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Shatter : The True Story of Kathy Roth's Eight Separate Personalities and Her Struggle to Become Whole
At thirty-six, Kathy Roth had the best of life. A comfortable Connecticut home. A happy marriage. Four beautiful children. And the energy to run a successful clothing business in the tough New York world of fashion. Then she traveled to a professional seminar in Atlanta - and her life changed forever. For the first time, Kathy discovered the terrifying truth that eight separate people were living inside her - each a separate entity, each aware of the others. And they had been with her all along, hidden. Now they were out, and her world become one of ceaseless torment. Despite her anguish, Kathy Roth refused to shatter. She summoned the strength to delve deep into her shadowy childhood, whose traumas and forbidden secrets she shut away, even from herself. Through it all,Kathy fought to keep her business, her marriage, and her family together. Travel with Kathy into the depths of mind and soul as she courageously attempts to fuse the personalities that threaten her very existence. Hers is a compelling, intensely personal, and triumphant story you will never forget.
326 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1986
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
May 14, 2019
I feel very conflicted about this book. I think this is due to a few things.
It reads, from the beginning, like a bad novel. Not a pleasant, trashy book, but a just plain bad book you read if you have no choice. It feels like fiction, the dialogue is stilted and unnatural, and the heavy emphasis on status and money feels like a middle of the day soap opera. Given that it's meant to be biographical, I kept finding myself desperately searching for something that felt real, and finding only smoke instead. I choose to believe that Kathy& was multiple, but the poor writing of it combined with the therapy Kathy& received makes it difficult to work out what the reality of their circumstances was. Were they naturally multiple or a trauma split? Were they ever sexually abused by more than one staff member hired by their family, or were the 'memories' of abuse created by the therapist's (I consider, unethical) approach? They were certainly the subject of parental neglect and emotional abuse, but was this a cause of their troubles that led to them seeking therapy, or just an unpleasant part of the culture of their particular family that had little or no actual effect on their natural inclination to multiplicity?
The therapist in the book refers to Kathy&'s system members as 'experiences', implying heavily that they aren't real. This isn't something unusual for the genre, as some therapists take this approach, but he muddies the waters with some therapeutic approaches that make me really uncomfortable. At the same time as he's supposed to be grounding Kathy& in reality and singularity, he's pushing her to engage in roleplay where she's taking on the identities of other people like her sister and mother, but without laying out that it's roleplay - he just demands to speak to these other people as though they're system members. I have read about systems that have members based on real people, often abusers or parental figures, but Kathy&'s system is not one of them. I assume he's trying to evoke some kind of break though or catharsis, but pushing Kathy& to take on the role of her neglectful mother, then berating her for being an abusive mother.... seems weird and unhelpful? It might be different if Kathy& was acting out against their mother in the form of imagining her present or something, but taking on the role of their abuser so their therapist can yell at her seems strange. Surely, if anything, HE should take the role of the abuser (a 'safe' substitute) and Kathy& should be encouraged to berate him? And pushing them to take on other identities when, according to him, their problem is taking on other identities, seems weird, too. He's not taking the approach of educating them about how and why they dissociate, he's just randomly demanding to speak to/berate people who aren't members of Kathy&'s system at all and who actually exist outside of Kathy&, locally, and who could easily be brought in for group sessions with Kathy& if group therapy with them was necessary for progress. I guess I just don't see the point, outside the therapist poking Kathy& and seeing how far they'll go to use their dissociation to try to please the therapist. It just seems cruel and dispassionately curious rather than justifiable.
Along the same lines, there's an eight year old system member that the therapist is sure was raped, and his way of pushing the disclosure is to grab and hold her physically while the system member is screaming about how she is frightened of men and doesn't want to be touched by them, ever. This isn't a sudden grabbing, he tells her he's going to touch her, she says she doesn't want that, he continues to approach, telling her her rejections aren't directed at him but her rapist, she reaffirms she doesn't want physical contact, and it's... ugh. She's telling him that men hurt women, and that's why she doesn't want to be touched, and his response is essentially, 'not all men' and forced hugging while she screams, and it's like watching her be raped on the page by someone she should be 100% safe from unwanted physical contact with. It's awful, utterly horrifying to read, but the system member 'confesses' her rape, so it's fine? Never mind that her therapist ignored consent just as thoroughly as her rapist did.
I thought Prism Andrea's World was the worst book with terrible therapeutic practices I'd read about a multiple system, and it still is, but this is up there. As a CSA survivor myself, there's very few things that make me feel more horrified and threatened than the idea of a male therapist ignoring repeated requests to not be touched and being grabbed and forcibly held while that therapist gaslights me by telling me I'm not really rejecting the contact. In those circumstances, I might well disclose a rape that never happened just to get away. I'm not 100% certain that this didn't happen with Kathy&. They were vulnerable, their therapist used very manipulative and coercive approaches, he messed with their sense of identity and simultaneously provoked dissociation while not teaching them how to control their tendency to dissociate without warning. He seemed to only care about the 'show' in the therapy room, while brushing off their concerns about their home life, their marriage, their mental health and suicidal ideation. He even encouraged the child system member in the immediate aftermath of recovering the memory to imagine her father in the place of her rapist, raping her, because 'her daddy wouldn't do that', which, what the fuck? You're encouraging someone who doubts their own memories to modify them to include an even more intimate violation, to somehow fix it? There are known and accepted ways of exploring violent, traumatic memories, ways that allow the client to absorb the reality of the memory without being retraumatised or coming to doubt the memory's validity. Kathy&'s therapist seemed determined to take every safe and respectful method and throw them out the window.
Unsurprisingly, Kathy& spent the next while in considerable emotional turmoil, seriously doubting the memory reflected any kind of reality. When they told the therapist that, he continued to pressure them to remember what he wanted them to remember, despite their protestations. He didn't want to hear about the system member Kathy's ability to stay present for sex with her husband, which is what she actually wanted to talk about. In fact, he seemed almost angry about it and passive-aggressively told her she seemed 'proud enough for the both of them' when she asked if he was proud of her for her progress, and poohpoohed the value of it since she didn't orgasm, even though Kathy was fine with the fact that she hadn't. Kathy& continually stated they didn't accept the reality of the rape memories, and reaffirmed the reality of their system members as individuals. The therapist bombarded them with intrusive questions about how her rape and molestation felt, assured them that they were blocking it out because it was pleasurable (reminder - if the rape was real, they were EIGHT YEARS OLD), and told them to hold his finger to their lips and imagine it was the penis of one of their abusers (because, according to him, forbidden=pleasurable, and, reminder, if this memory was real, this was a THREE YEAR OLD). He even heavily implied that both instances of abuse/rape happened because they 'disobeyed' and therefore, invited the abuse/rape (going up to the attic with one abuser, going down into the basement wearing her nightgown and no panties for the second). He refers to her abuse as 'fucking' and a 'sexual relationship' rather than rape or paederasty, implying there's an element of equality in dynamic, which, fuck no. He also coerced Kathy& into 'bodywork' therapy - massage therapy with a male - and pushed them to continue despite them having flashbacks and uncontrolled switching every damn time. Only after several 'bodywork' sessions did Kathy& decide the rape must have happened. I just... can't even. I could say more, but the shorthand is - this book is terrible, the subject was probably multiple, though maybe never sexually abused, the therapist should have been struck off for being an unethical gaslighting creeper.
It reads, from the beginning, like a bad novel. Not a pleasant, trashy book, but a just plain bad book you read if you have no choice. It feels like fiction, the dialogue is stilted and unnatural, and the heavy emphasis on status and money feels like a middle of the day soap opera. Given that it's meant to be biographical, I kept finding myself desperately searching for something that felt real, and finding only smoke instead. I choose to believe that Kathy& was multiple, but the poor writing of it combined with the therapy Kathy& received makes it difficult to work out what the reality of their circumstances was. Were they naturally multiple or a trauma split? Were they ever sexually abused by more than one staff member hired by their family, or were the 'memories' of abuse created by the therapist's (I consider, unethical) approach? They were certainly the subject of parental neglect and emotional abuse, but was this a cause of their troubles that led to them seeking therapy, or just an unpleasant part of the culture of their particular family that had little or no actual effect on their natural inclination to multiplicity?
The therapist in the book refers to Kathy&'s system members as 'experiences', implying heavily that they aren't real. This isn't something unusual for the genre, as some therapists take this approach, but he muddies the waters with some therapeutic approaches that make me really uncomfortable. At the same time as he's supposed to be grounding Kathy& in reality and singularity, he's pushing her to engage in roleplay where she's taking on the identities of other people like her sister and mother, but without laying out that it's roleplay - he just demands to speak to these other people as though they're system members. I have read about systems that have members based on real people, often abusers or parental figures, but Kathy&'s system is not one of them. I assume he's trying to evoke some kind of break though or catharsis, but pushing Kathy& to take on the role of her neglectful mother, then berating her for being an abusive mother.... seems weird and unhelpful? It might be different if Kathy& was acting out against their mother in the form of imagining her present or something, but taking on the role of their abuser so their therapist can yell at her seems strange. Surely, if anything, HE should take the role of the abuser (a 'safe' substitute) and Kathy& should be encouraged to berate him? And pushing them to take on other identities when, according to him, their problem is taking on other identities, seems weird, too. He's not taking the approach of educating them about how and why they dissociate, he's just randomly demanding to speak to/berate people who aren't members of Kathy&'s system at all and who actually exist outside of Kathy&, locally, and who could easily be brought in for group sessions with Kathy& if group therapy with them was necessary for progress. I guess I just don't see the point, outside the therapist poking Kathy& and seeing how far they'll go to use their dissociation to try to please the therapist. It just seems cruel and dispassionately curious rather than justifiable.
Along the same lines, there's an eight year old system member that the therapist is sure was raped, and his way of pushing the disclosure is to grab and hold her physically while the system member is screaming about how she is frightened of men and doesn't want to be touched by them, ever. This isn't a sudden grabbing, he tells her he's going to touch her, she says she doesn't want that, he continues to approach, telling her her rejections aren't directed at him but her rapist, she reaffirms she doesn't want physical contact, and it's... ugh. She's telling him that men hurt women, and that's why she doesn't want to be touched, and his response is essentially, 'not all men' and forced hugging while she screams, and it's like watching her be raped on the page by someone she should be 100% safe from unwanted physical contact with. It's awful, utterly horrifying to read, but the system member 'confesses' her rape, so it's fine? Never mind that her therapist ignored consent just as thoroughly as her rapist did.
I thought Prism Andrea's World was the worst book with terrible therapeutic practices I'd read about a multiple system, and it still is, but this is up there. As a CSA survivor myself, there's very few things that make me feel more horrified and threatened than the idea of a male therapist ignoring repeated requests to not be touched and being grabbed and forcibly held while that therapist gaslights me by telling me I'm not really rejecting the contact. In those circumstances, I might well disclose a rape that never happened just to get away. I'm not 100% certain that this didn't happen with Kathy&. They were vulnerable, their therapist used very manipulative and coercive approaches, he messed with their sense of identity and simultaneously provoked dissociation while not teaching them how to control their tendency to dissociate without warning. He seemed to only care about the 'show' in the therapy room, while brushing off their concerns about their home life, their marriage, their mental health and suicidal ideation. He even encouraged the child system member in the immediate aftermath of recovering the memory to imagine her father in the place of her rapist, raping her, because 'her daddy wouldn't do that', which, what the fuck? You're encouraging someone who doubts their own memories to modify them to include an even more intimate violation, to somehow fix it? There are known and accepted ways of exploring violent, traumatic memories, ways that allow the client to absorb the reality of the memory without being retraumatised or coming to doubt the memory's validity. Kathy&'s therapist seemed determined to take every safe and respectful method and throw them out the window.
Unsurprisingly, Kathy& spent the next while in considerable emotional turmoil, seriously doubting the memory reflected any kind of reality. When they told the therapist that, he continued to pressure them to remember what he wanted them to remember, despite their protestations. He didn't want to hear about the system member Kathy's ability to stay present for sex with her husband, which is what she actually wanted to talk about. In fact, he seemed almost angry about it and passive-aggressively told her she seemed 'proud enough for the both of them' when she asked if he was proud of her for her progress, and poohpoohed the value of it since she didn't orgasm, even though Kathy was fine with the fact that she hadn't. Kathy& continually stated they didn't accept the reality of the rape memories, and reaffirmed the reality of their system members as individuals. The therapist bombarded them with intrusive questions about how her rape and molestation felt, assured them that they were blocking it out because it was pleasurable (reminder - if the rape was real, they were EIGHT YEARS OLD), and told them to hold his finger to their lips and imagine it was the penis of one of their abusers (because, according to him, forbidden=pleasurable, and, reminder, if this memory was real, this was a THREE YEAR OLD). He even heavily implied that both instances of abuse/rape happened because they 'disobeyed' and therefore, invited the abuse/rape (going up to the attic with one abuser, going down into the basement wearing her nightgown and no panties for the second). He refers to her abuse as 'fucking' and a 'sexual relationship' rather than rape or paederasty, implying there's an element of equality in dynamic, which, fuck no. He also coerced Kathy& into 'bodywork' therapy - massage therapy with a male - and pushed them to continue despite them having flashbacks and uncontrolled switching every damn time. Only after several 'bodywork' sessions did Kathy& decide the rape must have happened. I just... can't even. I could say more, but the shorthand is - this book is terrible, the subject was probably multiple, though maybe never sexually abused, the therapist should have been struck off for being an unethical gaslighting creeper.
April 26, 2019
A woman with everything. At the height of this life in her mid thirties she discovers the multiple lives and trauma of her childhood. Very, very good
March 4, 2021
over-novelization of the "true story" makes for page after page of internal debate and external dialogue. This is nothing like the nonfiction works on human psychology I like to read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews