Marguerite Sechehaye’s “Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl”: Child-aged personalities of case of multiple personality respond well to “Mama”

“[This is Renee’s intimate story as she recalled it shortly after her recovery. It begins with her first feelings of unreality when she was five years old.]”

“I remember very well the day it happened…a disturbing sense of unreality…it was during this same period that I learned my father had a mistress and that he made my mother cry. This revelation bowled me over because I had heard my mother say that if my father left her, she would kill herself” (1, pp. 21-22, the first two pages of her story).

“From the point of view of scholarship, my last year at the elementary school was good enough. I took three prizes, two of them firsts” (1, p. 28).

“Beneath the exterior of a girl, hardworking and full of responsibility (I managed a household of six persons on a pitiful budget, educated my brothers and sisters, and was an excellent student), I felt more and more bewildered. The Fear, previously episodic, now never left me. Every day I was sure to sense it, and the unreal situations increased as well” (1, p. 35).

[“Renee, who had never cared for dolls, suddenly, at the age of seventeen or eighteen, began to play with them like a little girl…”] (1, p. 39).

“For me this doll “really” existed…Just the same I did not believe that she was really alive, since I never gave her anything to eat” (1, p. 42).

“During the earliest attacks of Fear and an intense unreality, I sometimes uttered these unconscious and shocking words: ‘I should prefer to escape into madness to avoid this consuming Fear.’ Alas, I did not know what I was saying. In my ignorance I believed that madness was a state of insensibility where there was neither pain nor suffering nor joy, but particularly, no responsibility…For me, madness was definitely not a condition of illness…It was rather a country, opposed to Reality, where reigned an implacable light…leaving no place for shadow” (1, pp. 43-44).

[But madness was also weird and horrible, and against it] “I waged a battle with the help of the analyst who later became my ‘Mama.’ Only near her I felt secure, especially from the time when she began to sit next to me on the couch and put her arm around my shoulders. Oh, what joy, what relief to feel the life, the warmth, the reality!” (1, p. 46).

“I literally hated people, without knowing why. In dreams and frequently in waking fantasies I constructed an electric machine to blow up the earth and everyone in it. But what was worse, with the machine I would rob all men of their brains, thus creating robots obedient to my will alone. This was my greatest, most terrible revenge” (1, p. 47).

“One day I wrote a letter of entreaty to the unknown author of my suffering, to the Persecutor…Some time after I discovered that the Persecutor was none other than the electric machine, that is, it was the ‘System’ that was punishing me” (1, p. 48). “…the head of the System, Antipiol. He took up his position…” (1, pp. 100-101).

“…the sound of my voice and the meaning of my words seemed strange. Every now and then, an inner voice interrupted sneeringly, ‘Ah, Ah!’ and mockingly repeated what I had said. These inner voices…were affected, ridiculous” (1, p. 50).

“Then Mama’s sweet voice sounded…saying, ‘Little Renee, my little Renee needn’t be afraid when there is Mama…What did me the most amazing good was her use of the third person in speaking of herself, ‘Mama and Renee,’ not ‘I and you’…‘Renee,’ or, better still, ‘the little personage’ ” (1, pp. 52-53).

“In the midst of this horror and turbulence, I nonetheless carried on my work as a secretary. But what a hardship. Added to the torment, strident noises…But I readily distinguished them from the noises of reality. I heard them without hearing them, and recognized that they arose within me” (1, p. 59).

“A ceaseless voice within me repeated over and over, ‘This is it, Renee, this what the System has done to you!…You are alone in your punishment. I am alone and afraid. Renee is afraid.’ With all my strength I tried to choke off the poor little voice, this baby’s voice speaking in the third person like a tiny child…But the little voice continued more firmly: ‘Mama, Renee is afraid; the System has punished Renee; Renee is afraid’ ” (1, p. 70).

“I kept writing simply to keep myself busy—anything rather than listen to the little voice” (1, p. 75).

“During this holiday, I noticed a complete loss of the sense of perspective. I sketched like a child. I got lost easily and I could not orient myself spatially” (1, p. 88).

“I continued to respond to voices which, though I actually did not hear them [externally], existed nonetheless for me” (1, p. 94).

“Mama [what she called Sechehaye, her therapist] brought me a gift—a little plush monkey…When he had his arms up, I was anxious lest he hurt me…When I related my fears to Mama…She took the monkey’s two arms, lowered them…and said, ‘Mama’s little monkey, Mama asks you alway to keep your arms down to comfort Renee…The little monkey agreed; I could see it in his eyes. It is hard to express how relieved I was…At any rate, from that moment, the impulse to self harm left me abruptly” (1, p. 96-97).

“At these times my ear took some part in hearing the voices…Now even though I distinguished them readily from real voices, I could say I actually heard them…” (1, p. 100).

“I seemed to grow smaller…The voices were screaming, crying out that I ought to throw myself in the river. But I resisted with all my strength as I ran to Mama…Mama tried…to calm me…’Why,’ she said, ‘don’t you want the apples I buy you? [Renee replies,] ‘Because the apples you buy are for grown-ups and I want real apples. Mama’s apples, like those,’ and I pointed to Mama’s breasts…She put the piece [of apple] in my mouth, and with my eyes closed, my head against her breast, I ate, or rather drank, my milk. A nameless felicity flowed into my heart. It was as though, suddenly, by magic, all my agony…had given place to a blissful calm…I reveled in my joy…the contentment of a tiny baby…I saw Reality, marvelous Reality, for the first time…During [the] second day, I realized that the voices had disappeared…For the first time I was in touch with reality” (1, pp. 104-107).

“Months passed; then one day my nurse failed to appear as usual…It was early in the nurses absence when I first began to notice the fact that Mama has patients and that she had a husband whom I called the ‘Great Personage.’…I could not bear the thought that she was giving a large part of her time to strangers, leaving me alone with the System and the newly returned voices” (1, pp. 112-113).

But eventually, facilitated by a doll Mama gives to Renee, a few sedative injections, and more therapy from Mama, the title of the last chapter is “I Become Firmly Established in Wonderful Reality” (1, p. 130).

Comments

In her Introduction to the Autobiography, the therapist, Marguerite Sechehaye, emphasizes how ill Renee had been: that even though “Renee’s intimate introspections…seem to bear witness to an astonishing lucidity, it is not to be forgotten that”…“there were long periods of hebephrenic catatonia when her confusion made it impossible to register what went on either around or within her” (1, p. 18).

I would add that Sechehaye did not understand what was going on in Renee even when Renee was lucid. As indicated by my added boldface in the above narrative, it is quite likely that Renee had one or a few child-aged alternate personalities who were “small” “personages” and babies who related to dolls and Mama the way child-aged alternate personalities would be expected to. Sechehaye might have realized this if she had ever asked, “How old are you?” at the times and in the ways that I (or anyone familiar with multiple personality) would have. Plus there were probably other personalities, such as the “Persecutor” (search “persecutor personalities”), head of the “System.”

In short, there is nothing in the autobiography or Sechehaye’s interpretation of it to indicate what actually did happen with all these alternate personalities, beyond the fact that they settled down, went behind the scenes, and stopped causing trouble; which, if the truce lasted, was, in practical terms, a successful treatment, not of schizophrenia, but of multiple personality.

Cautionary Note

“Multiples evoke the desire and fantasy of reparenting in many therapists. The child alters [alternate personalities] especially seem to beg for good parents to hold and nurture them. Their painful history and current torment may elicit strong parental feelings…In some cases, therapists have taken multiples into their homes and tried to raise them anew…

“Instead, I believe that the reparenting process must occur from within the multiple. The adult personalities must…care for…the child alters. In my experience, this works well” (2, p. 193).

In the case of "Renée," a pseudonym for Louisa Düss, Marguerite Sechehaye and her husband actually, legally, adopted her (3).

1. Marguerite Sechehaye (Part 2, Analytic Interpretation). Autobiography of a Schizophrenic Girl: The True Story of “Renee” (Part 1) [1951]. Translated by Grace Rubin-Rabson. Foreword by Frank Conroy [1968]. New York, Meridian/Penguin, 1994.

2. Frank W. Putnam MD. Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, The Guilford Press, 1989.

3. Wikipedia.