The Flock

by Joan Frances Casey

  Now Gordon distracted Jo from her focus on the “therapeutic purpose.” He had questions about Jo’s reality, and she decided that it would be rude of her not to answer him as carefully as he questioned her. And Lynn didn’t seem to mind whenever Jo and Gordon veered into intellectual abstraction. In fact, Lynn would sit benignly at one side as Gordon and Jo hammered at some idea together. And sometimes she joined in.

  Spurred on by Gordon’s penetrating questions, Jo searched for images and analogies that would help him understand. At night, after the sessions had ended, she wrote in her journal, exploring further the ideas that had surfaced in her talks with him.

  “How can I explain what it’s like to feel so out of control?” Jo wrote one night.

  It’s like I’m nothing more than a heavy weight dragging at the bottom of a sea. I am too submerged to feel the pounding waves of my other personalities. I’m too deep within my own mind to be really conscious of the beach of real life. I’m dragged by the backwash, the undertow of what the other personalities decide and do. So I scrape the watery sand, neither tossed onto shore to be me alone, nor light enough to become part of the lulling rhythms of life that I sense but do not experience.

  “It’s like you think of yourself as an object,” Gordon said after reading Jo’s journal entry.

  “That’s because I have no control. I feel like I’m not really a person,” Jo replied. Gordon shook his head in confusion.

  “I don’t get it,” he said. “What can’t you control?”

  “Anything. The only times I become aware outside of Lynn’s office, I find myself sitting in a classroom or at my desk at home with books and papers spread out before me. So I write or study or do what it seems that I’m supposed to do. I don’t really have any choice in the matter.”

  “What happens if you get up for something to drink or decide to go to bed?” Gordon asked.

  Jo wasn’t sure. “I never try to do those things,” she said, “because I know I’d lose time.”

  Gordon was unsympathetic. “It seems to me that the only way to have control is to take control.”

  Jo was embarrassed that she hadn’t thought of that herself, but she suspected that the situation was a little more complex. What she didn’t know was that the rest of us were developing a greater empathy for her as well. As she explained her unique self to Gordon, she was explaining to her internal entourage as well.

  Jo’s complaints made me think about how I could make life better for her. I didn’t have to control who got time when. And even if I wanted to shepherd the Flock in that way, I now knew that I wasn’t powerful enough. If I were, Josie and some of the more difficult personalities would never have appeared.

  I began listing the variables that determined who had time when. My desire was only one factor.

  External need was another: if there was a class to be taught, I did the teaching; if a paper needed to be written, Jo did the writing; if the house needed to be cleaned or dinner needed to be cooked, Charlene took control. Over the years, we had divided up the tasks of living. Most of us were a little flexible—I could respond adequately in a graduate seminar and Jo could cook dinner—but in general the personalities performed the tasks that they liked.

  Each personality also had internal limitations that helped determine who had time. Jo was afraid of large groups of people, so she didn’t come out in crowds. Rusty refused to come to the surface unless the body was dressed in jeans or something else that would pass as “boy clothes.” I couldn’t deal with people being angry with me, so, like it or not, I lost time when I thought I had made somebody angry.

  Once I realized that control was such a big issue for Jo, I began to hold back. I stopped stepping in to handle things for her.

  Now, if the phone rang while she was studying, I didn’t push her out of consciousness to answer it. Instead, I waited to see what she would do. More than once, the caller hung up while Jo and I waited each other out, but she learned that she really did have a choice and could answer the telephone if she wished.

  As Jo experienced more of her life, she felt overwhelmed less often. She didn’t have significantly more time, but the time she experienced was more comfortable for her. She felt confident. Jo’s growth pleased me as the growth of a troubled student might. I found I had no reason to feel threatened by her progress.

  Lynn and Gordon also applauded Jo’s new control. They delighted in her success and reaffirmed her developing sense of self. Jo still could not see her physical reflection, but she wrote: “How can I think of myself as less than a person when I see myself reflected in the mirror of Lynn’s and Gordon’s pride?”

  Jo no longer worried that Lynn would think her lazy or resistant. She decided that her discussions with Gordon were worthwhile and acknowledged this. “Our talks root and grow for the sake of themselves,” Jo said. “Even if that growing seems to be aimless, it brings about further sharing and further learning. That continual becoming is what being a person is all about.”

  Lynn said, “I love you, Jo.” And, for the first time, the words meant something.

  Lynn’s feelings may have been genuine for a long time, but only now was Jo ready to accept them. Gordon shared responsibility for this change, and Jo acknowledged that to him.

  “Thank you,” he responded. “For the last two years, I’ve really felt left out. Now I feel part of the family.”

  “Family,” Jo thought. “So that’s the special feeling I share with Lynn and Gordon.” She shivered with anxiety that she might actually belong to people in the continuing and vulnerable sort of way that the term “family” suggested, but she shivered in excitement as well. The concept fit. Family. Together Gordon and Lynn were teaching her, through their love, how to love herself. Wasn’t that what a family was supposed to be? She had to make sure.

  “How do you love me, Lynn? In what context?”

  Lynn sighed and hugged her close. “You’re a grown woman, Jo,” Lynn said, “but you’re my little girl.”

  Jo hesitated, breathing in the safety of Lynn’s embrace. She risked her question quietly, tentatively: “Are you saying you love me like a daughter?”

  “Yes, I love you like a daughter.”

  “Daughter.” That word was even more emotionally laden than “family” for Jo. She tested the word in her journal:

  “Daughter” flutters about, so unfamiliar on my tongue. The word had no place in my childhood vocabulary.

  When I was with my mother, I sometimes thought of myself as a trophy—something to be flaunted before friends. When out of public view, I sat on the shelf, ignored and forgotten. Other times, I felt like my mother’s intellectual superior. I toyed with her, tying her in semantic knots, as my father did, subtly scornful.

  When I was with my father, at the worst of times, I felt “not-a-son,” trying desperately to be something I could never be. At the best of times, I was my father’s “kid.” “Kid.” The word is casual, too casual to describe any real bonding.

  Why didn’t I feel that I belonged to my parents? How early 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?

  My mother once told me that she had picked out the name Robin for a girl child. A boy would be called Joseph. Had I been named Joan as a reminder that I was neither the boy she wanted nor a girl she could love? Were they too disheartened to give me a name that would have started my life out right?

  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.

  The accuracy of m
y memories, whether things happened exactly the way that the personalities remember, doesn’t really matter. If my memory, combined with the memories of the other personalities, provides some coherent past, then that is far better than the blankness I have. Whatever inaccuracies may occur because of the passage of time or because of the colored intensity of “emotional truth” harm no one. All that matters is that I gain a firm grasp on what is real. The memories of the total entity, accurate or not, are providing me a handle. I must have some background to adequately explain where I am now. I must have a base from which to build an unfragmented future.

  Jo was at last ready to accept that the other personalities were not lying even if she herself had no memories of Ray’s abuse. She now had real relationships with Lynn and Gordon to replace the fantasy of Ray as a perfect father.

  “I know that you do love me,” Jo told Lynn, “and that makes it possible for me to grow, just as love makes it possible for an infant to grow. But you know that I don’t like my dependency on you. I’m willing to accept it for a time, because I believe you when you tell me that my acceptance of dependency on you heals a very old need. But I really hate it. I hate being an emotional infant. I want to grow free of you.

  “If I didn’t feel that your love accelerated my growth,” Jo added firmly, “I’d fight against it.”

  DIARY    April 3, 1983

  I’m exhilarated and moved by all of the growth that has taken place in the Flock. In February, the therapeutic relationship was stalled. The Jo personality was in agony, and Josie and Sissy spent time almost every session diving for the wall or the window. Now, with the active involvement of Gordon, we—Gordon, the Flock, and I—are a family. I would never have predicted that therapy would take this sort of turn, and would feel very reluctant to counsel someone else to treat in this way. Yet I feel sure that what is happening is right.

  Gordon’s and my success so far is beyond my wildest dreams. We are not only providing what the various personalities need at various times; we are also modeling good parenting and a healthy marriage for all of them. Jo and Missy both watch me carefully to see how I’ll respond to their enjoyment of Gordon. Unlike her mother, I’m not envious of the relationship they have. In some respects, the mother role is not a new transition, just one newly recognized. I’ve known for two years of cuddling Missy and the other very young personalities that I was providing healthy maternal love. Although Renee would never accept hearing this, I mother her as well, using what I learned when my own daughters were teenagers. Like any wise mother of a teenager, I allow Renee to depend on my counsel without ever drawing attention to the fact of her dependency. Mothering Jo is a joy, if for no other reason than her beginning to realize that, even within her own limited personality, she is a lovely young woman whom I am proud to call my daughter.

  Gordon provides his share of parenting as well. Not only does he protect Josie from self-inflicted harm; he provides her with experience of a healthy male, counterbalancing her memory of paternal abuse. The Rusty personality, so threatened by women, is eagerly opening up to Gordon, sharing memories and growing stronger in the process.

  I don’t think that the personalities manipulated me into this surrogate parenting. It’s been clear for two years that none of them ever expected to have their aching need filled. My love grew in spite of all of my early hesitancy and restraint. I need to continue to be very careful to make only promises I can fulfill, build trust, and keep in mind that the personalities need treatment as well as mothering.

  I can’t deny to myself or to Jo the bonding the three of us are experiencing. I’m a little uneasy about the focal shift in our relationship and know there will be many rocky times ahead as I try to manage both a family relationship and a therapeutic relationship, but I will not abuse Jo by denying its reality.

  Jo has recently pushed through to realizations that were simply not possible before. A week or so ago, she asked me, “Why do you want to be around me?” I told her it was because I liked looking at her, liked hearing what she had to say, found her to be an interesting and likable person. “I never felt that way with my parents,” she said. “They told me I was ugly, stupid, and clumsy, and I believed them.”

  “That’s all wrong,” I said. “You’re not stupid. You’re very bright. You’re not ugly. You’re very pretty.”

  “You mean people aren’t repulsed by me?” she asked. “I don’t look worse than most people?” Jo suddenly realized that she wasn’t the grotesque monster she had imagined her physical self to be.

  She stood suddenly and walked to the mirror that hung on the back of my office door. Gordon and I held our breath while she gazed at her reflection. We watched as she stroked her hair and cheek, much in the way that Little Jo touched me. She seemed entranced. “I see myself,” she said, “I see me.”

  Then she turned back to us, eyes flashing with anger. “How could they do that to me? How could anyone do that to any child?”

  She flew into my arms, just like Missy, and sobbed. “I can see the me that you see,” Jo whispered.

  But then, a day later, I had to reassure Jo again after she found a clinical article that described the therapeutic coparenting that Gordon and I are doing with the Flock as “messianic counter-transference.”

  It’s hard knowing that I’d be scorned by most mental-health professionals. I haven’t gone out of my way to talk about Flock treatment with my colleagues, but neither have I worked to hide what’s happening. Based on my occasional exchanges with Harry, I’ve assumed that they are all adopting a wait-and-see attitude. Now I see that I’ve been naïve and must get used to the idea that at least some people might think I am as sick as my patient.

  I do feel that this is right for the Flock. I can’t deny the progress I am seeing. I can only hope that my “gut” is based on my professional savvy as well as the undeniable personal attraction I feel for them.

  I can’t help worrying about what’s going to happen next. I’m as prepared for the personalities to grow out of their dependency on me as I was with my biological children. But what if I’m wrong? What if the Flock decides that it is comfortable being my “baby”? How will I force growth then? Can I stay objective enough to see that this needs to be done?

  22.

  DIARY    April 16, 1983

  My understanding of the prime dictum, “Meet the patient where she is,” deepens. I am applying it more literally with the Flock than I have ever before in my work. I’ve responded to the separate personalities as individuals from the beginning and have been able to perceive them the way they see themselves. But that doesn’t mean that I have always responded to them in a way that each has needed. My fear of some of them has occasionally made for lousy therapy.

  I know, I know, I know that you can’t force growth. My past experience with children and adolescents has shown me that growth in those periods has little to do with adults’ telling the youngsters that they have to grow up. With some of the personalities, it’s been easy for me to keep this in mind. I’ve been able to allow Missy and Renee to grow in their own ways. I’ve let Little Joe be the little boy he knows himself to be. I’ve given each of these personalities the freedom to grow. Jo has been so focused on the goal of therapy that my task has been to get her to relax and let me worry about the therapeutic nature of our relationship.

  Yet I lacked faith that therapy would progress with some of the others unless I reminded them of my more objective reality. Whenever Joan Frances, who seems to despise me, appeared, I reminded her that she was multiple and had been abused. I constantly supplied psychotic Josie with our current date and location. When I first met Rusty, clearly male and scornful of women, I felt compelled to challenge his identity by reminding him that he lived in a female body.

  As a result, I saw little of Joan Frances and Rusty and simply couldn’t reach Josie. I think now that my rigid adherence to what “needed” to be done was dictated by my discomfort with their lack of acceptance of my reality! I didn’t
really miss Joan Frances or Rusty when they didn’t appear. I was content to spend the hours of therapy with those personalities who seemed to appreciate me more.

  I actually acted in ways to discourage Josie’s appearance. I can’t deny that I was afraid of her. I wasn’t sure what part she played in the system or how much of a threat she was to the Flock. What if they all got psychotic like Josie instead of her getting better? My time with Josie was spent trying to keep her from hurting herself and trying to shock some reality into her. I had no energy left for creative therapeutic intervention.

  Gordon has reminded me that the acceptance I spouted applies equally to all of the personalities. Gordon saw instantly beyond Josie’s bizarre and frightening behavior and gave her love without expectations. Relaxed, fatherly, and warm, Gordon has given Rusty permission to grow and develop in ways he was never allowed before.

  The simple but elusive concept that people must first of all feel accepted for who they are before they can risk change has once again been confirmed for me. It’s so easy to forget when we’re threatened. Nowhere is the result of remembering this concept so clearly seen as with Rusty in his relationship with Gordon.

  —

  RUSTY HAD ALWAYS BEEN a mystery to me, as well as to others in the Flock. When I first accepted the others enough to talk openly with Lynn, I completely forgot about him.

  I was surprised when Isis told Lynn that Rusty was another personality and not an external playmate of Missy’s, but I still didn’t think he’d ever much matter to any of us. I didn’t want to think about an adolescent boy living in my body.