HSP3M ARTICLE STUDY

THE 50 PERSONALITIES OF ‘DEBRA’

In frightened fits of sleep, some children dream the kind of nightmares that Debra has lived. As a two-year old she was kicked down the stairs. When she was 8 she was raped. When she was 12 she was told by her social worker that she would be institutionalized for life if she did not pay him sexual favours. When she was 16, she tried four times to kill herself.

The stories she has to tell have a chilling sub-human quality that even she has trouble believing. She doesn’t remember most of the incident on her own. It is because when things got bad for Debra, she escaped. There was always someone else in her head who could deal with the pain. Throughout her childhood and adolescence, Debra created 50 personalities, each with a separate life and duty. Debra is what is called a multiple personality.

Repressed Feelings

To survive, Debra would repress her feelings about what was happening to her, says Mary Vandervennen, the psychotherapist with the Christian Counseling Services who diagnosed Debra as a multiple personality two years ago and has treated her ever since. “One part of her remembers what happened, and splits so the major personality doesn’t have to deal with the problem. It’s like an anesthetic to numb the brain. It’s actually a brilliant, creative way of dealing with problems. And her problems were horrible.”

It started before she was two. She had trouble learning to walk because of a mild case of cerebral palsy. Her mother would not acknowledge that her seventh and last child could not walk. She took her daughter to the basement door and threw her down the stairs. Though the child pleaded and begged at the bottom of the stairs for her mother to pick her up, she was told that the only way she was coming out of the basement was if she walked. Debra’s mother was determined that she would learn how to walk. She mercilessly berated her daughter, twisted her arms and constantly belittled her until Debra broke down in a sea of confusion. Then, like a dream, Debra escaped and another little girl, Sally, inhabited her body. Sally was braver. When the mother told Debra a monster would get her if she was bad, Sally said she would eat the monster. In her room at night Sally fought that monster, and told it she hated her mother. “I’m going to kill mommy. I’m going to put mommy in a box,” she would tell the monster. Sometimes this would cause Debra some trouble later because she would be punished for the bad things that Sally did. Debra did not understand what was going on inside her scrambled head.

Sally was the first personality that has been created in Debra’s mind over the last 20 years. With her remarkable system of self-defence, Debra was able to stay alive when others would surely have chosen suicide. It was not until Vandervennen diagnosed her as a multiple personality that the 22-year old began to understand what was going on. Debra was confused. She would wake in the morning and notice a half-eaten cake and beer bottles on the floor and not know how they got there. Once she woke up with her feet dangling over the edge of a balcony, and did not know why. After work one day she asked a friend to go to a movie only to be told that they two of them had seen that movie just the night before. And there were nights where she did not sleep at all. When Debra went to sleep, Eileen or Jackie or Carol or Diane or Cindy of any one of the countless personalities would take over Debra’s body. Debra did not know that things were happening to her that she would not be able to explain. She tried to get help many times but nothing good had come of it. She had been hospitalized, given shock treatments, and seen countless doctors, psychiatrists, social workers and psychotherapists. For some reason, none of them understood. She could not open up to them and she did not really know why. She decided to try one more time, so a friend put her in touch with the Christian Counseling Service and she met Vandervennen. It turned out that Vandervennon was the only person that Debra could trust enough to tell her story. Vandervennen was touched by her determination and when information slowly leaked out about Debra’s complicated past, Vandervennon knew she was dealing with someone who had serious identity problems. Debra told her she had been abandoned by her mother when she was three, along with her six brothers and sisters. Her natural father was already in jail for incest when her mother left the children in a station wagon, parked near a shopping center in another province. Debra and her brothers and sisters came into the care of the Metro are Children’s Aid Society and were placed in about 35 foster care situations over the next 13 years.

Though her situation in her natural home was very bad, the foster care situations were worse. Most of the damage occurred in a foster home where, for almost four years, her foster father sexually, physically and emotionally abused her in ways that Debra was only able to reveal after being put into a regressed state during therapy. Even Vandervennon, who had ‘heard it all,’ was shocked by the variety and constancy of abuse the girl had endured. Vandervennon related the stories which Debra’s various personalities had revealed in therapy. Debra was locked in closets for days at a time. She was folded into locked trunks and tied to sofas. Small animals were strangled in front of her, and she was told she would meet the same end if she told anyone what had been done to her. Her foster father shot at her, but was too drunk to hit the mark. She endured severe physical pain, through beatings and rapes. She had said she received no love from anyone in her life, and grew up without ever being hugged. During therapy Debra called on her 8-year-old personality to describe these events. The 8-year old also drew pictures from these years, with primitive, childlike scenes. Vandervennen said that for a long time Debra associated her bed with so much abuse that she was afraid to sleep in it. She slept on the floor instead. The colour red was so closely associated with anger and pain that for years she could not bear to sit on a red couch, wear red clothes or be in a red room. When she was finally removed from the foster home where she was so violently abused, when was placed in a home with her brothers and sisters. That lasted for a few years before the children were separated again. Debra’s different personalities remember selected events but Debra remembers very little. One of her personalities remembers one foster mother’s attempt to cure her fear of dogs. Debra was given a package of chocolate laxatives and locked in the basement with yelping dogs.

Before she met Debra, Vandervennen had never treated a multiple personality. In fact, when she started to see the signs of a multiple personality, she was reluctant to admit it to herself and her colleagues. There are still many professionals who do not believe there is such a thing as multiple personality. Vandervennen says more cases of the disorder are surfacing. “There were 450 professionals at a conference in Chicago, and it was the first ever on the topic. It’s surprising how widespread the disorder is becoming.” Ken VanWyk, Vandervennon’s associate who has been involved in Debra’s therapy, is afraid that as more and more reports of childe abuse surface, more cases of multiple personality disorder will be discovered. “it seems that cases of multiples being reported run in streaks. We’re learning now from adults who had bad experiences in foster homes as chilredn. Now we’re dealing with the consequences of a child welfare system that hasn’t always worked the way it was supposed to. As a result of our own good intentions there are adults who instead of getting help when they were children, got horrible hurt.” Surveys done by professionals show that the majority of known multiples are women and like Debra, they have tried to get help from an average of nine professionals before they were correctly diagnosed. There is very little written about the treatment of multiples. “I’d read Sybil and the Three Faces of Eve, but aside from that, I didn’t really know where to start,” said Vandervennen. She read everything on the subject in professional and popular journals and then went to work. When she realized that Debra had more serious problems than most, she knew therapy could not be scheduled for one hour a week. She made herself available, within reason, when Debra needed her. “I started by seeing her two times per week. I would just work with whoever showed up. I was meeting new people each time for a while.” She begun taping the sessions and then asked VanWyk to join for some of the sessions. She was afraid for her own safety at times. “One day Debra brought in a leg brace she had been wearing because of surgery she had, and it was completely mangled. It was twisted and town apart. I could even see teeth marks on the leather parts. Some of her personalities can be very violent. They are strong and quite frankly, I was afraid of them. There were times that Ken and I had to use physical force to keep her from hurting herself, and us. Some personalities didn’t want Debra, or the others who where co-operative, to come to therapy. They didn’t want her to get well. When one personality wanted to go back to school, one of the destructive personalities tore up all of Debra’s school records.”

Though they all have trouble related to men because of the sever abuse they suffered as children, there I one personality, Eileen, who is sexually promiscuous. “We call her the psychopathic sexpot,” Vandervennon said. The other personalities want nothing to do with her, but she’s quite strong. She doesn’t seem to belong to any particular group of personalities, and no one can seem to figure out how old she is or how long she’s been around.” One afternoon, Debra came into the office and announced that “if we leave here today, none of us will ever come back.” Vandervennen and VanWyk took the threat seriously and finished off their last appointment for the day and had a marathon session with Debra and several of her personalities to try and straighten things out. They wanted to find out why one of them seemed intent on suicide. And they wanted to try to persuade enough of the others to stop her from doing it. Vandervennen and VanWyk videotaped the session and have permission from Debra to use an edited version for educational purposes. In the tape, which includes subsequent sessions with Debra, half a dozen personalities are revealed. Though Debra was 22, when she calls up one of the younger personalities, she becomes a convincing child. Sally is an angry little girl. Mike is an exasperated, macho little boy. Eileen is an angry teenager. When a different personality is called up, a complete transformation takes place. Debra’s posture changes and her face contorts. Her voice becomes either coarse or throaty or is reduced to a tiny whine.

Vandervennen said that therapy for a multiple personality usually takes from two to five years. Although Debra had her ups and downs over the last two years, Vandervennen said that the prognosis is good. She hopes Debra will soon have much more control over her various personalities. A major part of the therapy involves trying to fuse several of the personalities and then trying to provide the patient with a manageable life. Vandervennen must also help Debra to learn how to cope with stressful situations, so that splitting off would not occur again. Personalities split off when the main personality can not long cope with a situation. It is an escape that works until the system starts to take control of the person. Vandervennen says research shows that multiples have an average IQ of 150, high above average. It becomes clear that to devise a system of such complication, the person has to be quite smart.

I never really met Debra. When I arrived at the therapist’s office for a prearranged interview, I was greeted by Eileen, one of the personalities. Debra, apparently, did not know about the interview. Eileen was hesitant as well. “I don’t really think I’m the right person for this,” she said. “Maybe you should talk to one of the others.” Dressed neatly in knitted sweater and skirt, Eileen was ill at ease, shy and fearful of me. Though she seemed to be putting a brave front, it was obvious she would rather have been somewhere else. She suggested I speak to Jackie. Eileen put her head down close to her chest, closed her eyes and pressed her lips tightly together. Whatever was happening was taking a great deal of effort. Her eyes fluttered as if she was just falling off to sleep and then she quickly raised her head, her eyes opened and I introduced myself – again. “You should feel honoured,” she said, laughing. “I see Eileen got all dressed up for you.” She surveyed what she was wearing as if it were an outfit she had never seen before. She had nothing to do with getting dressed for this appointment. Immediately, I realized that this self-assured woman had a sense of humour and casual, comfortable manner. Even her posture was much more relaxed and confident. For the next two hours we talked candidly about her ‘condition.’ Jackie, the personality most mature and in control, explained how the ‘system’ worked. There were four different groups of personalities, around each was a set of guards and protectors who controlled access to the more vulnerable personalities in the middle. Some of the personalities were very young, holdovers from Debra’s childhood. Some were mischievous and mean, others were innocent and kind. Some had special responsibilities. Greta was the keeper of the music, and made sure that no matter how much the adults tried to ruin it, there would always be music in Debra’s life. “I believe and a lot of the others also believe, that music is the only thing that’s left in the world that is pure,” Jackie said. “In a world where there is so much ugliness, music is all we have to hang on to.” Helen was the one who kept Debra in school. Others were not fully developed. They kept certain memories of horrible abuse, but rarely came out. Their function was to keep those memories from surfacing. Almost all of the personalities were there to protect Debra.