When Rabbit Howls

by Truddi Chase

from the age of two until the age of sixteen and who manifests at least ninety personalities—personalities

The persons who speak and write refer to themselves collectively as “the Troops.” It is they who created the book as part of the sorting-out process that we call psychotherapy, and the book has been a critical element in the therapeutic process.

Truddi from the beginning of her psychotherapy, when she was unable to recall any of her experiences, through her realization of what had happened to her and of the way she developed multiple personalities as a creative means of coping with that experience.

In order for “multiples” to admit and accept that they express themselves in multiplicity, I believe they must recognize that they are not alone. Therefore, I introduced her to other students and clients who were experiencing or who had experienced multiple personalities.

For five and one half years, he’d worked with incest families. Based on those credentials, he’d been asked several years ago to use his expertise in male sexuality and take things one step further. He’d set up a program to act as therapist to men who sexually abused their children. Part of the overflow on his desk had to do with that program: phone calls from the abusers themselves and from irate or merely suspicious mothers, countless referrals from Children’s Hospital and more from the District Attorney’s office.

“This person is forty-one, a victim. A Woman’s Place was her first contact, but they aren’t allowed to recommend therapists. Do you know that for two months she’s been referred from one agency to the other? She tried everyone, from the American Psychiatric Association to the Rape Crisis Center, asking for a therapist with a clinical, working knowledge of incest treatment.

“There’s something peculiar about her.” Mrs. Greenwood hesitated. “The librarian?” “The woman. She can’t tell time. Not by the clock, unless she strains, and as for blocks of time—I had to help her figure out how long it had been between the phone calls she made. It’s difficult to explain,” she said, noting his puzzled look. “But trust me. The woman has trouble with time.”

She waved him to the sofa and knelt on a pair of orange floor cushions. She said she hated chairs.

She told him what she wanted: therapy with fast results so that she could get on with her business and personal life. She expressed anger over her situation in a no-nonsense, businesslike fashion.

when my daughter, Page, was born. She’s fourteen now, and lives with her father.

I have trouble with dates, I told your Mrs. Greenwood the same thing. Every calculation on those pages was an effort. Wait. That’s a lie. My mother said I lied a lot.

He watched her stubbing out the cigarette. She gave no sign that the visible burn on her fingers had caused pain.

But if the counselor at A Woman’s Place is right—that child abuse caused what I’ve been going through—and if incest is almost commonplace with few good therapists to treat it, then aside from clearing up my own situation, I want to make a contribution.” Her condition for taking on her treatment was that he would talk about it to everyone, to anyone, and the sessions were to be filmed for the eventual training of mental health professionals. It took him a minute to absorb what she was offering, the chance of a lifetime—to film a victim’s therapy from day one. She explained her desire to break most victims’ rule of privacy.

“It hit me for the first time when I went down to that library. All those children, keeping their mouths shut. I can’t do it anymore. I’m tired of hiding and feeling dirty. I take three baths a day and still feel dirty. It doesn’t go away. Lately, I feel as if every memory I don’t have up here is boiling to the surface; as if it’s close enough to touch. If I dared. I’m telling myself that I dare. My mother warned us as children, my half brother and half sisters and me, not ever to discuss family business.” “Secrecy,” he said, “is incest’s biggest friend. But I want you to be sure before you enter into anything.”

“You’re not saying that I’m overreacting or crazy? I’m willing to accept either one or both. Sometimes I feel crazy.” “What you’ve described can make a person feel crazy, especially if it’s kept inside.”

I’m in real estate because that makes me self-employed. I don’t have to face job applications full of questions that I can’t answer.

That. I never saw another one of those, until I was twenty-four. I think I was twenty-four.” “Were you sexually active up until the time you were twenty-four?” “I don’t know,” she said. “And after twenty-four?” “I guess so. I don’t know.” “Is Page an adopted child?” “Oh, no. Norman wanted a baby so badly. Page

involve a conscious effort.” “Therapy has been known to loosen the creative flow. It can be the tapping of one’s inner self.” “Really? That would be nice. But I might waste a lot of time and money.” He could not help staring. Her voice shocked him. It was that of a small child.

She operated a real estate office with seven agents and negotiated contracts with a hard-nosed attitude, but he saw little belief in her ability to do anything without questioning her motives or painting the outcome black. Almost everything frightened her.

giving them a whole new meaning. There were times when she cried, but appeared puzzled by the tears on her face. “Distancing” from one’s feelings did not mean forgetting what had been said just minutes ago. Yet very often, she did seem to forget. He had to keep reminding himself that she’d been tested for every ailment under the sun and that hers was not a medical problem.

It had been impossible to take the usual psychosocial history. They’d only begun to delve, but he had never encountered a client with so few basic foundations from which to start.

When pressured to describe a single meal under her mother’s roof or the sound of her mother’s voice, the woman bent forward from her yoga position and cried in frustration.

don’t think we can refer to you in these pages as “Doctor Phillips,” or by your first name either. Somehow it brings you and the authority you represent too close, and the sick feeling rises up. If you don’t mind, another name has been chosen—“Stanley.”

My stepfather said I was a liar ever since I can remember. So did my mother. Consequently, I suppose, I feel as if every word on these pages must be a lie, too, because the pages reflect my life with them.

In fact, nothing really bothers me. I told you, I don’t believe I have what most people would call emotions or feelings—just an awful fear, a guilt I can’t define, and a sense of impending doom.

In fact, all I wanted to do when my mother described his good qualities was break, smash, destroy, anything in front of me.

I don’t remember my tantrums, as she called them. I do remember a boiling hatred inside myself.

she stomped in retaliatory rage, over my prone body. I remember the shock of that moment. She said all the time that she loved me. I didn’t feel loved. I felt her heels on my spinal column.

“I don’t have what you’d call constant contact with anyone. Never have. Don’t want to. People bore me. Small talk, chitchat, pleasantries; it’s a pain.

Apart from what he saw as a woman at war with herself—one side frightened to death and the other frightened enough to run—no sharp delineation had ever materialised. Except for the voice of that small child.

“It sounds like migraines,” he said. “They’re very painful.” “No. The doctors ruled out migraines. And there’s no pain.” No pain, he thought. Then how could she know she had a headache? “I sort of sense the pounding,” she told him, “but it’s from forty miles away and that makes me nervous. Because I know it’s coming.” “What’s coming?” “The pain.” “But you never feel it?” “No. I told you. I never feel anything.” She grinned. “But I stay so busy that maybe I outrun it. Think so?” He wondered if the quantities of coffee she drank had anything to do with the headaches. She stared at him over the bundle in her arms. “Nope,” she said, still grinning. “I know what you’re thinking. I drink about thirty-two cups a day. Maybe more. I stopped once. It didn’t help.”

As the word punishment entered her mind, there came a wave of dizziness.

Incest families were complicated. The abuser, whether male or female, was seldom alone in his or her efforts. Usually the “silent partner” played a secondary but important role.

“She thought that if I screamed in pain, it meant I was paying attention. If I didn’t scream, she’d lose count and hit me until I did.”

Deep inside the Tunnel, that first questioning penetrated the walls of the Troop Formation. The threat posed by talking to Stanley—the first person with whom they’d ever shared so much and contemplated sharing more—the mechanism keeping so many unaware of each other since birth was a strong one, but the tremour had been felt. For a handful of Troops, the tremour was so strong that they recognised each other as being separate. For others, more insulated, only a question with no hint of the separateness behind it raced through their minds: Who is the woman?

Of all the Troop members, only the Gatekeeper dared raise her eyes and stare down the length and breadth of the Tunnel Walls—to the deepest recess. The

Old, the Gatekeeper said to him. You are old. I feel you, a thousand years multiplied, by every leaf on every tree. Aye, he said. She had never seen such a smile. She did not want to use the word “seen.” It was ineffectual, demeaning to the experience. I know you, the Gatekeeper said. I know your name. Ean. She hesitated, grasping immediately that voicing his name was against the rules. Who is the woman? Not who, he said, and the brogue in his voice was rich and full, but what.

Three persons sitting in prime command had been wrenched from the surface depths of their Troop positions. It had quickly become apparent to two of the three that they were not alone—as they both had always supposed.

She, the Buffer, was not alone, but sharing space with the woman on the orange cushions.

the Buffer had until now absorbed the resultant blows, thinking she was the only one and that she absorbed on her own behalf. Caught in the new awareness, the Buffer reeled. But not as in the past, from a massed series of blows. The emotional reactions of the other Troop members were now single and separate and piercing, as if a thousand tiny razor blades hacked away at her.

The Interpreter’s job, without knowing where all the words originated, had been clarifying, in order to convey often convoluted meanings. It was in this instant and not before that the Interpreter knew that there were many sources for the words and that she, herself, was but one of them. She adjusted herself to the situation, and computed another flash of knowledge: it wasn’t the woman on the orange cushions to whom Stanley was listening. Somehow, the Buffer sat in front of the woman, absorbing the blows, and speaking the words. The Buffer was catching whatever pain the knowledge behind the words might have caused the woman and deflecting it to herself.

What she did not understand was the woman, herself. There was something very odd about her construction—her being.

the woman did not “lack” particular mechanisms; she had purposely been constructed to function without them.

the Front Runner absorbed the individuality of her Troop charges.

In the deepest recesses of the Tunnel, the Irishman’s counsel was his own. The woman’s words in the session would go on and the Front Runner would allow it because the Gatekeeper’s signal far back in the woman’s mind was clear: Continue.

those places did not exist.” “You were six and your half sister was two,” Stanley said. “Yes. I think so. I’ve never been able to keep track of time, it doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Stanley had what he thought of as a brilliant idea. The soft face and the very young voice told him it was brilliant. “And how old are you, right now?” he asked. “Twelve. I’m twelve years old.” The voice had faded to almost nothing and Stanley had to lean over to catch the words.

At first glance, as she rubbed away the smudged mascara, her eyes were pale green and slanted. The colour changed then, almost to grey, and the slant became more oval. The eyes wouldn’t shut; they remained open and stared right back at her.

OK, so you’ve got a tremendous need for coffee, which means caffeine, you’ve got ‘we,’ headaches with no pain, a sporadic memory, and somebody who tells you that she’s twelve years old. Anything else?”

“Is she very creative?” Marshall asked. “Somebody thought enough of her work to give her a one-woman show. She once designed an entire art department according to a strict budget. That’s