The Flock Quotes

“I get attached to people, but they have their own lives, their own problems, and really don't give a shit about anyone else. I knew that was true, and it didn't bother me most of the time. I had learned to be a friend without expecting anything in return. I had learned not to be surprised when people decided that I no longer fit into their lives. (14)”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“I feel as though I can only hold it together if I don't worry too much about its falling apart. (288)”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“Somehow the disorder hooks into all kinds of fears and insecurities in many clinicians. The flamboyance of the multiple, her intelligence and ability to conceptualize the disorder, coupled with suicidal impulses of various orders of seriousness, all seem to mask for many therapists the underlying pain, dependency, and need that are very much part of the process. In many ways, a professional dealing with a multiple in crisis is in the same position as a parent dealing with a two-year-old or with an adolescent's acting-out behavior. (236)”
― Lynn I. Wilson, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“It's like I'm carrying around this huge secret that I'm never supposed to tell. But since I don't remember just what I'm supposed to keep secret, I'm afraid I'll tell it by mistake.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“I knew Lynn was a "professional." Like all of the therapists I had seen before her, she was talking to me because she was getting paid to do so. But she was better at pretending that she cared. Her body language and sympathetic "umm' suggested that she really listened. (12)”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“I don't expect to have a fully verified story of how Jo's disorder developed, but I don't think that historical accuracy is as important as what I call "emotional truth." People attach different levels of significance to the same events. No two participants in any event remember it in exactly the same way. A single broken promise, for example, among thousands of promises kept, might not be remembered by a parent, but may never be forgotten by the child who was disappointed. (34)”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“It is the story of people who found each other at the right moment in their lives and performed magic. (v)”
― Lynn I. Wilson, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“The little girl's dependency on her father made [his] abuse more insidious.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“More than one personality was created in the hope of being the daughter Nancy could consistently love. More than one new personality was created in response to Mother's unexpected fury.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“I had never before considered that people near me might have problems that were not caused by me. I had been created to please people. If the people around me weren't happy, I must be doing something wrong. Lynn helped me see that I lacked the power to make other people feel anything.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“When I'm sailing, sometimes I'll spend hours watching flocks of birds. They have something special going on there," Gordon continued. "They are all separate entities, those birds, but they share a single thought. Watch them fly in formation and suddenly veer around some invisible obstacle. Watch them flutter in swirling confusion and then, abruptly, move together in perfect formation again, each knowing its part in the whole. That what I mean by group minds." Gordon seemed to weigh his remarks, as though each word had significance. "A flock," she said, testing the term. "I guess my group of personalities is like a flock." She smiled ruefully. I only wish I could be lead bird sometime. (155)”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“Why didn't I feel that I belonged to my parents? How early 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?”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“The accuracy of my memories, whether things happened exactly the way that the personalities remember, doesn't really matter. If my memory, combined with the memories of the other personalities, provides some coherent past, then that is far better than the blankness I have. Whatever inaccuracies may occur because of the passage of time or because of the colored intensity of "emotional truth" harm no one. All that matters is that I gain a firm grasp on what is real. (165)”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“I know that you do love me," Jo told Lynn, "and that makes it possible for me to grow, just as love makes it possible for an infant to grow. But you know that I don't like my dependency on you. I'm willing to accept it for a time, because I believe you when you tell me that my acceptance of dependency on you heals a very old need. But I really hate it. I hate being an emotional infant. I want to grow free of you. "If I didn't feel that your love accelerated my growth," Jo added firmly, "I'd fight against it." (165)”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“Lynn said that therapy was like separating the strands in a tangled web of yarn. It made sense that things would keep getting more separate for awhile so that we eventually came back together in an organized way. (205)”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“I'm going through hell," I cried, "and Steve wants me to be thankful he baked a pie." (272)”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“Even the most damaged and disenchanted teenager was only waiting for someone to see the real persona beneath the defense and respond with genuine caring. (63)”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“When I was with my mother, I sometimes thought of myself of a trophy—something to be flaunted before friends. When out of public view, I sat on the shelf ignored and forgotten.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“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.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“It's as though I'm sitting in the audience caught up in a well-made film.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“Jo tried to think about her suspicion that Lynn liked her. She figured that Lynn was nice to her because she was a patient. Jo's mother had shown her what it meant to have a professional mask. The times Jo saw her mother at work in the lab, busy and efficient as she drew blood and marked vials. Nancy smiled warmly at the patients, ready with a sympathetic comment. If a patient or a doctor called Nancy at home, she immediately became the caring professional, no matter what had been happening before the phone rang. When Lynn hung up after an evening phone call from Missy, Jo suspected that Lynn resumed screaming at her husband or kids.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“To me, the essential task of any therapy is the same as that of lie - to recognize, experience, and affirm our common humanity as we integrate within, with one another, and with the universe. (viii)”
― Lynn I. Wilson, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“I thought carefully about the events of the evening and decided that there must be limitations on desires. It wasn't true that I could have anything I wanted. I felt good about understanding that, but I still didn't know how people figured out what it was safe to want. I did know, from my mother's scolding, that 'wanting' was a problem. If the desire could not be filled, then I was greedy and selfish. Since I couldn't figure out how to judge the possibility of fulfilling a desire. (66).”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“It is this honest connection behveen two human beings that, in the end, makes what we endured together understandable and meaningful.”
― Lynn I. Wilson, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“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.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“I have often tried to imagine how I might have acted differently. Always I end up in the same place.”
― Lynn I. Wilson, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“She knew she needed Lynn, so she wouldn't get angry at her. Jo's parents had taught her long ago that it was not safe to get angry at someone she depended on. (53)”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“I have come to believe that concentrated time, when it's needed - freely given and with a special purpose - can accomplish goals that even years of traditional treatment sometimes cannot. (185)”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“The accuracy of my memories, whether things happened exactly the way that the personalities remember, doesn't really matter. If my memory, combined with the memories of the other
personalities, provides some coherent past, then that is far better than the blankness I have. Whatever inaccuracies may occur because of the passage of time or because of the colored intensity of "emotional truth" harm no one. All that matters is that I gain a firm grasp on what is real. The memories of the total entity, accurate or not, are providing me a handle. I must have some background to adequately explain where I am now. I must have a base from which to build an unfragmented future.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

“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.”
― Joan Frances Casey, The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality