The Flock Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  The Flock

  “A testimony to her own courage and the dedication of her therapist, who believed that a profoundly fragmented self has the capacity to heal within a loving therapeutic relationship…The Flock is written in a direct and clear style…and helps to clarify the genesis and development of a disorder that is still looked on with skepticism by some psychologists.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Like Sybil, Casey is a smart, admirable woman and that is what makes The Flock positively, intensely transfixing.”

  —New York Woman

  “Although the names of both authors are pseudonyms, every word of this extraordinary book rings true….This remains an unusual story because it is largely told by the patient, and she is a gifted writer.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “An excellent book…It states the disorder with understanding and gives a clear indication of what being a multiple is like.”

  —CORNELIA B. WILBUR, M.D., real-life psychiatrist to “Sybil”

  “[An] extraordinary, convincing account of her psychological fragmentation and arduous journey toward wholeness…deftly told and studded with striking images…distinguished by [Casey’s] intelligence and courage and by Wilson’s unremitting patience and compassion.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A remarkable book, totally honest and compelling…a ground-zero look at one of the most frightening outcomes of child abuse…This is the real thing.”

  —ANDREW VACHSS

  Some names and places of persons and institutions have been changed to protect the privacy of all involved. Joan Frances Casey and Lynn Wilson are pseudonyms.

  2017 Ballantine Books Trade Paperback Edition

  Copyright © 1991 by Joan Frances Casey

  Afterword copyright © 1991 by Frances Howland, M.D.

  Preface copyright © 2016 by Joan Frances Casey

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Ballantine Books, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  BALLANTINE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., a division of Penguin Random House LLC, in 1991.

  ISBN 9780449907320

  Ebook ISBN 9781101969182

  Cover photography © Al Francekevich

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Preface

  Prologue

  Author’s Note

  Book I

  Chapter 1.

  Chapter 2.

  Chapter 3.

  Chapter 4.

  Chapter 5.

  Chapter 6.

  Chapter 7.

  Chapter 8.

  Chapter 9.

  Chapter 10.

  Chapter 11.

  Chapter 12.

  Book II

  Chapter 13.

  Chapter 14.

  Chapter 15.

  Chapter 16.

  Chapter 17.

  Chapter 18.

  Chapter 19.

  Book III

  Chapter 20.

  Chapter 21.

  Chapter 22.

  Chapter 23.

  Chapter 24.

  Chapter 25.

  Chapter 26.

  Book IV

  Chapter 27.

  Chapter 28.

  Chapter 29.

  Chapter 30.

  Chapter 31.

  Chapter 32.

  Chapter 33.

  Chapter 34.

  Chapter 35.

  Chapter 36.

  Chapter 37.

  Chapter 38.

  Chapter 39.

  Afterword

  PREFACE

  Lessons learned from four years of intensive work with Lynn and Gordon Wilson have sustained me since my integration, for more than twenty years.

  The most critical comment from the year The Flock was published until the present day was that my maverick therapist and her co-therapist husband did not maintain the sterile boundaries that define most psychotherapeutic relationships in the United States. Lynn took me home. I perched on a kitchen stool and chatted with her on some Sunday afternoons while she cooked meals to freeze for the week. Some of our therapy sessions happened on miles-long walks or while nestled on pillows on the living-room rug. Gordon stopped by at the school where I taught one day when I was terrified and suicidal personalities were jumping out of my skin. Reassured by his presence, I was able to finish my day’s work. His unexpected response created an unprecedented level of trust throughout the Flock.

  Lynn and Gordon invited me to spend weekends with them at their lakeside cabin. I learned how to clean birds’ nests out of the rafters. I learned to guide a canoe and feel the tranquility of sunrise on the lake. I even learned how to replace a toilet. Lynn and Gordon invited my partner and me to join their family for holiday meals. They recognized my need to rebuild a personality damaged early in life.

  At that time and place in our lives, it worked for Lynn and Gordon to reparent me. They gave me a safe relationship in which to heal. My alternate personalities, which had separated in response to childhood trauma, all learned to depend on Lynn and Gordon’s honest care for each one of them. Lynn and Gordon addressed the need presented by the emergence of each personality; in response, each personality healed and grew healthy. The separate personalities’ dependence on Lynn and Gordon transferred into the personalities’ dependence on internal others, which led naturally to my integration. Toward the end of my therapy with Lynn and Gordon, the remaining few distinct but no longer amnestic personalities agreed among ourselves that we could live our life as separate but equal, healthy personalities. I didn’t know at the time that my defense of the importance of each one’s continued autonomy was a sure sign that we were about to unify.

  Would I have gotten better with a more formal style of treatment or different therapists? I expect so, eventually. Lynn reminded me throughout our time together that my drive toward health was undeniable. I fought to be independent of Lynn and Gordon as fiercely as I craved to trust them and be dependent on them. When my dissociation seemed most flagrant and treatment was most intense, I applied to graduate school. I completed the last year of treatment while working on my degree a thousand miles from Lynn and Gordon. I had continued contact with them, including intensive therapy sessions when I was home on school breaks, but I was also determined to get on with my life.

  In treating other clients with what is now called Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), Lynn and Gordon confined most of their therapy to Lynn’s office. But they never failed to surprise a client by meeting a special need unexpectedly, knowing that proactive, unexpected responses strengthen the therapeutic relationship.

  Analyzing the criticisms of Lynn and Gordon’s treatment style with the Flock became part of the therapy itself. When some mental health professionals accused Lynn of breaking the rules, Lynn and I researched therapeutic conventions in various cultures and determined that the sterility of U.S. psychotherapy was an expression of convention, not an essential for treatment. If she and I had met in the therapist-client roles in a more closely knit community where anonymity and distance between therapist and client were not expected, her treatment style might have been admired and supported by those around us. In some native cultures, “two-spirited” individuals are celebrated rather than seen as pathological. (It would be interesting to research whether these multiple personalities occur spontaneously or through trauma.)

  When some clinicians noted that Lynn and Gordon’s re-parenting of the Flock would not be possib
le for all mental health professionals to provide to all clients, we dismissed the argument as irrelevant. Cookie-cutter therapy, in which every client is treated exactly the same as every other, is not the technique of any wise and experienced practitioner. Each client presents with her own history, healthy responses, and pathological defenses. Each brings his own projection and transference to the therapist’s office. All therapists bring their own projections and countertransference in return. A competent therapist uses a variety of techniques to help clients recognize their pathologies and heal themselves. The best therapeutic relationships are those that allow clients to transform their internal obstacles into wisdom and into tools that they practice inside therapy and then can use in other personal and professional adult relationships.

  If a client’s DID was caused by significant childhood trauma, he or she was a victim of boundary violations from an early age. This has led some clinicians to the conclusion that strict boundaries are required for appropriate treatment. However, inflexible boundaries can be as problematic as having no boundaries at all. Rigidity is not a sign of any healthy relationship. Teaching the difference between boundary violation and boundary crossing would seem to be the more important lesson at hand. Lynn and Gordon did not violate boundaries in treating the Flock. They challenged themselves and me to work within boundaries constructed to meet our particular context.

  My life as an integrated person denies none of the previously fragmented personalities but instead celebrates all of our strengths. It has been many years since I’ve classified a feeling by thinking “That’s Missy talking,” or “That’s an Isis feeling.” They are all me—all the time.

  I was victimized by a father (now deceased) who sexually assaulted me early in life, setting me up to be prey for other abusers, including a handful of teachers, family friends, and two Catholic priests. Having been victimized does not make me a victim today—nor does it make me a survivor. I don’t define myself by my past. I embrace who I am and don’t worry much these days about how I got here.

  I have cultivated my dissociative experience into skills that I use today. I am a pro at multitasking and juggling three or more projects at a time. Despite my juggling, I rarely forget an appointment or miss a deadline. And I think I have a greater range of emotions available to me than most people do. It is almost too easy for me to imagine the points of view of others, including those with whom I have serious political or ideological differences. Such skills have served me well in professional and personal life.

  After my years of intense therapy to resolve inner conflicts, conflicts with other people do not scare me. Rather, I see disagreements or misunderstandings as opportunities to learn and grow. I honestly work to understand how I may have offended someone or caused hurt feelings. Rather than defend myself, I’m empathic about the pain that I inadvertently caused, and I’m interested in what I can learn from the experience. One important outcome of moving from dissociation to integration is that I’ve learned to forgive myself and to feel safe broadening my worldview.

  I’ve also learned to forgive others. I understand that people speak and act in ways that reflect where they are at particular moments in their own growth and development. Their choices reflect their experiences and expectations and their projections on others around them as well. Lynn taught me by example that change cannot happen without acceptance, and so I’ve learned to be patient with the imperfections of others. I’ve been able to stay connected with my family of origin because I appreciate watching people around me feel safe enough to grow.

  Ironically, it is clarity on boundaries, developed through my relationship with Lynn and Gordon, that has served me best. In the years since my integration, I have become good at detaching from the emotional outpourings of others. I can appreciate that another person is having a hard time without feeling responsible for her feelings and without thinking that I should try to fix the cause of her anger or unhappiness. I can be compassionate and supportive without feeling consumed by the other person’s experience. I no longer wear the badge of hypervigilance that identifies those still reactive to previous trauma.

  As any examination of the history of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) will show, diagnoses go in and out of favor, often in response to technology, to events in the world around us, and to developing acceptance of differences in life experience. The diagnosis of DID is less common now than when I was diagnosed and is still controversial among mental health professionals. The diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder, on the other hand, is currently common. PTSD carries its own dissociative subtype. While the DID diagnosis polarized mental health professionals into “believer” and “nonbeliever” camps, no therapist would doubt that those who have experienced significant or sustained trauma carry psychological wounds. Amnesia, the reliving of past traumatic events, responses to triggers, and stunted emotional development are symptomatic of a number of diagnoses that are accepted by mental health professionals. Perhaps the common ground in the DID controversy is an agreement that how a disorder is labeled matters less than whether clients get what they need to heal their pain.

  Another change in the years since my integration has been the greater acceptance by the psychiatric community and the public of gender variance. Some gender-nonconforming individuals call themselves androgynes, pan-gender, or non-binary. They report that their experience is neither that of always-male nor that of always-female. These individuals often identify their more male self by a name distinct from the name of their more female self; they can live comfortable lives with two personalities as long as they are supported by external others. Transgender adults and children recognize that their identities do not match the sexual organs with which they were born. While transgender individuals switch from one gender identity to the other rather than maintaining both, they often describe their before and after personalities as distinct, demarcated by their gender transition.

  Gender Identity Disorder does not appear in the fifth edition of DSM. The new classification “gender dysmorphia” has shifted the profession’s focus away from how individuals live their lives to a client’s difficulty or stress in response to gender identity or nonconformity. (By analogy, the professional focus in treating DID would be less on separate personalities as a problem and more on the discomfort and dysfunction reported by those who have them.) Perhaps the acceptance of gender fluidity will allow for greater acceptance of broader identity fluidity as well.

  Post-integration, I’ve been happy to take advantage of more traditional therapy. I’ve seen three other therapists since completing my work with Lynn and Gordon. All of those therapeutic relationships conformed to acceptable U.S. psychotherapeutic models, each lasting no more than six months of no more than weekly fifty-minute sessions. I worked through the painful end of a life partnership in one case, made peace with a cancer diagnosis at another time, and worked with my partner in couples therapy to articulate and address the struggles of maintaining a long-distance relationship in the third. My time as “the Flock” feels distant and done, as do the traumatic events that resulted in the dysfunction that led me to Lynn. Now, as unfettered from the past as any healthy individual can be, I live my life forward.

  —Joan Frances Casey, June 2016

  PROLOGUE

  This book is many things. It is the story of a child who was badly hurt, but survived. It is the story of a young woman who had many personalities and became one. It is also the story of how one therapist treated one patient. Most of all, however, it is the story of people who found each other at the right moment in their lives and performed magic. It’s about two women who changed each other and about three people who became a family.

  It is neither a manual nor a definitive statement of what ought to be done to treat Multiple Personality Disorder. It is an account of what Joan and I did and how it worked. A therapist more experienced with multiples might have treated Joan differently and much more efficiently. But, then, as I have lear
ned to my sorrow, many clinicians might not have seen what was there to be treated, no matter how flamboyantly presented.

  What happened between Joan and me was a product of the time, the place, and the people the two of us had become when we met. A year or two earlier or later, I might not have been able to respond to Joan’s need. A year or two either way, Joan might have been dead or might have been strong enough to use me as she had used other therapists—to bury her problems further.

  When I first met Joan, on a snowy March day in 1981, I was approaching a transition in my life. My daughter Lisa, youngest of five, was finishing her final year at home. For the first time in thirty years, I would have no children living with me. For the first time in our seventeen years of marriage, my second husband, Gordon, and I would be alone together.

  I knew I would miss Lisa. By the time she was born, five years after her nearest sibling, Victor, I had relaxed enough about mothering to enjoy her completely without worrying much about how she would turn out. Lisa had found it easy to confide in me, and we had spent joyful hours walking along the lake near our weekend cottage, talking about politics and about her hopes for the future. There were no younger children demanding my attention, so I had the time and energy to develop a personally gratifying relationship—not only with a daughter but with a delightful person. As much as I wanted Lisa to grow up and build her own life, I knew her departure would leave a gap.