Multiple Personalities

The first note I wrote down for this episode was, "Maybe I've pointed this out before, but Oprah has some seriously big boobs."

And then this shit got serious, and I stopped making jokes.

When I first saw the promo for this episode a few days ago, I scoffed and declared that I thought multiple personalities were a load of crap. That might have been a little harsh, and it certainly wasn't based on any actual information I possess.

I'm not going to say that an episode of Oprah is enough education to receive on this topic, but I guess there is something to be said for being able to see the human side of a much-maligned disorder. This wasn't The United States of Tara on my television today. And thank god, because I hate that show.

The point is, it wasn't exactly a laughing matter when Oprah re-introduced us to Truddi Chase, who first appeared on the show way back in 1990. She had 92 separate personalities, caused by the sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her stepfather starting when she was two years old.

Fucked. Up.

In the clip Oprah showed from 1990, she completely broke down while talking to Truddi. Apparently it had something to do with Oprah finally acknowledging her own history of abuse. You don't see Oprah lose it like that these days. I mean, she shed some tears in this episode, but not like she did back in 1990.

Truddi Chase died earlier this year, at the age of 75. Her daughter was the second guest on today's episode, but I didn't think she had all that much to say, so I'm glossing over her.

The bulk of the episode was devoted to Kim Noble, a 49-year old English woman who has 20 personalities. And a 13-year old daughter. "Patricia" is the dominant personality, though others have been dominant at different times in the past. Kim is sometimes a deeply religious woman named Salome, sometimes a doting mother named Bonny, sometimes a gay man (go figure) named Ken, and many more.

At one point, they did an interview (a taped piece) with Kim in which she switched between personalities. I guess what I don't understand is how she's able to control it for the cameras, but not when it matters in real life.

The truly tragic part of this story is Kim's daughter, Aimee. Poor girl has to deal with her mother constantly changing, and more than one of the personalities doesn't realize that Aimee is "the body's" daughter. In that taped piece, we see one of the personalities refer to Aimee as "a friend's daughter," and Aimee breaks down. This is too tough on that girl, but I don't know what the solution is. It would likely be worse for her to be raised in a government-run home somewhere.

This thing turned into a horror movie when the personality named Ria Pratt surfaced. Pratt is a 12-year old girl, and is apparently the only one who possesses the memories of what happened to Kim as a child. A psychologist has encouraged all the personalities to draw to express themselves, so an Oprah producer showed the Pratt personality some of these drawings. Some of them are blurred out, though you can see that they appear to show an adult doing something awful to a child.

The pictures were downright freaky, and my skin crawled when the producer asked Pratt what the pictures showed, and Pratt put her finger to her lips and said, "Shh."

Seriously. Can't you just see that in a trailer for some horror movie?

There was a lot of talk about how getting these people to tell their stories helps encourage others who are victims of sexual abuse. More importantly, I hope it encourages people to educate children as much as possible on the subject, so that we can lessen the frequency of the abuse in the first place.

When the show ended, Katie turned to me and said, "This show was too serious for me to make any funny comments. I'm not going to be able to give you any material for this post."

Shows what she knows.