The Magic Daughter, by Jane Phillips, 1995
Jul. 3rd, 2023 11:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lb_leeMori: in my great medical multi booksweep of the big downtown library, I ended up checking out The Magic Daughter: A Memoir of Living With Multiple Personality Disorder. (There's already a digitized copy on archive.org, so no need to scan it.) We had first read it back in middle school, when I was reading every MPD/DID book I could get my mitts on, but it didn't have what I was looking for at the time, so I tossed it aside as a wash. But I was wrong!
The Magic Daughter generally isn't remembered as one of the famous medical multi memoirs. When Rabbit Howls still gets mentioned by folks today, as the source for many of the seeds regarding headmate personhood and treating headspace as important. (They weren't the only folks or the first, but they're the famous, remembered ones.) People still mention Chris Costner Sizemore, and even the Flock on occasion, but the Magic Daughter seems mostly forgotten. The abuse is described in a straightforward, undramatic way; it's more interested in explaining everyday life as a closeted dissociative, dealing with things like "my pain tolerance fluctuates wildly and I can never tell if I'm sick, oversensitive, or flashbacking." It's a quiet book, and I'm getting way more out of it as an adult! I think a lot of people would.
Reading most mainstream-published multi memoirs is excruciating for us. It feels like holding our hands to a hot stove burner, something to be endured for education's sake. The Magic Daughter is so much less agonizing. I'm still only halfway through, but here's some quotes I like!
"One can only be heroic with MPD if one leads a life so successful that no one could possibly know." (14)
"Because I suffered at the hands of both males and females, I do not, as some victims do, see one gender as safe and attractive and the other as dangerous or repulsive. (...) I have friends who assume that all women health care providers will automatically be gentle and understanding--only to be nailed from time to time by cold incompetents who--surprise!--are women. (...) I do not assume women are kinder or more giving, or that all men should be viewed in terms of their potential as mates or rapists.
"There are distinct differences between what was done to me by males and what was done to me by females. Somehow it has always been easier to come to terms with the actions of my brothers. I can tell myself they were young and ignorant. (...) I can also see my brothers' treatment of me in terms of overt, discrete episodes: this attack, that molestation, and so on.
"What has been far more insidious, and in the end far more destructive, was how my mother treated me. (...) Everything she said, everything she did, underscored the sickening 'truths' I had gleaned from my brothers. What I cannot forgive, somehow, is that her own glee about my developing body made her so blind to my emotions. What I cannot forget is what it was like to have to stand in the bathroom (...) while she measured and remeasured my bust and waist and hips. It was no coincidence, I think, that she could never quite get the 'exact' measure of my bust, measuring and remeasuring it in every session.
"What my brothers did I at least could guess was wrong. But my mother's rights to my body, and her power over me, I took for granted." (92-93)
The Magic Daughter generally isn't remembered as one of the famous medical multi memoirs. When Rabbit Howls still gets mentioned by folks today, as the source for many of the seeds regarding headmate personhood and treating headspace as important. (They weren't the only folks or the first, but they're the famous, remembered ones.) People still mention Chris Costner Sizemore, and even the Flock on occasion, but the Magic Daughter seems mostly forgotten. The abuse is described in a straightforward, undramatic way; it's more interested in explaining everyday life as a closeted dissociative, dealing with things like "my pain tolerance fluctuates wildly and I can never tell if I'm sick, oversensitive, or flashbacking." It's a quiet book, and I'm getting way more out of it as an adult! I think a lot of people would.
Reading most mainstream-published multi memoirs is excruciating for us. It feels like holding our hands to a hot stove burner, something to be endured for education's sake. The Magic Daughter is so much less agonizing. I'm still only halfway through, but here's some quotes I like!
"One can only be heroic with MPD if one leads a life so successful that no one could possibly know." (14)
"Because I suffered at the hands of both males and females, I do not, as some victims do, see one gender as safe and attractive and the other as dangerous or repulsive. (...) I have friends who assume that all women health care providers will automatically be gentle and understanding--only to be nailed from time to time by cold incompetents who--surprise!--are women. (...) I do not assume women are kinder or more giving, or that all men should be viewed in terms of their potential as mates or rapists.
"There are distinct differences between what was done to me by males and what was done to me by females. Somehow it has always been easier to come to terms with the actions of my brothers. I can tell myself they were young and ignorant. (...) I can also see my brothers' treatment of me in terms of overt, discrete episodes: this attack, that molestation, and so on.
"What has been far more insidious, and in the end far more destructive, was how my mother treated me. (...) Everything she said, everything she did, underscored the sickening 'truths' I had gleaned from my brothers. What I cannot forgive, somehow, is that her own glee about my developing body made her so blind to my emotions. What I cannot forget is what it was like to have to stand in the bathroom (...) while she measured and remeasured my bust and waist and hips. It was no coincidence, I think, that she could never quite get the 'exact' measure of my bust, measuring and remeasuring it in every session.
"What my brothers did I at least could guess was wrong. But my mother's rights to my body, and her power over me, I took for granted." (92-93)
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Date: 2023-07-03 06:34 pm (UTC)- Mike (he/him)
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Date: 2023-07-04 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
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