35 Quotes by Joan Frances Casey

The Karen personality was created when Jo was nine and her mother said once too often, "Why can't you be like your cousin Karen?" Jo's internal Karen was the perfect mimic of her cousin, and fulfilled Nancy's demand that the child be neat and organized.

Why didn't I feel that I belonged to my parents? How could I have known that I was not right? I think it has always been part of me. Can a newborn sense her parents' disappointment and feelings of frustration at not being able to change the unchangeable?

The Flock have come a long way in their acceptance of this, and when a professional refused to deal with them in a straightforward manner and, in fact, manipulated and deceived them in return-they rebelled fiercely but self-protectively.

I was just thinking that I started off OK," Jo said. "There wasn't anything different or wrong with me when I was born. I wasn't inherently bad or freakish."That's right, Jo," Lynn said."Other people—my mother and father—did things to me that made me feel all wrong about myself," Jo said, another warm wave of new, sure knowledge washing over her.

I was just thinking that I started off OK," Jo said. "There wasn't anything different or wrong with me when I was born. I wasn't inherently bad or freakish.

Are any of these anxieties or beliefs about my past real? Maybe I'm just making them up⎯re-creating the past.I have to smile as I look at what I just wrote. I can tell when my solitary exploration becomes too threatening, or when I'm treading close to a memory too frightening to be remembered. Rather than push through unfamiliar brush, I stomp the well-worn path of "Maybe I'm making all of this up." But retreating there no longer makes sense to me.

When the Jo personality first told him of the diagnosis, he called MPD "clinical bullshit." Then, seeing Jo's stricken look, he softened and showed her how the possibility of many personalities in a single body was philosophically untenable. MPD did not fit into Steve's system of beliefs, and therefore it did not exist.

Jo knew she had to be utterly truthful, even when her version of the truth conflicted with what Lynn wanted to hear. Truth was vital to Jo, because she had a hard enough time keeping track of the spotty reality she experienced.

Now that she had the diagnosis to explain her sense of reality, she sorted some of the chaotic jumble of thoughts and memories. "I'd feel funny having 'daydreamed' my way through whole seasons," Jo said, "but then I'd hear someone say, 'Time flies,' or 'How did it get to be three o'clock already?' and I'd think that everyone was like me.