Quotessence
Home / Quotes / Quote by Joan Frances Casey

Quote by Joan Frances Casey

Work

The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

Browse quotes and source details for this work. more

Author

Joan Frances Casey

Browse famous quotes and profile details for Joan Frances Casey. more

You May Also Like

“Of course, I should have known the kids would pop out in the atmosphere of Roberta's office. That's what they do when Alice is under stress. They see a gap in the space-time continuum and slip through like beams of light through a prism changing form and direction. We had got into the habit in recent weeks of starting our sessions with that marble and stick game called Ker-Plunk, which Billy liked. There were times when I caught myself entering the office with a teddy that Samuel had taken from the toy cupboard outside. Roberta told me that on a couple of occasions I had shot her with the plastic gun and once, as Samuel, I had climbed down from the high-tech chairs, rolled into a ball in the corner and just cried. 'This is embarrassing,' I admitted. 'It doesn't have to be.' 'It doesn't have to be, but it is,' I said. The thing is. I never knew when the 'others' were going to come out. I only discovered that one had been out when I lost time or found myself in the midst of some wacky occupation — finger-painting like a five-year-old, cutting my arms, wandering from shops with unwanted, unpaid-for clutter. In her reserved way, Roberta described the kids as an elaborate defence mechanism. As a child, I had blocked out my memories in order not to dwell on anything painful or uncertain. Even as a teenager, I had allowed the bizarre and terrifying to seem normal because the alternative would have upset the fiction of my loving little nuclear family. I made a mental note to look up defence mechanisms, something we had touched on in psychology.”

PsychologyMental HealthMental IllnessTherapyEmbarrassmentDissociative Identity DisorderPsychologistStigmaDissociationMultiple Personality DisorderAlter PersonalitiesDissociativeSplit PersonalityTherapistAltersSelf Stigma
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
Create image

“In my series, five percent presented self-diagnosed. In most cases, this was not believed by the initial clinician. I had the following unnerving experience. Prior to my first multiple personality disorder case, I did not think the condition existed. I saw a young woman who claimed to have multiple personality disorder, and dismissed her claim. She never mentioned it again. Seven years later, while doing research in multiple personality disorder, I asked her to be a control subject for a new multiple personality disorder screening protocol, since I believed she was a medication-controlled paranoid schizophrenic. A protector personality rapidly took over, cursed at me for disbelieving the patient in the first place, introduced me to other personalities, resumed control, and chastized me vehemently at great length. Thereafter, she left, never to return.”

SkepticalDissociative Identity DisorderDisbeliefMultiple Personality DisorderAlter PersonalitiesMisdiagnosis
Book:Childhood Antecedents of Multiple Personality Disorders
Create image

“I did well at the Department of Justice. Some of my parts were hard workers. My well-developed memory helped me remember people: their names and positions and what they said during meetings. Rather than making me seem checked out, my dissociation made me seem calm and collected. In fact, the general dissociative state I was always in helped me function very well. I collected information, interacted on a personal and professional level, and was quite adept at managing most tasks in my life from this superficially numb and calm place. Most people, including me, didn't notice. This way of being and interacting was really all I knew. From that mild dissociation, I quickly went into a deeper dissociative state if there was conflict around me, if someone expressed strong emotions, or if something unpredictable happened. Although these difficult situations triggered me, they brought out behavior that helped me do well when the going got tough.”

Dissociative Identity DisorderDissociationStereotypesMultiple Personality DisorderMultiple PersonalitiesAlter PersonalitiesDissociative DisordersSurvival Mechanism
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
Create image

“My mind instinctively developed new parts to specialize in skills I needed to make it through law school. They learned to focus on the important information: the outlines, the nutshells, and what each case meant.”

Dissociative Identity DisorderMultiple Personality DisorderMultiple PersonalitiesAlter PersonalitiesDissociative DisorderDissociative PartsDissociative Identities
Book:The Sum of My Parts: A Survivor's Story of Dissociative Identity Disorder
Create image

“The SCID-D-R's standard for "distinct identities or personality states" (DSM-IV, p. 487) is: "Persistent manifestations of the presence of different personalities, as indicated by at least four of the following: a) ongoing dialogues between different people; b) acting or feeling that the different people inside of him/her take control of his/her behavior or speech; c) characteristic visual image that is associated with the other person, distinct from the subject; d) characteristic age associated with the different people inside of him/her; e) feeling that the different people inside of him/her have different memories, behaviors, and feelings; f) feeling that the different people inside of him/her are separate from his/her personality and have lives of their own" (Steinberg, 1994, p. 106). [The author believes that it is of considerable importance that none of the SCID-D-R's six criteria for "distinct personalities or personality states" are observable signs; each of the six is a subjective symptom or experience that must be reported to the test administrator. This striking fact supports the contention that assessment of dissociation should be based on subjective symptoms rather than signs (Dell, 2006b. 2009b).]”

Dissociative Identity DisorderAlter PersonalitiesDissociative PartsDdnosAlter IdentitiesOsddPersonality StatesDistinct IdentityLess Dictinct Parts
Book:Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond
Create image

“Anna O. had a third state as well, which today would be called a hidden observer, internal self helper, or center. This was an entity described as follows: "A clear-sighted and calm observer up sat, as she put it, in a corner of her brain and looked on at all the mad business" [p. 101].”

Dissociative Identity DisorderAlter PersonalitiesAlterIshHidden ObserverInternal Self Helper
Book:Dissociative Identity Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment of Multiple Personality
Create image

“There were two main reasons that the name of this condition was changed from multiple was changed from multiple personality disorder to DID in the DSM-IV. The first was that the older term emphasized the concept of various personalities (as though different people inhabited the same body), whereas the current view is that DID patients experience a failure in the integration of aspects of their personality into a complex and multifaceted integrated identity. The International Society for the Study of Dissociation (1997) states it this way: "The DID patient is a single person who experiences himself/herself as having separate parts of the mind that function with some autonomy. The patient is not a collection of separate people sharing the same body." ͏”

PersonalityDissociative Identity DisorderMultiple Personality DisorderAlter PersonalitiesDissociative PartsDsmDissociative IdentitiesPersonality States
Book:Handbook of Psychology, Clinical Psychology
Create image

“But am I satisfied to know merely the structure of the rainbow and how it came to be? Is that why I gaze upon it; with thoughts of refraction and wave frequency? Am I better off, now that I know this celestial arch isn’t divinely inspired – that there isn’t some meaningful purpose to it? Is that truly the answer I wanted when I asked myself where this spectacle came from? Do I stare up at the night sky because I search for the elements that comprise the star? Do we rationalize the tears that are shed at the birth of a child and the death of a loved-one? Do we ask ourselves why we dance? Do we contemplate that question before we allow the music to stir us? Do we allow it at all, or does it allow us? Not a single note, by itself, compels a couple to gracefully embrace, yet, this is how they would have us understand it - music, merely a series of connected notes and nothing more.”

GodFaithMaterialism
Book:Liberty and the Will to Power: A Manifesto for the Amoral Libertarian
Create image