Quotes from Joan Frances Casey

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.

Rusty visualized his mind as being like a fishing net. The only thing he could remember were the little drops that clung to his mental netting.

Gordon and Lynn recognized within the Flock a sense of internal coordination that none of the individual personalities could see.

Only two and a half years before, I had felt threatened by internal "compulsions" that had no name; now I knew I was multiple. Once I had wanted to destroy the other personalities; now I wanted everyone to be happy.

Jo knew she had to be utterly truthful, even when her version of the truth conflicted with what Lynn wanted to hear. Truth was vital to Jo, because she had a hard enough time keeping track of the spotty reality she experienced.

I attempted to be clear and straightforward in my approach to Dr Tate, deferring to his medical expertise and stating my desire merely to be helpful. Renee and Joan Frances, in turn, were clear and straightforward about their needs in a way that was new for them. Yet we were seen as manipulative multiple and puppet therapist. Renee had probably never been less manipulative in her life than when she was trying to reason with Dr. Tate.

Somehow this disorder hooks into all kinds of fears and insecurities in many clinicians.

The Karen personality was created when Jo was nine and her mother said once too often, "Why can't you be like your cousin Karen?" Jo's internal Karen was the perfect mimic of her cousin, and fulfilled Nancy's demand that the child be neat and organized.

When the Jo personality first told him of the diagnosis, he called MPD "clinical bullshit." Then, seeing Jo's stricken look, he softened and showed her how the possibility of many personalities in a single body was philosophically untenable. MPD did not fit into Steve's system of beliefs, and therefore it did not exist.

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

No one inside will ever disappear. We're all real. We all matter.

Steve said he was glad that I trusted him to develop relationships with the other personalities. He knew that my acceptance of them was a sign of greater health, but he really liked me best and wanted to know when I'd be integrated—when the other personalities would be gone. "Look, Steve," I said, "whether you like it or not, all of the personalities are part of this entity. No personality is ever going to disappear.

Jo and I were becoming friends, and I realized that I loved the rest of my Flock as well. Missy was a fun-loving, artistic kid. Rusty had a droll sense of humor. Everyone seemed to be getting healthier, happier, and more productive. When I wasn't putting stress on the Flock by fighting with Lynn, I now felt that I was sharing this body, this physical space, with a whole group of very interesting and worthwhile people.

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.