“Stop-Time” by Frank Conroy (post 2): a childhood memory ends just when the traumatic part begins, which is typical of a multiple personality memory gap.

Ordinary memory tends to remember the most emotionally arousing parts of past events: what was surprising, frightening, etc.

The opposite is typical of memory in multiple personality. If something is starting to happen that is frightening—e.g., signs that a beating or molestation is about to occur—they will automatically switch to the alternate personality who had originated to deal with, and contain the memory of, that kind of experience, leaving the regular personality with a memory gap for the period of time that the alternate personality substituted. And that is what Frank Conroy appears to be describing in this childhood memory:

“The arrival home of my father late one night. I ran down the hall, opened the door, and looked up at him. My last memory is that something was wrong…I’ve been told that on that night he got rough and chased me all over the apartment. When my mother came home I was hiding under the bed, but my memory ceases at the opening of the door. The image is vivid and detailed to the point of remembering the weave of his suit—gray-blue herringbone—and the smell of his breath. Bourbon, but after that, nothing” (1, p. 22).

1. Frank Conroy. Stop-Time [A Memoir, 1967]. New York, Penguin Books, 1977.