Recant Quotes

It was early in my career, and I had been seeing Mary, a shy, lonely, and physically collapsed young woman, for about three months in weekly psychotherapy, dealing with the ravages of her terrible history of early abuse. One day I opened the door to my waiting room and saw her standing there provocatively, dressed in a miniskirt, her hair dyed flaming red, with a cup of coffee in one hand and a snarl on her face. “You must be Dr. van der Kolk,” she said. “My name is Jane, and I came to warn you not to believe any the lies that Mary has been telling you. Can I come in and tell you about her?” I was stunned but fortunately kept myself from confronting “Jane” and instead heard her out. Over the course of our session I met not only Jane but also a hurt little girl and an angry male adolescent. That was the beginning of a long and productive treatment.

Bessel A. van der Kolk

After writing the letter Sybil lost almost two days. "Coming to," she stumbled across what she had written just before she had dissociated and wrote to Dr. Wilbur as follows: It's just so hard to have to feel, believe, and admit that I do not have conscious control over my selves. It is so much more threatening to have something out of hand than to believe that at any moment I can stop (I started to say "This foolishness") any time I need to. When I wrote the previous letter, I had made up my mind I would show you how I could be very composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me nor to explain anything to me nor need any help. By telling you that all this about the multiple personalities was not really true I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need you. Well, it would be easier if it were put on. But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not exist has now caused me to lose about two days.

Flora Rheta Schreiber

Lies that cause survivors to deny or recent abuse memories and experiences ⸱ The alters who are designated to live in the "real world,” going to school or college and holding jobs while interacting with others in adulthood, are trained, usually at home by parents, to disbelieve any memories that might come up.⸱͏ Children are taught to believe that they got the idea that they were abused from something they read or saw on television or from someone else’s experience or from a therapist. (This is a basic argument of those who attempt to discredit these experiences in the public eye and among professionals.)⸱ Children are also taught that if they experience ﬂashbacks of awful abuses, those must be dreams or imagination or signs that they are crazy. Nothing bad really happened to them