It may be difficult for readers to follow passages in this book that describe the presence of more than one person at a time, and conversations between those persons. The Troop members “see” and “hear” each other and carry on conversations with one another that are real to them. Often these conversations take place in a manner similar to what goes on in our own minds when we are thinking but not speaking our thoughts. However, the major difference is that more than one person is communicating. When they externalize these conversations the listener becomes aware of differing voices. Perhaps the closest we can come to understanding this phenomenon is to look at what we know of altered states of consciousness. Subjects under hypnosis, for example, often report that they can imagine vividly scenes, images, places, and people in a way that is very real to them but is not shared by those around them. In a similar manner a conversation involving many Troop members may be going on, and yet the outside observer may be totally unaware of that very special reality that the Troop members share.
It is important to realize that for various Troop members the concept of time may be very different. The woman and each of the others have significant periods of time missing from their awareness, periods lasting from a few minutes to days. For those times when a particular self is not present, it is difficult to know how much time has passed or when specific events took place. For the absent selves, that time did not exist.
Most victims of child sexual abuse, particularly those who experience multiple personalities, strive for perfection in the face of what they perceive as their constant failings. This drive often threatens any personal relationships. The Troops could not at first see their own suspicion, mistrust, and anger at any person who came close to them. Gradually they began to understand what had been buried so deep: the cause of those feelings was a lack of self-esteem, itself the result of what the mother and stepfather had taught them as children. Only with that understanding could they begin to be less hard on themselves and others.
Various Troop members have recognized that the environment of the household they grew up in very much affected their attitudes. One of them noted that the expression of sexuality had held particular terror. She informed me that had she not hewed to the mother’s edicts against “wanton” behavior she would have become a very promiscuous person, most likely a prostitute. “The mother was right,” she told me. “I was so bad, I was born that way.” Yet another Troop member had learned, as a result of the restrictiveness of her upbringing, to despise and fear all adult authority figures. She explained to me that no person is ever free, and that “even time is not ours to deal with as we will. In the fall whether we want it or not we’re given an extra hour, and in the spring it’s taken away. There’s always somebody, government, parents, church, telling you what to do and how to do it. No wonder people never learn to depend on themselves for anything.”
There are, of course, many unanswered questions. For example, the Troops through it all have wondered about the specifics regarding the act of their creation. They continue to speculate on whether instead of the birth of each self being a conscious or unconscious response of the first-born child to the overwhelming abuse, the births might have been triggered in response to that abuse by some as-yet-unknown area of the human brain. Could there not be an area where, in ways we do not as yet understand, personality originates and is nurtured, and perhaps even to one degree or another is fixed and made immutable? They ask if perhaps their creation might be the product of a sort of intellectual reproduction system, just as normal births are part of our sexual reproduction system. During their therapy the Troops have raised and continue to raise many questions that neither I nor any other professional to date can answer with certainty.
Therapy with someone who experiences multiple personalities is a difficult process, requiring more than the usual client-therapist involvement. It also takes a greater investment of time. The therapist must be willing to become a support system, and this involves contact beyond the therapeutic hour. I believe that a therapist must also be willing to use nontraditional methods over and above the usual talking therapy. One must be able to establish trust with those clients who have perhaps the greatest reason never to trust. A therapist must be willing to explore new areas and must be open to the possibility of multiple personalities when the client desperately does not want to believe her own experience.
This then is the story of Truddi Chase and the Troops, persons who have chosen to go beyond the survival of childhood experiences of abuse in order to find a life free from debilitating fear. Therapy continues and progress is being made. We regularly consult by telephone and I have travelled to meet and to process with the Troops what is happening in their lives. Of the ninety-two selves we know as the total “whole” of the Troop Formation, seventy-four have stepped forward to date and been delineated. Another eighteen still remain in the shadows, harboring the deepest trauma and the remaining memories. As you read this story you will have the opportunity to explore a world that may seem strange, a world where many actual people express themselves through the physical body of one person. It is a world that has become quite real to me, and one that the Troop members hope others like them will recognize. It is the world of multiple personalities.
—ROBERT A. PHILLIPS, JR., PH.D.
AUTHORS’ NOTE
THIS book encapsulates, into a nine-month period, four years of our therapy with Robert A. Phillips, Jr., Ph.D., Psychotherapist. We, the Troops, have written this book as a self-imposed part of our therapy process. It is the factual documentation taken literally from our daily journals, our combined recall which we tape-recorded, and our sessions, which were videotaped. Thanks to the Recorder, a Troop member with almost “photographic” conversational recall, the book reflects those occasions when we could not take notes or tape-record: the interaction between ourselves and Dr. Phillips, his students, other incest victims, other multiples, members of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Police Youth Division, the Maryland State’s Attorney’s office, members of the D.C. Children’s Hospital and Prince George's County (Maryland) Hospital staffs, Protective Services workers, mothers of victims, and a number of offenders themselves.
Except for our own, the names of locations and of all persons, including other victims and our daughter, have been changed. Captain Albert Johnson is a compilation of several persons, several situations. Marshall Fielding, the psychologist whom Stanley consults, is a composite picture of all that we began to realise and formulate during our therapy, of exactly what Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), as a process, was for us.
Fortunately, Dr. Phillips did not try to force us into somewhat established multiple patterns, but allowed us to discover and reveal our own. Consequently, as we emerged individually in the manuscript pages, we were able to escape the cage in which we’ve always lived—the cage wherein the pseudo-tiger, pseudo-lamb is never really itself but only a mirror-image of what society wishes, demands, to see.
The various spellings (British, Middle English, Old English, Old French, etc.) originate from Ean, the Irish Troop member who says simply that they are part of his background, his heritage. He also seems to be more familiar than other Troop members with the bible. While this may be true for Ean, neither he nor any other Troop member will allow any reference to religion or relatives to be capitalised within this book, except at the beginning of a sentence.
Ean is responsible for the “Tunnel” passages, those portions of the book that are set off in separate sections and appear in italic type; they portray the inner walls of our fortress. It was Ean who first refused the idea of integration, the melding of us all into one composite human being. We may never accept that option.
We’ve written in a semi-documentary style, because we felt that Sybil and Eve and Milligan were clinical studies that could not reflect the actuality of our experience within the Multiple Personality Disorder process. Third person singular was employed because there is no “one” author here with total memory of the abuse. Even the Troop member who stepped in and unknowingly lived Truddi’s life for her from infancy could not serve as spokesperson in the first person singular—since she had less memory than any of us. Nor was she aware of her precise “job” within our ranks. Had we given up our names immediately in the manuscript and to Dr. Phillips as the sessions progressed, she would have retreated, perhaps, into an unreachable state of mind along with the cores, unable to continue the performance of her particular job. Dr. Phillips would call our individual jobs “multiplicity’s coping mechanisms.”
As to the matter of energy discussed in this book, Dr. Phillips says our experiences must stand on their own. While other multiples of our acquaintance have mentioned similar happenings, and while experiments are being conducted within the scientific community in this field, the subject is neither widely understood nor accepted. Dr. Phillips does say, however, that each individual human being is made up of energy—and since we are more than one, we naturally evidence more of it, especially when a number of us are coming and going at one time. Added to this is the factor of repressed rage. As the rage builds, so does the energy, much like steam in a pressure cooker.
Most incest victims and multiples never get therapy. We were fortunate to have the best available, but one thing we could not put away was the rage. Contrary to established belief that a “well” victim has kissed anger good-bye, we’ve learned that almost no victim can completely. Our ending, therefore, is the only thing in this book that did not really take place, except as a literary compromise among ourselves. To the children here who envisioned it, the ending is quite real, a comfort created of a rage they will always hold.
—THE TROOPS
ONE
PROTECTIVE Services, federally funded and operating statewide, dealt with a variety of family ills—among them, child abuse. The branch agency for Cashell, Maryland, was housed on the outskirts of suburbia in a long, concrete building. As he pulled into his parking space that morning, the back windows already streamed with light. The spring wind that had buffeted his car on the highway shoved him bodily across the parking lot, whipping at his tweed jacket and tearing at his briefcase. Reflected in the glass doors as he strode through them was the blurred image of his six-foot, forty-year-old frame. His dark brown hair and Vandyke beard needed a trim.
The muted sound of a typewriter and ringing phones followed him down the maze of hallways, past the playroom where small children came to say things that most adults did not believe, and which some judge would eventually throw out of court. The sign on his door said “Robert A. Phillips, Jr., Ph.D., Psychotherapist.” He eyed his desk with no surprise at the overflow. Troubled families forced into weekend familiarity seemed to explode. By Monday morning they’d landed at Protective Services in the form of police reports and phone messages.
For five and one half years, he’d worked with incest families. Based on those credentials, he’d been asked several years ago to use his expertise in male sexuality and take things one step further. He’d set up a program to act as therapist to men who sexually abused their children. Part of the overflow on his desk had to do with that program: phone calls from the abusers themselves and from irate or merely suspicious mothers, countless referrals from Children’s Hospital and more from the District Attorney’s office.
The familiar sound of Mrs. Greenwood’s four-inch heels echoed down the hallway and paused outside his door. Mrs. Greenwood was a short woman who did everything possible to make herself taller and who still looked like a tiny gnome. There was nothing gnomelike about her skills with the public. As intake director, she often heard things that sent her into a spin. Her solution to burnout was to choose the proper co-worker and unload. Once rid of whatever she found troublesome, irritating, or appalling, Mrs. Greenwood went about her business, refreshed and ready for more.
Now she clattered into his office, black hair loose around her face, her eyes glinting.
“Remember the cheers when the child abuse hot line number went up on the Jersey Turnpike? Well, cancel the cheers. The sign came down this morning. The Jersey agency couldn’t handle it. In twenty-four hours they logged seven hundred and fifty bona fide calls. Can you imagine that? You missed one.” She retrieved a slip of paper from the floor where it had fallen. “This person is forty-one, a victim. A Woman’s Place was her first contact, but they aren’t allo
wed to recommend therapists. Do you know that for two months she’s been referred from one agency to the other? She tried everyone, from the American Psychiatric Association to the Rape Crisis Center, asking for a therapist with a clinical, working knowledge of incest treatment. She was told that cards aren’t indexed according to specialty. When somebody calls, there’s no way to know which psychoanalyst or psychiatrist handles what. Finally, someone at the Rape Center gave your name as a referral from Children’s Hospital.”
Doctor Phillips shook his head. “The wheels grind slowly.”
There was a look of exasperation on her face. “The woman told me something else I didn’t know. Bet you don’t, either.”
“What?”
“She went to our town library, wanting to see in black and white that others had been victims, too. The shelves were bare. Not a single volume on anything to do with child abuse. The librarian told her that children come in and sweep the shelves clean, borrowing every book in sight. Then the librarian said, ‘I guess you know why. The adults abuse them and the children keep silent. The books tell them they aren’t alone.”’
“No. I didn’t know that.”
“There’s something peculiar about her.” Mrs. Greenwood hesitated.
“The librarian?”
“The woman. She can’t tell time. Not by the clock, unless she strains, and as for blocks of time—I had to help her figure out how long it had been between the phone calls she made. It’s difficult to explain,” she said, noting his puzzled look. “But trust me. The woman has trouble with time.”