When Jack was 3 he was in the bath one day when something he said triggered a psychotic reaction in his mother. She lashed out and hit him, causing him to fall stunned face down in the bath. He nearly drowned, but his mother got him out in time. Unfortunately his last memory as he slipped into unconsciousness was of his mothers hands pushing down on his back, pushing him under the water. What he didn’t know was that this was her first attempt to lift him, but her hands had slipped. Fortunately, her second attempt to lift him succeeded. This incident would affect him for life, and being part of a psychotic episode was automatically dissociated and never talked about it. Jack was left with a permanent dissociation disorder.
Diane’s mother was a child of the great depression, and was extremely jealous of the opportunities Diane had available to her as a child growing up in the 1960’s. Instead of affection and encouragement from her mother, Diane was pushed into every activity available as her mother tried to relive her childhood through her daughter. Diane hated most of it, but felt she had no choice. And lacking her mother’s affection and warmth she sought it elsewhere and just before her 14th birthday found herself pregnant.
Diane’s mother had been a nurse and knew which doctor in town to see to arrange an abortion. She told Diane she was just going in for a check-up, and that any discomfort was the price of becoming a mother. The pregnancy was duly terminated. A couple of months later when Diane’s normal biological functions resumed, she discovered what had happened and an argument started between them. Things got out of hand and the ensuing fight found Diane lying on her bed, her mother astride her, with her hands around her throat strangling her. One of Diane’s flailing hands hit her mothers head and she fell stunned allowing Diane to escape. Diane fled to a neighbor, who took her to welfare, and they took her to the police.
The senior police office rang her parents to come and get her, threatened Diane with being locked up if she didn’t stop telling such a “lie”, and told her parents to send her to another welfare district so there would be no follow ups. A couple of days later she was gone, sent to stay with relatives in another region. As a result of the attack a large amount of bruising came out on her neck, and she took to wearing a dog collar, fashionable in some circles at the time, to try and conceal it. Her maternal grandmother also lived in the town she was staying, and when she saw Diane wearing the collar she told her off, saying she looked like a slut wearing it and she was embarrassing her mother. Diane’s personality shattered at that moment, unable to defend herself, and she would be affected by dissociation of her identity from then on.
The family reunited a few weeks later but it was almost open warfare between Diane and her mother. Within a couple of years Diane had left home to start a new life.
As Jack reached his teens on a few occasions he would wake in the middle of the night, dress and wander off finding his way to a young lady in distress. He would offer his teenage words of wisdom and eventually go back home and back to bed. When he awoke the next morning, he would have no memories of the incident. One night the lady in question was Diane, in a very distressed state. His family was away so he took her home, made coffee, and they talked for several hours. Just as the sun was coming up she left. As usual he went back to bed, and when he woke had no memories of the nights events.
Some of the advice he had offered included a change of career, and a few weeks later he chanced to drive past the place she had been working so he stopped and went in to see if she was there. The staff told him that she had found a new job, and when they told him what it was he felt very happy for her. As he drove away, it was possibly the only time he became co-conscious – the part of him that went out at night and the normal daily self both aware of what was happening. Day self asked “Who the f**k is Diane” but night self was gone, slipping back to the depth of subconscious, and there was no reply.
7 years later Jack was looking for a room in a share house. He checked the ads in Saturdays paper, found the perfect place and went for the interview. On Sunday he got up, checked Sundays paper then went back to Saturdays paper and found an ad for a place in a suburb he didn’t want to live in and went for an interview. The lady who had placed the ad was Diane and while neither of them had any memories of what had happened 7 years earlier, they bonded instantly and Jack moved in the next week.
A few months later Jack proposed and they were married later that year. It turned out that Diane had a few issues with her reproductive system so eventually they found themselves joining the IVF program. The psychologist that conducted their assessment commented that they were the best candidates she had met so far.
The Christmas holidays before their first treatment was due they stayed with Diane’s parents for a few days. The night before they were due to leave Diane rushed in about 9pm and said they should leave now and drive through the night to avoid the heat so they packed and left. What had happened was that her father had taken her aside and asked she reconsider the IVF treatment because the doctors might notice something and start asking awkward questions. Her response was a very angry no, and then she was gone.
They started the first IVF treatment a few weeks later and 3 days in her father passed away suddenly. So they had to leave and go to the funeral etc. She hadn’t talked to her father since their argument, and she quickly sank into a serious state of depression which lasted for tears. No therapist was able to help as the incident was so heavily suppressed by the mind virus’s which protect parents, police and the medical profession. With no knowledge of what had happened back at Christmas time, or what had happened when she was 14 Jack was totally in the dark as to what had taken hold of her life.
It was about this time that Dr Mayer was doing his hypnosis therapies, and like so many women at the time Diane started to have weird flashbacks of incidents from childhood and teenage years which profoundly affected her sense of self, and with changing memories her identity also changed. This also compounded any therapy as the focus shifted from grief counseling to trying to come to grips with her changing memories.
Diane & Jack struggled on and a couple of years later things were starting to look up. Diane asked Jack to accompany him for an appointment with her gynecologist. After the check up had been completed the three of them were sitting talking, and the doctor mentioned the flashback memories and said the during the examination he had noticed scarring usually caused by an abortion or STD at a young age, and did they know anything about it? They looked at each other, then both replied no and the matter was dropped. The power of mind virus’s – dissociation – is so strong that by the time they got back to their car both had no memory of the conversation. But the damage was done. Jack had heard the family secret and was now unwittingly part of the keeping of it.
Over the next 6 months Diane introduced so much aggression into their relationship that one day after a particularly sad time Jack said he would like to leave. They had a long talk, Diane hadn’t seen how bad she had become, and asked him to stay and see if they could work it out.
They stayed together, and for the next 6 years worked to try and fix things. One morning Diane was feeling extremely depressed and after Jack left for work somehow managed to work herself into a state where she did a complete personality dump and blanked out all memories of the previous years back to just before the argument with her father. Jack received a call from one of their friends who they had only known for a couple of years saying that they had tried to call Diane but she didn’t seem to know who they were. So Jack went home and found Diane with no idea what had happened and in a state of total confusion, they had only lived in the house for 2 years so she didn’t know where she was, but recognized enough of their older possessions to think she was home.
Diane was referred to a psychiatrist who diagnosed psychogenic amnesia and began treatment.
To Be Continued….