The Flock Read online

  Lynn tried to enlist my help. “Renee, how are we going to help Jo face the truth about her childhood?” she asked.

  I felt irritated that Lynn was trying to involve me in this. It was Jo’s problem, not mine, and I thought I had done more than anyone could have asked for. I gave Jo time to be with Lynn, I gave her time in the evenings to write in her journal. What more did Lynn expect from me?

  “Maybe Jo’s right,” I snapped at Lynn when she pushed me for suggestions. “Nancy and Ray didn’t seem like child abusers to me.”

  The mounting pain, pressure, and panic in the group was a greater threat to me than to any of the other personalities. I was the one who was trying to keep a functional life going, and I felt that Lynn was pushing for a psychic explosion. I only hoped that I would be in some deep recess of our collective mind when things really blew.

  Jo found that she was being assaulted from the inside as well. Fears from somewhere deep inside her surfaced as a strange mental image of blood on a wall.

  “I can’t make sense of the fear or the vision,” she said, “but I’m so afraid to let go. I feel all this stuff rising and have to constantly fight against it.”

  “What are you afraid of?” Lynn asked. “What would happen if you stopped fighting the internal pressure?”

  “I’m afraid I’ll lose time,” Jo said. “Maybe I’m afraid that I won’t lose time. Maybe I’m afraid of remembering something I don’t want to remember.”

  “Jo, you are safe in my office,” Lynn said. “It’s OK if you lose time in here, and it’s OK if you remember something frightening. It’s all in the past and can’t hurt you now. I’ll help you deal with it, whatever it is.”

  Jo couldn’t let herself relax. Within a week, Jo had gone from comfortably exploring gender identity to shaking with anxiety and panic from unknown origins. Her whole body quaked.

  No memories surfaced, and every afternoon overwhelming blackness answered Jo’s anxiety. When Jo’s fear ran wild, Josie, the personality who knew only panic, took control. Sometimes Lynn recognized the shift from Jo to Josie. She saw the quivering muscles tense, the eyes open wide and fill with terror. Lynn would talk calmly, soothingly as she slowly moved to block Josie from the wall.

  Sometimes Lynn managed to restrain Josie for a few seconds, and she used that time to try to reach her. “Josie, Josie,” Lynn said with a note of desperation, “you’re safe here.” But for Josie there was no safety. There was no here.

  “No,” Josie cried, “please don’t!” and she struggled out of Lynn’s arms until she was free to block out memories and her own awareness with the self-inflicted pain.

  When Jo, in her words, felt “the fear scratching and crawling all over in an attempt to escape,” sometimes Sissy, the four-year-old past-keeper who held rage as well as fear, appeared, searching for a window. She pounded her fists on the pane of Lynn’s fifth-floor window, crying, “Out, please, out. Please, people!”

  I was weary and bruised after three of these panic-filled sessions and decided that despite my own anxiety, I had better help Lynn get to the root of this anxiety.

  “Josie feels overwhelming panic,” I said. “In her memory, it is dark and she is terrified. She wants only the blessed peace of knocking herself against the wall. But I think that maybe she doesn’t have the full memory yet. That’s part of what’s driving her to the wall now. She wants to knock herself out before she remembers the awful thing that caused her terror.”

  “When Josie finds herself here, it’s as though she can’t hear or see me,” Lynn said. “Is she blind? Deaf?”

  “No, that’s not quite right,” I said, and groped for the words to explain. “For both Josie and Sissy, there’s really no past. It’s not as if they have memories that they can tell you about. When they do remember something, they’re reliving it right here and now. The memory has sight, sound, texture. It’s as real as, and then more real than, any reality that you and this time and place have to offer.”

  “So, if we could transfer the memories to Jo, then she could remember them as being in the past, where those events belong,” Lynn speculated. “Jo has no problem distinguishing past from present. She wouldn’t be overwhelmed by the memories the way that Sissy and Josie are.”

  “Yes,” I agreed with little optimism, “but it was Sissy and Josie who experienced these things, not Jo.” The Jo personality had no memories to correspond with Sissy’s and Josie’s reliving of past torment.

  Jo was frustrated by her inability to name or control the fear she was experiencing, and was further frustrated by Lynn’s apparent calm.

  “Why aren’t you frustrated too?” Jo asked. “Why don’t you help me?”

  “I’m helping you the best way I know how,” Lynn responded, “and I can wait out the bad periods.”

  Eventually the pressure built to such a pitch that Jo imploded in despair. She grew depressed, more deeply despondent than she had been since starting therapy. She couldn’t work, couldn’t think, couldn’t even enjoy reading.

  “Lynn, with her professional distance, might be able to wait this out,” Jo thought bitterly, “but I can’t wait anymore.” Jo was consumed by her depression. “Please help me!” she begged Lynn.

  “I’m doing what I can,” Lynn said.

  By now I empathized with Lynn and searched along with her for some way to help Jo. I knew Lynn wasn’t sure what to do. “I guess I’ve got to push Jo even harder,” Lynn said.

  I agreed. “Anything is better than this.”

  Late in February, Lynn forced Jo to listen to a tape of the blood-curdling scream Sissy let out as she dived, furious and frightened, for the window. “You’re angry,” Lynn shouted at Jo, “you’re terribly angry! You’re angry at your parents for what they did to you. You’re angry at your parents for the feelings you have about yourself. If you can begin to own your anger, you won’t feel that blocked rage and pain.”

  Rather than being shocked into acknowledgment that something terrible had happened to her in childhood, Jo withdrew. She didn’t lose time, but sat immobile throughout the tape and Lynn’s onslaught. Jo silently reasoned that she had hit on the truth at last.

  She was insane, she decided, and getting progressively worse. The horrible, haunting scream on the tape proved it. Soon she’d be locked up in a psychiatric ward. Silently Jo resolved that death was her only alternative to a debilitating chronic mental illness.

  Jo left the office calmly, shrugging off Lynn’s attempts to get her to talk. Now that she understood, there was nothing more to say. She had to kill herself before they locked her up.

  Jo drove home slowly. By the time she unlocked the door to the house, her movements were mechanical. She felt no fear, no sorrow, no pain. She felt nothing.

  Jo searched the cabinets for prescription medications and gathered them all on the kitchen counter. She put the kettle on for tea, figuring that the hot liquid would hasten her overdose. She considered the various drugs and piled together what she calculated to be a lethal mixture and dose.

  Blocked by Jo’s depression and determination, I paced inside and watched the scene with horror. I sought for a break in Jo’s concentration that would allow me out before she took the pills. I hoped that if she acted I’d be able to take control and force the pills back up.

  Jo placed an afghan on her rocking chair in the sunroom. She found a classical-music station on the radio. Now she would fetch the pills and tea, and cuddle under the cover. She would watch the snow blowing hard in the twilight and wait to fall asleep. Jo was grateful that she had retained enough sanity to carry through her plan.

  Returning to the kitchen to pour her pot of tea, Jo was distracted by a sound at the kitchen door. She looked up to see Lynn’s face at the window. Jo stared incredulously. Then she opened the door to let Lynn in.

  “What were you doing?” Lynn asked gently.

  Jo gestured toward the tea and pills. “I can’t take any more. I can’t let this get worse.”

  Lynn didn’t se
em surprised.

  “I was concerned when you left the office,” Lynn said. “You changed when you heard the tape. You stopped pleading for help. You wouldn’t talk to me and you were far too calm. When no other personality resumed control, I was afraid that you were close to suicide.”

  Jo’s defenses dropped and she began to cry. She suddenly understood that Lynn had not given up and would not give up on her.

  “You’re going to get better, Jo,” Lynn said. “You and I are making you well together. Sometimes it means working, but sometimes it means waiting out the bad times.”

  Lynn and Jo spent a few hours that evening waiting together. They sat on the sofa with a fire crackling in the fireplace, Lynn’s arm protectively encircling Jo. Jo rested her head on Lynn’s shoulder as only Missy had done in the past. Lynn’s rescue did not dissolve the overwhelming fear, but it made waiting to understand it a little easier. Jo finally knew that she was not alone.

  BOOK

  III

  20.

  Then waiting became impossible. Josie dived for the wall a few days later, her feet flailing, and cracked two of Lynn’s ribs. Lynn was no longer able to keep Josie and Sissy from hurting themselves. “I’m certain that these memories being unleashed in such a violent way are important,” Lynn said. “We’ve got to control damage to both our bodies, but these memories have to be allowed to surface.

  “What about hospitalization, Renee?” Lynn asked.

  I was embarrassed and upset that the group had hurt Lynn, but hospitalization was out of the question. Despite the toll of daily therapy sessions, Jo was taking courses toward her master’s degree, and I was teaching. The group was undeniably functional. Besides, we were all terrified of psychiatric hospitalization.

  “I think that we would, all of us, become suicidal if we were ever locked up,” I told Lynn. “There’d be no hope, no reason to go on. Anything that said ‘You’re really not functional’ to the group would be disastrous. It’s our functionality that makes it possible to put up with the craziness. You can’t take that away from us.” Lynn agreed that hospitalization was not a viable alternative.

  “Renee, what if I had someone here who was strong enough to hold Josie away from the wall?” I wasn’t overjoyed at the prospect, but it certainly was better than hospitalization. And something had to be done. I agreed.

  I walked into Lynn’s office March 3 anxious about the involvement of another person but relieved that Lynn would be protected. Long before I knew I was multiple, I had figured out that one person’s pain didn’t justify someone else’s being hurt. I had seen Ray come home, upset about something that happened at the factory. Within an hour, Nancy would be sobbing in the bedroom, feeling beaten and bewildered by his demands and sarcasm. “If he can’t leave his problems at work, he shouldn’t come home,” I muttered then, and proceeded to take this on as a general rule. No one had a right to take out his pain on another person.

  Now I was doing that to Lynn. My problem was causing Lynn physical pain. I was mortified and would have agreed to don a straitjacket while in Lynn’s office if that had been the only way to keep her from harm.

  It didn’t matter that neither I nor the other personalities wanted to hurt Lynn. Being functional enough to be out on the streets meant, to me, not causing other people pain. I was closer to the edge of what I called dysfunctional than I had ever been. My need to stay away from that edge, even if only by a hair, made me willing to allow someone else to see me “acting crazy.”

  I reasoned that this “protector” would have only temporary involvement. He would be around just long enough to weather the storm so that the actual memories could surface. Once those memories were uncovered, the panic, with its threat of physical harm, would certainly cease.

  Lynn had told me that she would arrange for someone to sit outside her office in the receptionist’s area. She wouldn’t call for him unless or until Josie or Sissy surfaced.

  At the start of the session, I said, “This person knows about the others, right? I mean, he won’t think it’s me, Renee, acting like that?”

  “I’m surprised that you haven’t guessed who’s out there.” Lynn smiled.

  I had no idea and nodded for her to continue.

  “It’s Gordon,” she said, with pleasure.

  “Gordon?” I echoed, horrified. Not Gordon. I had tried so hard at my party in January to make Gordon see me as a competent, functional person. What would happen if he saw Josie or Sissy? I didn’t want him exposed to them. Even if it was true, as Lynn assured me, that Gordon had as much empathy and respect for me as she had, he’d be appalled if he saw what really went on. Angry and embarrassed, I fled inside. Let some other personality deal with this!

  Jo emerged. Since she was unaware of the exchange Lynn and I had just had, Lynn again explained that Gordon was the person outside the door, waiting to offer assistance. Jo knew that the Renee personality had met Gordon, and she had looked forward to meeting him herself. She wanted at least to thank Gordon for being so understanding of the enormous amount of time she spent with Lynn. Now he was going to meet not her but Josie and Sissy!

  Jo protested and, when Lynn tried to persuade her at least to give it a chance, she too fled from the outside awareness.

  DIARY    March 3, 1983

  I was shocked by Renee’s and Jo’s reactions to my enlistment of Gordon. Renee had so obviously liked him (and I believed Jo too would quickly be comfortable with him) that I expected his presence—rather than that of a security guard or one of my colleagues—would be reassuring.

  I thought it would be harder explaining Gordon’s presence to my colleagues than to Jo and Renee. But since my sessions with the group don’t start until 5:00 p.m., when the workday is over, I anticipated that few people would be aware of Gordon’s involvement.

  I did tell Harry about it yesterday. It sure helps to have a boss who has known me for two decades. Over the years, he has watched me shelter battered wives in my home and take inner-city kids for rides in our sailboat, and has approved my expense reports for such therapeutic costs without blinking an eye. Even so, I was surprised at how easy it was to convince Harry of this new unorthodox step in the treatment of my first multiple.

  Harry said that he thought I had come up with the best solution. He doubted that voluntary admission to the psychiatric ward would work even if Jo and Renee were willing. He reminded me how fascinated yet disbelieving the house staff had been when I had presented Jo’s case at Psychiatric Grand Rounds. It was clear that they knew nothing about MPD. “If she were hospitalized, you’d lose control of her treatment, because you’re a social worker, not an M.D., and I wouldn’t trust the house staff to respond appropriately to her,” Harry said. “Any mistreatment at a time of such crisis might leave her in far worse shape than she is right now, particularly if you were the intervening force.”

  Harry also approved of my choice of Gordon for physical protection, although I suspect that agreement had an economic as well as a clinical base—it wouldn’t cost the unit anything to have Gordon involved. “I’ve known Gordon as long as I’ve known you,” Harry said, “and his presence is not likely to cause the anxiety to you or Jo that introducing a new clinician might.”

  He told me not to worry about how the rest of the staff might view my unusual treatment methods. They had grown accustomed to the idea of a multiple’s being treated on their very service. He said that the only real concerns expressed lately were from clinicians who were afraid that he might want them to put in the inordinate amount of time I was spending with Jo. He reassured them and reminded them that having a colleague treating such an unusual disorder was a rare opportunity for them. “I have complete trust in your therapeutic instincts,” he said.

  His concern was that I may have a difficult time letting go of Gordon once the crisis is over. I told him that I hoped that wouldn’t be an issue. It depended on Jo and the others, of course, but Gordon and I had already discussed the possibility of his having a contin
uing presence in Jo’s treatment.

  I know that I could use an adjunct therapist, and Gordon would be my first choice. Treating a multiple is the most intensive and exhausting therapy I have ever done. I don’t regret what I have done, or the commitments I have made to the group to see their treatment through, but I am afraid of getting burned out.

  This wouldn’t be the first time that Gordon and I had combined our talents to help someone in need. Some of the abused and neglected inner-city kids who formed my caseload were students in the school where Gordon taught. We often worked after hours with these teenagers, helping them find alternatives to the drugs, destruction, and despair they knew at home. And he and I spent many productive hours brainstorming together about how to recognize and respond to a particular child’s need.

  I was relieved and grateful when Gordon volunteered to help with Jo. He and I had become excited when we thought how we might be able to work as cotherapists with the various personalities.

  Now this.

  Jo apparently wants Gordon to see her and understand her as a person, not as “just a freak to be controlled.” That’s easy. I’m delighted that Jo wants Gordon here, interacting with her the way I do.

  Renee is a bigger concern. She left today, swearing she would “never be back to be humiliated” by me again. Somehow she feels that I have let her down, that I have exposed her to Gordon in a way she didn’t want to be exposed. An “anonymous” helper whom she had no desire to include in her “real life” would have been easier for her. She seems to think that if Gordon encounters the other personalities he will lose respect for her.

  I am struck, once again, by how separately the personalities view themselves. Renee obviously thinks that, since Gordon saw her acting appropriately at a party, he thinks of her only in that way. But what about all of the late-night phone calls to my house from confused, hesitant Jo and from plaintive Missy? Doesn’t Renee realize that Gordon knows they are the same physical entity?