The Flock

by Joan Frances Casey

  Yet I felt a secret happiness at the prospect of not having her around. I was excited by the idea of being a spouse rather than a mother, of being able to make plans just for Gordon and me. Now we could spend hours, or even days, sailing. Gordon had a special love of the water and of his boats: a thirty-foot Catalina named The Channel and a fifteen-foot O-Day that he called Mantra. Some of the children grew to appreciate the beauty and solitude of being on the water, but I was often too distracted by some family or professional crisis to go out for a sail or to enjoy it when I did. Now I’d have the time.

  The stack of books I had waiting to be read was two feet high. In anticipation of lazy hours on Lake Michigan, I had divided the stack in half: one for reading in bed, the other on the water.

  I wanted also to do some work on the house that had been occupied by kids, cats, and dogs for so many years. I thought I might even get back to singing in a choir.

  My career as a clinical social worker was gratifying too, and my job had changed recently in a way that promised growth. After sixteen years of doing both fieldwork and psychotherapy, I had become a member of a new “whole-patient” unit attached to the local university and teaching hospital. This outpatient unit was designed to serve as an interdisciplinary training ground for members of the medical and ancillary professions.

  I enjoyed working with both students and community people, and I welcomed being able to teach as well. My colleagues were enthusiastic about the concept of treating a “whole” person and concentrating on wellness rather than disease. The mix of doctors, nurse clinicians, and social workers collaborating for the good of patients generated new and challenging ideas. But the program was slow in getting started. Not all the doctors were thrilled with interdisciplinary treatment, and some were resistant. Referrals were scarce and sometimes inappropriate.

  Although I worked hard to show the doctors how useful a social worker could be in patient care, I was not as busy as I would have liked. The first time Joan called me, it was easy for me to respond to her apparent desperation with an immediate appointment, and equally easy to schedule additional sessions as the complexity of her problem became obvious. This is a rare situation for most clinicians.

  In the years that have passed since I met Joan, many things have changed. I know that if Joan were approaching me for the first time now I would respond to her differently. The bureaucratic structure has changed, and I have more administrative duties. I am also treating other multiples and have begun supervising a colleague who is treating them. The two of us are conducting group-therapy sessions for adults who were molested as children. Most of these are people who suffer from Multiple Personality Disorder. Sheer numbers, if nothing else, have forced me to find other ways of treating MPD than those I used with Joan. And as my understanding of and competence in treating the disorder have grown, multiple personality has come to seem, though still horrendous, less unique and incomprehensible, and thus more manageable.

  Six years ago, treating one multiple was unsettling enough to me. Now I can treat several at once, because of what I learned from Joan. I have also found that both therapist and patients benefit from cutting down on the mystique and the feelings of isolated strangeness that so often accompany the disorder.

  I must emphasize that I am not apologizing for my approach to treating Joan. Despite the “reparenting” style of treatment described in this book, I was not “overinvolved,” nor did I experience “messianic countertransference,” as some of the clinical literature would suggest. I have often tried to imagine how I might have acted differently. Always I end up in the same place. For us, at that time, it was the only way. To treat my first multiple, as to raise my first child, I had to commit myself deeply to the experience in order to tolerate the uncertainty, fear, pain, and intensity. With Joan, I came close to burnout, over and over again, but was continually rescued by the depth of my caring.

  Treating Joan changed me and my life. It confirmed deeply felt values, sharpened my awareness, honed my perceptions, and gave me a sense of confidence about my skills and abilities that is reflected both in my work and in my being. It remains a priceless gift.

  As I write this, I think how remarkable it is that I now feel so clear about the connection Joan and I made, the relationship that weaves like a shining thread through all the pain and confusion that existed for so long. It is this honest connection between two human beings that, in the end, makes what we endured together understandable and meaningful.

  To me, the essential task of any therapy is the same as that of life—to recognize, experience, and affirm our common humanity as we integrate within, with one another, and with the universe.

  —Lynn Wilson, June 1988

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  I had multiple personalities from infancy until I was almost thirty years old. My sense of identity changed drastically as I began to accept my diagnosis and progressed through successful treatment. Even my ability to say “I” in a self-referential way is a relatively new experience for me. I have been integrated—well—for six years.

  Before my integration, “I” meant, at various times, any of twenty-four personalities. It’s a confusing way to live and, with twenty-four points of view, a confusing tale to tell. My story is told here through the perspective of one major, growing, and changing personality—a personality who called herself Renee.

  BOOK

  I

  1.

  Anyone can walk a tightrope. All it takes is practice and luck.

  I had the practice. For as long as I could remember, I had walked cautiously through life, careful to please whoever might be near. I was so expert that hardly anybody noticed I didn’t have feelings or thoughts of my own.

  Practice and luck. I used to be very lucky. School was easy; I never had a job that I couldn’t handle. It used to be that everybody always liked me.

  It was different now. Keith wanted us to separate. Maybe he didn’t want to be married to anyone, certainly not to me.

  I figured that he didn’t really mean it. He must be warning me to shape up. Sometimes I forgot about trying to please him.

  When he first told me that we should live apart for a while, I tried to do everything I thought he wanted. I let him stay in our house and found an apartment for myself to make it easier for him. That should have counted for something, but after three months, just as I was getting ready to ask him if I could come home, he said he wanted a divorce.

  There had to be a solution. If I could just figure out the right button to push, he’d like me again. But when I tried to think about it, I got scared, so scared that the tightrope swayed and I began to fall.

  —

  I LEANED BACK AND JERKED reflexively to regain my balance, startling myself awake. I was no longer sitting at my desk. The typewriter I had been working at continued to hum, but now I was ten feet away, sitting on the wide windowsill.

  I had no memory of leaving my desk, of crossing the room, of climbing onto this perch. Nevertheless, I was now tucked against the old mullioned window, chilled by the March cold that seeped through the pane.

  “Damn it,” I muttered, “what’s going on?” The blankness throbbed within, so I looked out at the gray urban sprawl. My life was centered here, at the University of Chicago.

  I was working on a master’s degree in political science. My lover was a biology professor; my job was secretary in his department. I could see my apartment, clearly visible in the afternoon sun. And if I faced north and squinted just right, I could pick out the United Way building, where Keith worked as a fund-raiser.

  Then I looked down.

  “Jump!” I heard the voice, felt the nudge. “Jump!”

  As if I had been mentally rehearsing a part in a play, I envisioned myself pushing the large window open, hopping to my feet, pausing briefly in exhilaration, and then diving strong and hard at the parked cars five stories below.

  I shook my head to flick away the mental scene and hopped back down quickly from the window, a
s though the ledge itself might compel me to leap.

  I returned to the typewriter, breathed deeply for a moment to relax, and set trembling fingers on the keys.

  “Jump!”

  Where had that come from? I didn’t want to die. I wanted to be married.

  It didn’t matter where it had come from. I knew this kind of thing was dangerous.

  It had happened before. I didn’t want to kill myself, but suicide was on my mind.

  “I’ve got enough to deal with without this,” I said, giving up on the typing and resting my head in my hand.

  It had to be the drugs. High school had been a series of psychedelic experiments, a little LSD, a little mescaline, more than a little marijuana and hash, enough of something so that I had virtually no memories prior to the summer I was fifteen.

  My memory was spotty even now, ten years later. Mostly I didn’t worry about it. Proper payment, I figured, for having had so much fun. It was only a problem when someone guessed that I didn’t know something I should have known. But that didn’t happen often. When I walked my tightrope with care, no one seemed to know that I sometimes lost it.

  But suicide was different. I had been frightened like this before: once I’d discovered pills hidden in my dresser; then a collection of razor blades; this was the second time I had found myself looking longingly from a window ledge and fighting the urge to jump.

  In college, after I uncovered the cache of pills, I happened on a way to relieve the pressure at the campus counseling center.

  I didn’t tell the counselor about the pills or feeling out of control. I just played a game that proved to make me feel better.

  I relaxed and let my inside come out.

  Sometimes I could sit on my shoulder and watch. Sometimes I watched with interest, sometimes with apathy, while a detached part of me talked to the therapist. And sometimes I forgot to watch altogether.

  It was a lot like what happened to me when I got high on drugs. Whatever it was, it worked, and the out-of-control feeling subsided. After three visits, I couldn’t do that “inside-out” thing in the counselor’s office. I stopped seeing him, but everything was OK for a while.

  This quick-fix therapy worked so well that I had subsequently seen eight counselors or therapists or psychologists. I always went somewhere different and stayed for no more than three or four visits. Sometimes I felt a little guilty about wasting their time, but I figured that’s what they were paid for.

  One therapist told me that I was passive-aggressive. I growled at her when I left.

  The last guy I saw just after I moved out of the house I shared with Keith and into my apartment. I thought he could help me figure out a way to get Keith back. He didn’t and he scared me away when he started asking questions that made me uncomfortable. I had been woolgathering in my “inside-out” position when I suddenly woke up and realized that he was looking at me curiously. “I asked you if you ever forgot things,” he said.

  That jarred me.

  “Yeah, sometimes,” I said teasingly and ran my tongue over my lip. “What about you?”

  “I’m asking the questions,” he said lightly, “like when do you forget? At work, in bed, here?”

  “Oh, sometimes I get distracted and find that I got someplace without planning to.” I grinned, letting my eyes convey that I thought he was sexy.

  “Like where?”

  “Like the shopping mall or work.”

  “You mean that you drive yourself places and don’t really think about it?”

  “Something like that,” I said.

  This seemed to satisfy him, and he explained that a lot of people get distracted when they’re under stress.

  I didn’t tell him that sometimes I found myself in distant cities when I had gotten really distracted. I didn’t want to get into discussing the drug use with him. And he didn’t ask me out, even though I made it clear that I was interested, so I never went back.

  Now I turned off the typewriter and went into Steve’s office. “I’m going to knock off a little early,” I said.

  He looked up from his book and smiled at me. “Has anyone told you today that you’re lovely?” he asked. “How about if I take you out to dinner?”

  “Not tonight—I’m tired and need to get home.” But I kissed him goodbye so that he wouldn’t feel rejected.

  I drove home, changed into sweat pants and running shoes, and raced outside with my two springer spaniels. They bounced along, black and white, then brindle and white. It was easy to slip into fantasy while my body stretched and moved, the dogs yelping at my bursts of energy: after my run, I’d find myself back at the house I shared with Keith, back where I belonged. I’d make something interesting for dinner. Thai. With lots of lemon grass. Keith liked that.

  The fantasy dissolved, and I was at the door of my temporary home. I showered, lit a cigarette, and called the nurse practitioner whom I had seen a couple of months ago when I had a virus. “I’m feeling kind of stressed out right now,” I said. “Do you know someone I could talk to?”

  Lynn Wilson was the name, and she was a social worker. I hadn’t liked that woman therapist who called me passive-aggressive, and generally preferred to be around men, but I decided that the gender of the therapist didn’t matter. I only needed to see her a few times. Within a month, everything would be fine: no scary suicide thoughts, and I’d probably be home with Keith.

  2.

  Early Friday morning, I left my desk and let myself into an empty faculty office. Fridays were quiet in the Biology Department; no one would notice the secretary’s brief absence. I needed to make this call in private.

  “Lynn Wilson, Mental Health Clinic.” I couldn’t conjure up a face to go with the name but had no trouble visualizing the mental-health clinic. Lots of little offices and a waiting room filled with tense-looking students who pretended to concentrate on their textbooks until the invariably late therapist condescended to see them. When called, a student would hop up nervously and follow a cool professional into an office from which, exactly fifty minutes later, she would emerge, sobbing over some overwhelming personal trauma. Late in the day, after all the students had gone, the therapists would get together and laugh about the ridiculous tales they had been told.

  I shook the scene from my mind and dialed the number. I’d never be like those other students. I would walk in bouncy and smiling and leave the same way. I had no real problem, no feeling that required going to a mental-health clinic. I was only going so that I could be more in balance and stop the threat of suicide.

  While I waited for Lynn Wilson to answer her phone, I rehearsed my speech. I knew what therapists wanted to hear.

  “My name is Joan Frances Casey, and I’m going through a stressful period right now,” I began. “I’m in the process of a divorce that I don’t want. I’m a secretary in the Biology Department, and I’m having an affair with a professor there. I’m also a graduate student in political science, and I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by it all.”

  I took a deep breath. “Just right,” I thought, “I sound serious, but not panicky.”

  The therapist paused. “Let’s see, can you come in Wednesday afternoon?” she asked. My hands felt clammy as I searched for a response. Five more days until Wednesday. I couldn’t make it that long. The tightrope swayed.

  “Umm, OK,” I answered uncertainly, “but could you tell me how to get through the weekend?”

  I waited while she weighed the new urgency in my voice. “I can make some time today,” she said.

  —

  THE WAITING ROOM WAS just as I had imagined. A half-dozen young women, some with small children, flipped through books or stared out the window at the falling snow. I smiled and made eye contact where possible. You don’t have to let your problems get you down.

  “Ms. Casey?” I stood casually and smiled at the tall dark-haired woman, then followed her down the hall. I liked that she called me Casey. I liked that name, liked it so much that I had kept it even after I
got married. “Casey” seemed more descriptive to me than a mere family label. I definitely liked “Ms. Casey” more than “Jo” or “Joan Frances” or “Josie” or “Missy” or any of the other names that people called me.

  Privately, I called myself Renee. Like one of T. S. Eliot’s cats, I assumed everyone had a private name. “Renee” felt comfortable on my tongue, on my being, even if I rarely said it out loud.

  We sat. The therapist pulled out a notebook and pencil from her desk. I smiled at my own understanding of the process, seeing that she knew her role as well as I knew mine. She waited expectantly.

  I felt relaxed and a little drowsy. It was a calm that I recognized. I knew what was going on, and my words flowed with little effort or input. I let my inside out.

  “My name is Joan Frances Casey,” I heard myself say, “but I prefer to be called Jo.” It was odd, I thought, hearing myself say that. It was not what I really felt. I certainly didn’t like to be called Jo.

  I listened while I answered the therapist’s questions. Most of it I could have predicted. I had heard the spiel before.

  I heard myself say that I was the younger of two children and that I had never been close to my mother or to my sister, Carol. I didn’t feel energetic enough to clarify that I didn’t see how I was part of any of this.

  But I did feel a twinge about Carol’s child John. Three years old and already so furtive in his movements, so unsure of himself. The phrase he knew best was “I’m sorry.” John had heard often enough that “Mommy won’t love you if you do that” so that he sensed Mommy’s love was dependent on his intuiting her wants.

  The pain gave way to sharper hurt when Father was discussed. “I was always close to my father,” I heard myself say. “Literally all my childhood memories are of time with him.”

  The therapist listened intently to the description of a special father-daughter closeness, a closeness that had ended in death. “In the spring of 1977, my father knew his cancer was terminal and he told me that he wanted me with him when he died. I think I hated him for saying that. I knew I wasn’t strong enough to watch him die. A few weeks later, my mother called and said to come home. I was living in Chicago, and they were in Richmond. I made plane reservations to go to Richmond, but I hoped that he would die before I arrived. He didn’t.