Autobiographies by Abuse Survivors:

Charlotte Vale Allen, Daddy's Girl (New York: Berkeley Books, 1980, 1996).

This books focuses on the story of how Allen was trapped into the abuse by her father and how she finally escaped, with a particular focus on the role of the people who helped her. It tells a lot of the feelings of the child, but does not discuss therapy or get inside the healing process. In a communication to me, Allen writes: "I wanted to make it very clear to you that I did not, do not, have never suffered from any acronym-ed ailment--particularly the faddish DID." Allen played an important role in bringing sexual abuse to public attention in the 1980s.

E. T. Aul, As You Desire Me: The Psychology of a Multiple Personality (Seattle: JHWhite Publishing Co., 1996. Ordering Information).

I wanted to like this book, but somehow it didn't quite come together for me. I do recommend it to anyone dealing with issues of multiple personality in later life--Aul kept getting told that by her age she should have outgrown her multiplicity. The book also emphasizes the harm done by her abandonment by her mother and very rigid upbringing by relatives, not sexual abuse. There is a lot of discussion of frustration with therapists.

Helen Bonner, The Laid Daughter: A True Story (Austin TX: Kairos Center, 1995). Kairos Center, 4608 Finley Drive, Austin TX 78731, 1-800-624-4697.

Helen Bonner is a professor of Women's Studies, Literature, and Creative Writing, and wrote this book under her own name about the process by which she came to terms with multiple personalities and childhood sexual abuse by her father. However, the majority of the book deals with her experiences between the time when the abuse ended and the time when she began to recover memories in therapy. If you are struggling with a history of problems with relationships you may identify with her experiences. I wished for more focus on the healing process.

Jean Small Brinson, Murderous Memories: One Woman's Hellish Battle to Save Herself (New Horizons Publishers, 1994).

This book is a story of healing of memories and coming to terms with multiple personalities, obsessions, and other defenses. Jean Brinson grew up in a white sharecropper family in the south and suffered extreme sadistic physical abuse from her father, but not serious sexual abuse. The jacket copy on the book talks about the recovered memory debate, but the text of the book does not deal with those issues. Her recovery of memories is presented in a straightforward fashion and it seems like at least some of the situation is easily confirmed (there was even a trial--her mother was acquitted on the basis of self-defense of murder of her father). The book is about 2/3 autobiography of the abuse and its effect on her adult life and 1/3 story of her healing. She moves from a place where she is seriously nonfunctional (multiple hospitalizations and suicide attempts) to a place where her alters and obsessions are still part of her but she can manage them to the point where they do not interfere with her life.

Marcia Cameron, Broken Child (New York: Kensington Books, 1995).

This was one of the first autobiographies I read; I found the abuse descriptions very painful, but they may actually not be worse than other such books. It tells the abuse story separately from the healing story, which I always find makes the abuse harder to read about. It is primarily a story of abuse by her mother. Be warned that the book was finished around the time that some multiples began to talk about not wanting integration or fusion, and Cameron pushes hard on how important she believes it is to integrate (by which I would say she means fusing--the alters no longer having any separate existence).

Kim Chernin, Crossing the Border: An Erotic Journey (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1994).

This book is a memoir of a love affair and part of a year spent living in Israel; it is not focused primarily on abuse survivor issues. I include it because Chernin has a sense not of having been multiple, but rather of having been different people over the course of her life (when she looks back on the self who was in Israel, she feels that is "not me"). She does connect her feelings to a history of trauma: the death of her sister when they were both children and an (apparently isolated) rape before the age of five. Despite the subtitle the book does not include explicit sex scenes, but it does include free-love attitudes and lesbianism.

Jean Darby Cline, Silencing the Voices: One Woman's Triumph Over Multiple Personality Disorder (New York: Berkley Books, 1977)

This is one of the more helpful autobiographies. The author says she wants to present DID as less bizarre, and indeed her situation is less extreme--she had only two alters (though it was very hard for her to achieve coconsciousness with those) and she continued to work as a computer programmer throughout her healing process. The focus of the book is on coming to terms with multiplicity; there are only a few graphic descriptions of abuse and those come late in the book. In the end, I didn't like the book as much as I expected because it put so much emphasis on conflict between alters. It seems that for Cline the hard part was getting to acceptance and cooperation with her alters; once she had done that fusion just happened. The book gives few details of the therapy process (she apparently saw her therapist less than once a week through most of the process), but I thought what she did say about therapy was useful. The book also includes a lot of drama about her difficulty in getting out of a destructive marriage and some Christian ideas.

Linda Katherine Cutting, Memory Slips: A Memoir of Music and Healing (New York: Harper Collins, 1997).

The author of this book is a concert pianist; she weaves together the story of how her fears threatened her professional career with the story of a hospitalization where she came to face her abuse memories. She was abused by her father, who was a minister. This is a gentle book; her abuse is named but not described. She struggles some with roles that she gets stuck in, but she does not consider herself multiple.

Elly Danica, Don't: A Woman's Word (San Francisco: Cleis Press, 1988).

This small book is a series of memories of father-daughter incest and impressions of the healing process--it is not a coherent narrative. It is moving, but I got frustrated with the impressionistic rather than structured approach. However, I was particularly struck by her descriptions of not being able to function as an adult and of very slowly finding healing inside herself.

Kathy Evert and Inie Bijkerk, When You're Ready: A Woman's Healing From Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse by Her Mother (Rockville MD: Launch Press, 1987). Launch Press, P.O. Box 5629, Rockville MD, telephone 800-321-9167.

Bijkerk is Evert's therapist, but I have put the book in this section because Bijkerk, though listed as a coauthor, wrote only a short afterword. This book is a story of the healing process; there are some details of abuse but they are set in the context of healing. Evert does not name what she is dealing with as multiple personality, but she writes movingly about coming to love her inside child. The book is also particularly useful for her description of how she expressed very early abuse with her body in therapy, memories from before she had the words to understand what was happening to her. This is one of the best accounts I have seen of therapy that was truly driven by the inner process of healing, not directed by a therapist who thought s/he had the answers.

Sylvia Fraser, My Father's House: A Memoir of Incest and of Healing (New York: Harper and Row, 1989, hardcover Ticknor and Fields, 1987).

This book is mostly the story of the author's life before she recovers memories of her abuse by her father; her healing process is a small part of the book and not told in much detail. The strongest part of her story deals with her struggles to fit in to the social world of high school in the 1950s. I would recommend this book to anyone who struggled with high school social life. I didn't have a social life in high school, so it didn't speak so much to me.

Heather Harpham, I Went to the Animal Fair: A Journey Through Madness to Meaning (Colorodo Springs: Pinion Press, 1993). Pinon Press, P.O. Box 35007, Colorado Springs CO 80935.

This book is extremely discreet; it refers only very vaguely to her abuse history. It is most helpful for a Christian perspectives on healing. Her faith is central to her journey, but she doesn't expect it to give her easy answers. Her writing style is creative and attempts to give a feel for the process of waking up and trying to put the pieces together. Her father was schizophrenic.

Kathryn Harrison, The Kiss; A Memoir (American School Publishing, 1997).

If you read the review of this book in Newsweek, you probably swore you would never read it, because Newsweek made it sound like a titillating book written by someone who chose to have an affair with her father (starting at age 20). I was lucky; a friend bought it and urged me to read it, and it is nothing like the impression I got from Newsweek.

My friend found it very revealing for how it made clear Harrison's tormented relationship with her (not directly abusive) mother. What hit me was how clearly it showed how she was manipulated by her abuser. If she could still be manipulated that way at age 20, then I could better understand and forgive how I, as a child, could be manipulated into an abusive relationship. It also showed, very clearly, how the abuser systematically destroyed her boundaries. This is a really good book for understanding how abuse happens. It does not involve multiple personalities.

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