Recognizing Ann’s Unawareness of Betty and Betty’s Sabotage of Ann: Why Can’t Identities Write a Novel and Cooperate?

In yesterday's post, I said that Ann and her alternate personality, Betty, had been fighting for years over how much of the time each of them would be in control. But that “battle” was Betty’s perspective. Ann didn’t even know that Betty existed.

All Ann knew was that, since childhood, things would happen that were unexplainable. The medication was just the most recent example: She sometimes couldn’t find her medication, but when she did finally find it, she knew that it was not where she had put it.

This kind of experience was part of the fabric of Ann’s everyday life. Maybe it happened to everyone, but they just didn’t admit it. What could anyone do about it?

So Ann had decided many years ago that it was best to ignore the unexplainable. She certainly hadn't mentioned the long history of her mysterious experiences to either me, her psychiatrist, or to her psychotherapist. Anyway, that wasn’t why she had come for treatment. She had come because of anxiety and depression. The pills helped. The therapy helped. And that was that.

Betty didn’t like Ann’s treatment, especially the pills. For it was when Ann had felt overwhelmed that Betty had been most able to take control, and the pills were preventing Ann from feeling overwhelmed. Betty hid the pills, but she wanted to stop them at the source, and since she was co-conscious with Ann, and knew everything that Ann thought and did, she knew Ann’s scheduled psychiatric appointments.

Her plan was to see Ann’s doctor (me), but she would do so incognito, letting me assume that she was Ann—people were so stupid, Betty had found, and could not tell them apart—and she would make me believe that Ann didn’t want the medicine any more. Either I would stop prescribing the medicine or the treatment would be disrupted and discontinued. Betty’s problem would be solved.

During my first twelve years as a psychiatrist, Betty might have succeeded in making me think that Ann was rejecting the treatment, or at least that Ann was “treatment resistant.” But by that time, I had learned about multiple personality, and I realized what was going on. And no, I didn’t tell Ann that all she needed to do was write a novel, but I did tell her that Betty was quite a character and they should cooperate [with each other].