“Lights On, Rats Out (a Memoir)” by Cree LeFavour: Psychiatrists said she did not have alternate personalities, but what were “the 11s” that possessed her?

In part of this memoir, the author describes a psychiatric hospitalization that she had in her twenties due to self-mutilation—repeatedly burning her skin with cigarettes—which was serious.

Since one possible cause of self-mutilation is multiple personality disorder (MPD)—one personality persecuting another—she was given a questionnaire, the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES), to screen for MPD. According to her low DES score, she probably did not have MPD (but that assumes she answered the questions truthfully, which she may not have been motivated to do).

An interesting feature throughout this memoir is the author’s preoccupation with both the number eleven and “the 11s,” which refers to two things: 1. her feeling that encountering the number eleven is meaningful or magical, and 2. that some unnamed “they” are the “power” behind eleven. Let me quote the memoir:

“When the 11s appear I read them as a reminder directed at me from an unknowable, vaguely menacing power that must be placated. The power behind the 11s—not the number—dates to memories of myself at five or six years old…” (1, p. 44). [Multiple personality starts in childhood.]

“As long as I’ve tried to talk myself out of them since I first explained them to Dr. Kohl [her psychiatrist], there’s a strong, important part of me that isn’t conceding the argument” (1, p. 47).

“…the 11s don’t like Dr. Kohl, resent him for tricking me into spilling our secret magic” (1, p. 66).

“The 11s are in play. I’m placating them with every burn” (1, p. 75).

“ ‘People trick me into trusting. Once I do there will be a trick.’ This was the 11’s talking [author says]” (1, p. 88). [Alternate personalities may be heard as loud thoughts or voices in the head; they may pull strings from behind the scenes; or they may come out incognito, without acknowledging it is they who are acting or talking.]

“I’ve stopped writing what I call ‘fragments’—unpolished poems spewing rank as bile—because they’re scary thoughts from some other part of me. A disturbing antidote to the 11s called Edlin parades as a named entity come to rescue me…I rationally deny them all, but when I apply pencil to paper I’m possessed, as if the letters and the words they make are dictated by an alien self…” (1, p. 167). [Edlin is a named alternate personality.]

“Then there are the 11s and their favorite toy, the cigarette, goading me to take to burning as the psychic eraser I long for” (1, p. 247).

“I am on some level purifying myself for the 11s” (1, p. 252).

Comment

When the author was in the psychiatric hospital (1991), she was glad that she was diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder rather than MPD, because she said that MPD was a notorious fad, and perhaps felt that it looked too crazy, so she didn’t want to have anything to do with it.

And like most people, she probably equated MPD with an overt display of alternate personalities, which she didn’t appear to have. But most people with MPD, most of the time, do not display their alternate personalities overtly, unless they have already been diagnosed and are in a group with others who have MPD, or have agreed to make a demonstration video. Otherwise, alternate personalities tend to remain inside, pulling strings, or if they do come out, tend to do so incognito (answering to the person’s regular name).

After reading the above quotations from the memoir about what was going on in her mind, you might think that she must be crazy, but watch a video of a recent talk she gave about this memoir, and you will see that she is perfectly sane: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DL8fpVUu9V4

MPD is a dissociative disorder, usually secretive and inconspicuous, not a psychosis.

I assume that Cree LeFavour still considers the idea that she had MPD to be ridiculous, and that most people would agree with her (especially in view of the DES, noted above, which is usually valid). But they don’t provide a better explanation for “the 11s,” which is a prominent feature of this memoir, and should be addressed by any attentive review. In short, the 11s appear to be a group of unnamed alternate personalities. What the “11” refers to—the number of them in the group? [or the age of the person when these alternate personalities came into existence; or the age these personalities see themselves as being]—I don’t know.

1. Cree LeFavour. Lights On, Rats Out: A Memoir. New York, Grove Press, 2017.