We Are Adult Survivors of Child Abuse and Neglect

The observed behaviors of people with multiple personalities as has been discussed in this series, was not new to the psychiatric community. They have been documented and referred to by many people wanting to understand this disorder. In Dr. Corbett Thigpen’s book, The Three Faces of Eve, he states,

Before I present more documentation about child abuse and dissociation, I want to provide a little more background information.  After the Civil War period, psychologists in France, namely Pierre Janet and Sigmund Freud, studied what was then termed hysteria. Pierre Janet believed that the traumatic event occurred in a setting of altered consciousness or trance state, and was not produced by the hysterical symptoms.

As a continuation of multiple personality documentation in the 1800s, the case below is the review of another woman’s life history. Although there are many more, the three I have highlighted are the ones usually cited by therapists researching multiple personalities.

I am continuing my discussion about child abuse and Dissociative Identity Disorder. This documentation appears near the end of the 1800s about another woman’s case of different personalities.

One of the troubling aspects of the controversy about the legitimacy of multiple personalities/dissociative identities is the notion that somehow therapists have fabricated or “implanted” memories in their client’s heads. The other issue bantered about is the issue of the rarity of the disorder. Since most child abuse survivors have never gone public, there is no database compiled of everyone’s stories or experiences.

As someone who has integrated about twenty personalities into one, I am very interested in assuring that other survivors get proper treatment for this disorder. It is very disturbing that there are therapists who continue to say “I don’t believe in multiple identities/personalities,” and professors who actually tell their students the same thing.

I was recently a guest on a radio show that, as far as I know, talked for the first time about the generational aspects of abuse. The radio host had three women as guests: one younger than 40-years-old, one between 40 and 60, and me as the guest over 60-years-old.

One of the deepest held secrets in families is that of sibling incest. It is not as uncommon as you might think. Research shows that 60% of outpatient psychiatric patients report having engaged in sibling incest when they were children.[1] This is another area of child abuse that we need to talk about.