Beauty Vs. The Beast. M.J. Rodgers
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disorder or MPD still seems like science fiction to many people, even many psychologists. Some postulate that the affected individuals possess not many personalities, but many fragments of one personality.”
“Which approach do you consider more accurate?”
“I’m a pragmatist. I don’t fixate on disputing or embracing labels or adhering to hard-and-fast data.”
“So how do you approach treatment?”
Damian rested his elbows on the arms of his chair, the heels of his shoes disappearing into the thick mustard-colored carpet, his long, lean legs crossing at the ankles.
“I believe achieving results is what is important, not how the results are achieved. Patients come to me or any psychologist because they want to eliminate their disruptive feelings or behavior, sometimes both. I try what I believe will work, and if my method doesn’t work, I drop it and try something else until I find what does work.”
“What did you try with Lee when he came to you?”
“Lee wanted to eliminate his disruptive blackouts. Nothing in his present life appeared to be causing them. His lack of memories strongly pointed to the possibility of past trauma. I hypnotized him to discover what that past trauma might be. It was under hypnosis that Roy emerged.”
“So up until the time you hypnotized Lee, you didn’t know Roy, the second personality, existed?”
“That’s correct. Actually, Roy never came out in my sessions with Lee unless Lee was under hypnosis.”
“Are you saying he had to be hypnotized into being Roy?”
“No. What I’m saying is that under hypnosis, the control Lee exerted over the shared mind was relaxed sufficiently to allow Roy to be called out at will.”
“At your will, as opposed to Lee’s or Roy’s.”
“Yes. The first time it happened was quite unexpected. I had hypnotized Lee and asked him to tell me about his blackout periods, reasoning that an unconscious part of his mind must know. And it did. That unconscious part was Roy.”
“He popped up and introduced himself?”
Damian smiled. “Not exactly.”
“Then how did you know you were talking to this other personality?”
“Frankly, I didn’t know who I was talking to at first. The experience of finding another personality inside one’s patient is unnerving. It takes some adjusting and reflection on the part of a therapist not used to the phenomenon.”
“Lee was the only multiple case you had seen?”
“At that time, yes. I was eager to get up to speed on proper diagnosis and treatment. After I discovered Roy, I videotaped every subsequent session in order to be certain that I wouldn’t miss anything. That proved very fortunate. If I hadn’t had the tape to replay for Lee, I doubt he would have believed in the reality of Roy. You see, even people with multiple personalities have difficulty accepting the concept.”
Damian smiled at her with warm understanding for her reservations. “I know it must be difficult to take all this in,” he said.
Kay found herself wanting to immediately release her skepticism and accept whatever this man said. She caught herself just in time and shook herself mentally. Damn, but this psychologist was good at getting one’s defenses down. She’d have to be careful. Very careful.
She sat up straighter in her chair, cleared her throat. “How can a person’s mind become separated into these different personalities as you’ve described?”
“Psychological research connects the development of multiple personalities to a traumatic fragmenting of the core personality.”
“And the English version of that translates to...?”
He grinned at her, a very attractive grin.
“Perhaps an analogy would be helpful. If you think of our early-childhood personalities as rough diamonds and life experiences as the diamond cutter, then a multiple-personality individual is the result of life’s diamond cutter clearly missing its mark. The personality ends up shattered into pieces—sometimes two, far more often into many different pieces.”
“And in the case of your patient, the different fragmented personality piece that emerged as a young child was Roy.”
“He was chosen by the mind to exist in the hostile childhood environment.”
“What was the hostile environment that fragmented the personality?”
“Roy’s mother became pregnant as a young teen. Her parents arranged for the baby to be adopted by a childless couple they knew. However, when Roy was two, his teenage mother kidnapped him from his adoptive parents and fled the state with a guy she had just met. The man physically and emotionally abused the child.”
Kay sagged into the back of her chair. She had had to deal firsthand with the emotional devastation of child abuse in her first year as a lawyer in the King County prosecutor’s office. The anger and repulsion she’d felt at hearing such stories, along with her frustrated efforts to gather enough evidence to put away so many of the abusers, had finally driven her out of the prosecutor’s office and into civil law at a private firm.
She knew she was tough. But she no longer kidded herself that she would ever be tough enough to deal with such horrors and inhumanity with the dispassion the profession demanded. She forcibly refocused her attention to the issue at hand.
“Why didn’t the child’s mother protect him?”
“I don’t know for certain. Maybe due to fear for herself. But by turning her back to the abuse, she contributed to it.”
“You say Roy’s mother did this. But wasn’t she also Lee’s mother?”
“Physically, yes. Emotionally, no. Lee remembers little of his childhood. He seems to have nearly total amnesia for his own life events occurring before approximately six years ago.”
“But earlier you said that he views himself as a man in his thirties. How can he sense thirty-plus years of existence when he only remembers six?”
“It’s like Lee was sitting in front of a window opening to the world. He can tell you about the social and cultural changes that have occurred during most of his lifetime, including names of presidents and world events. He just can’t relate them to anything personal that happened to him until about six years ago.”
“Because six years ago was when he began to interact with life and not just watch it.”
“Yes, very well put, Kay. The Lee personality existed in early childhood only as an observer. He lived in a kind of mental attic where he felt protected and safe. Then six years ago, he came down from his mental attic and began to take over from the Roy personality.”
Despite the fact that Kay was still having difficulty getting her mind to accept the bizarre nature of this disorder, she couldn’t help but be fascinated by it. Two people inside one mind—each compartmentalized into separate memories and identities. It was literally mind-boggling.
“You said Lee Nye came to you for help. Did Roy Nye also seek help?”
“No. Roy Nye attributed his memory losses to alcoholic stupors.”
“And when he learned about Lee?”
“When I showed him the videotape of the sessions with Lee in control, he erupted first into denial, then anger.”
“How does he handle the situation now?”
“He doesn’t. Roy Nye is dead.”
Kay blinked in surprise. “Dead?”
“Yes. He died four years ago. Which brings me to why I’m here, Kay. Mrs. Roy Nye has filed a three-million-dollar wrongful-death lawsuit against me.”
“Your