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.