was about it.
“There's this girl – woman, actually – and when she was a kid, she saw her parents and sister murdered.”
Dr. Fraser could've taught Max a thing or two about keeping a neutral expression, and that was saying something.
I kept going. “Now, she's an adult, but she's pretending to be her dead sister. She doesn't have anything to gain from it and it seems like it's been going on for years.” I hesitated to share my opinion, but then thought of Livie and Katka. I had to know if I could help them. Her. Dammit. “Could she have a split personality?”
Dr. Fraser was silent for a moment, her dark eyes studying me. “You understand, I can't make a specific diagnosis without actually examining the patient, and even then, Dissociative Identity Disorder – multiple personalities, as it's commonly known – is very difficult to diagnose. There are many in my field who doubt they even exist.”
“What about you?” I interrupted. “Do you think it's possible?”
She pursed her lips. “I believe that when someone, particularly a child, goes through a traumatic event, the mind has ways of protecting itself. Sometimes, especially in the highly intelligent, that protection manifests itself by creating a different persona who is able to deal with the event.”
“So a seven year-old seeing her parents and her identical twin murdered could cause her to create her sister as a separate personality to deal with what she saw.”
Dr. Fraser nodded. “That's a simplistic way of putting it, but yes. Especially since you're talking about an identical twin. Every time she looked in the mirror, she'd be seeing her sister. It's quite plausible that, to deal with the loss of both of her parents and her sister, she had to tell herself that her sister wasn't dead.”
I couldn't feel anything. No pain. Nothing. My chest felt like an empty cavity, like someone had pulled my heart out and left me with nothing. My Kat was dead.
No, I realized suddenly. Not my Kat. Seven year-old Katka Duseková was dead. I'd never known her. My Kat was alive. Sort of.
“So what ends up happening to people with multiple personalities?” I asked. “I mean, is one of the personalities more real than the other?”
“A situation such as the one you're proposing makes it a bit trickier,” the doctor admitted. “Most of the time, the central personality is clear and the others are figments of his or her imagination, coming out only when something triggers the need. While they have fully formed identities, they're not real. Most of the time, they don't even age. A five year-old personality is always five years-old. In this case, however, the woman you're talking about became her sister. She would've taken on those particular personality traits. As she grew older, to maintain the illusion that her sister was still alive, the alternate personality would've aged as well. Because there's no real way of knowing who that child would've become, the sister would've become more and more like the person the core personality needed her to be.”
“Is there a treatment?” I wasn't sure why I asked. It wasn't like anything could resurrect a dead seven year-old and turn her into the woman I'd fallen in love with.
“Again,” Dr. Fraser said. “There are different schools of thought on the subject.”
“Don't you people agree on anything?” I muttered.
She chuckled, a brief, dry laugh. “Not often,” she admitted. “The problem with this disorder is that there's no physical proof it even exists and, therefore, no physical proof that it's cured. Most mainstream psychologists and psychiatrists go with one of three types of treatment. Some believe that the best course of action is to destroy the other personalities. Force the original to mentally kill the other.”
I flinched at the suggestion, unable to imagine Livie ever doing something like that, even in her mind. Worse was thinking about how horrible it would be to have Katka killed...I
“There's this girl – woman, actually – and when she was a kid, she saw her parents and sister murdered.”
Dr. Fraser could've taught Max a thing or two about keeping a neutral expression, and that was saying something.
I kept going. “Now, she's an adult, but she's pretending to be her dead sister. She doesn't have anything to gain from it and it seems like it's been going on for years.” I hesitated to share my opinion, but then thought of Livie and Katka. I had to know if I could help them. Her. Dammit. “Could she have a split personality?”
Dr. Fraser was silent for a moment, her dark eyes studying me. “You understand, I can't make a specific diagnosis without actually examining the patient, and even then, Dissociative Identity Disorder – multiple personalities, as it's commonly known – is very difficult to diagnose. There are many in my field who doubt they even exist.”
“What about you?” I interrupted. “Do you think it's possible?”
She pursed her lips. “I believe that when someone, particularly a child, goes through a traumatic event, the mind has ways of protecting itself. Sometimes, especially in the highly intelligent, that protection manifests itself by creating a different persona who is able to deal with the event.”
“So a seven year-old seeing her parents and her identical twin murdered could cause her to create her sister as a separate personality to deal with what she saw.”
Dr. Fraser nodded. “That's a simplistic way of putting it, but yes. Especially since you're talking about an identical twin. Every time she looked in the mirror, she'd be seeing her sister. It's quite plausible that, to deal with the loss of both of her parents and her sister, she had to tell herself that her sister wasn't dead.”
I couldn't feel anything. No pain. Nothing. My chest felt like an empty cavity, like someone had pulled my heart out and left me with nothing. My Kat was dead.
No, I realized suddenly. Not my Kat. Seven year-old Katka Duseková was dead. I'd never known her. My Kat was alive. Sort of.
“So what ends up happening to people with multiple personalities?” I asked. “I mean, is one of the personalities more real than the other?”
“A situation such as the one you're proposing makes it a bit trickier,” the doctor admitted. “Most of the time, the central personality is clear and the others are figments of his or her imagination, coming out only when something triggers the need. While they have fully formed identities, they're not real. Most of the time, they don't even age. A five year-old personality is always five years-old. In this case, however, the woman you're talking about became her sister. She would've taken on those particular personality traits. As she grew older, to maintain the illusion that her sister was still alive, the alternate personality would've aged as well. Because there's no real way of knowing who that child would've become, the sister would've become more and more like the person the core personality needed her to be.”
“Is there a treatment?” I wasn't sure why I asked. It wasn't like anything could resurrect a dead seven year-old and turn her into the woman I'd fallen in love with.
“Again,” Dr. Fraser said. “There are different schools of thought on the subject.”
“Don't you people agree on anything?” I muttered.
She chuckled, a brief, dry laugh. “Not often,” she admitted. “The problem with this disorder is that there's no physical proof it even exists and, therefore, no physical proof that it's cured. Most mainstream psychologists and psychiatrists go with one of three types of treatment. Some believe that the best course of action is to destroy the other personalities. Force the original to mentally kill the other.”
I flinched at the suggestion, unable to imagine Livie ever doing something like that, even in her mind. Worse was thinking about how horrible it would be to have Katka killed...I
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