Paul R. Abramson, Sarah: A Sexual Biography (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1984).

Abramson is a professor of psychology, but the subject of this book simply chose to tell her story (and share her journals) with him, he was not her therapist. In his analysis he focuses on how she acted out sexually as a teenager but gradually found ways to heal herself and establish her own values. Her primary abuser was her stepfather. This isn't a very good book, but it might be useful to someone trying to come to terms with teenage sexual behavior.

Doris Bryant and Judy Kessler, Beyond Integration: One Multiple's Journey (New York: Norton Professional Books, 1996).

This is an interesting book, though in many ways I don't like its assumptions (see my thoughts on the topic at: The Whole and the Sum of the Parts ). The authors (Judy Kessler is the multiple of the title) not only believe that integration is the best path to healing but also give a lot of importance to the special status of the original self. It is the original self who had been asleep for so many years who is the "I" after Kessler's integration. She writes: "I realize now that there were at least two decades of history I have missed by not going to school, by not really being there, by having personalities live my life. Even though my personalities, after integration, left me with their knowledge and what they had learned socially, it was not my experience." This book makes clear that integration is not the end of the healing process. It is primarily the story of Kessler's struggle with the issues she had to face after integration, particularly post-traumatic stress and missed developmental stages. Cognitive therapy approaches play a large role in her work. Little is told about her abuse, but it included both severe neglect and ritual abuse.

Joan Frances Casey with Lynn Wilson, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1991).

I highly recommend this book to anyone struggling to understand the healing of multiple personalities. It does not have graphic descriptions of abuse; it focuses entirely on the healing process. It deals very well with the struggles of therapy, and with Casey's efforts to function in the world while healing (she was a graduate student at the start of her healing journey and eventually finished a Ph.D. and took a teaching job). The one caution is that her therapist's approach put a very heavy emphasis on reparenting, something most therapists are not willing to do to that extent (and which is not essential to healing).

Theodore J. Jansma, Jr., and Katharine St. Clair, Becoming Kate: A Journey into the Life and the Healing of a Multiple Personality (Santa Monica: Roundtable Publishing, 1990).

I liked this book even though I didn't like the attitude of the therapist very much. It is the story of one woman's therapy, organized around the process of discovering alters and recovering memories. Some of the memories are told in gruesome detail, but at least they are put in the context of the healing process. Kate was severely abused by her grandparents and others and ended up with over 230 alters, so it is an extreme case. What I didn't like about the book is that the therapist takes the tone that he is healing Kate, not that Kate is healing herself. He believed that the alters had to be ready for integration, but he then used age progression and hypnosis to integrate most of them.

Colin A. Ross, The Osiris Complex: Case Studies in Multiple Personality Disorder (Toronto: Univ. of Toronto Press, 1995). The Ross Institute web site has information on this book, including the text of the introduction and one chapter.

Colin Ross is a well-known specialist in DID. He has collected here case studies of some of his unusual MPD/DID cases. The stories are intriguing, and it is interesting to see his thinking about his clients, but I don't think this book is as useful as it might be. First, he has selected unusual cases rather than typical cases, so I didn't find much with which to identify (not that I think of myself as typical, but a lot of these are really unusual). Second, Ross seems to me to put himself at a distance from his clients. In particular, I was bothered by the way he did things to his clients without their full understanding. On the other side, he spends a lot of time worrying about being manipulated by his clients. Third, Ross struggles with the issue of believing memories, and he doesn't always believe.

Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil (New York: Warner Books 1974).

This book was written by a professional writer who spent time with both Sybil and her therapist, and is one of the first popular descriptions of DID. Sybil has the reputation for being an extreme case, but it is mostly that her parts started out acting very separately in the world. Her abuser was her mother, and while abuse descriptions are a small part of the book I found them very disturbing. The therapy does not seem that oldfashioned to me, except for occasional overemphasis on Freudian concepts (like the primal scene). I avoided this book for quite a while because I was afraid that it would be painfully outdated, but I did not find it so.

Marsha Utain and Barbara Oliver, Scream Louder: Through Hell and Healing with an Incest Survivor and her Therapist (Deerfield Beech, FL: Health Communications, 1989).

This book deals with incest by a stepfather and an alcoholic family. The therapy part is heavy on theories about how dysfunctional families work. There is acknowledgement of inner children but no explicit discussion of DID. This book didn't make much impression on me.

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