Judging "Judging Amy"
Guest Review by Bob King, Firewheel Collective
"Crowded House", Judging Amy Nov. 30, 1999 episode.
I like Judging Amy. It's an excellent show, focusing on character, human interactions and personalities. So when I heard that there would be a case in Judge Amy's court dealing with Multiple Personalities, I expected the usual sensitive attention to issues that I've come to expect.
Instead, we get another case of "Multiple Personality, Threat or Menace."
This was of course one of three separate plots going on. The other two,
dealing with family dynamics and a writing project were marvelous. The case
was just thrown in for sensational value and to allow Judge Amy to have some
angst time.
The multiple was portrayed as an empty-eyed abuse victim of childhood
torture. She was accused of stabbing her home-ec teacher with a pair of
scissors for no apparent reason. Her lawyer claims Diminished Capacity. The
prosecution hammers the Colon Ross theory, that DID is simply one person making
pretend faces at themselves in the mirror.
So in one stroke, they raise all the ethical issues surrounding multiplicity,
and then they never deal with them. The teacher dies of infection from the
wound, the child is charged with murder and the case is taken out of family
court. Not only are the issues not dealt with, the essential statement is made
that there ARE no issues, it's just an unavoidable tragedy, for which someone
has to be ground into the wheels of merciless Justice to pay for.
And we are left with the image of a sobbing, pathetic traumatized multiple
on the screen again.
Now, of course, one might argue that just about anyone in such a situation
would be traumatized, and maybe a bit pathetic. But then again, the same
dramatic effect could have been achieved in any number of ways without picking
on the Bogeyman of the Day.
Meanwhile, we have to live with the increasingly common misconception that
because we ARE multiples, it's perfectly reasonable for people to expect
us to plunge sharp implements into innocent people for no good reason.
In my experience, members of multiple collectives are generally acting with
perfect internal logic when they take actions like that. The only reason it
seems insane - assuming the individual who commits the act isn't actually
insane - is that due to circumstances or background, they are unaware of the
real nature of the situation.
In other cases, people within a multiple collective war against each other.
Those situations are tragic, and they are real, and they would make great drama
and MIGHT provoke some understanding. They also raise some tremendously
fascinating issues. For instance, if "Janet" stabs a teacher with the motive to
get "Tammy" in trouble, can "Tammy" be held responsible at all?
Society feels intuitively that we have to be held.. heh.. collectively
responsible for our actions, and I tend to agree. But at the same time, we
cannot be held responsible in the same way, even if the practical outcome is
the same.
Example. Let us suppose that someone in my collective were psychotic and I
lost control of them. They got out and did a bad, bad thing. I'm responsible,
not for the bad thing, but for losing control. The culprit is responsible for
the bad bad thing, and it's my responsibility to carry out and enforce the
judgment of the court. That may require me to stay in jail for the rest of my
life too, which is unfortunate for me, but it's a consequence of the situation.
On the other hand, due to the nature of the Internal Landscape each
multiple has, the actual bad actor may escape effective punishment entirely.
This is not justice.
They could have had a marvelous time with these very real issues. But
instead they used us for a cheap dramatic effect. Again.
--
Regards,
Bob King
ICQ#: 12880485
You may read a very detailed synopsis of this turkey at
Television Without Pity.
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Was that "police record" or "broken record"?
The William Greene Story
Dateline NBC
July 5, 1999
Well, another boring story of a multiple who hopes to use an insanity defense for an alleged assault in 1994 led off Dateline NBC tonight. If you want to write to Dateline, go to nbc.com and use their form or write to dateline at nbc.com.
William Greene was charged with attacking (not murdering) a prison therapist who had met Greene while he was serving time for sex offenses. She knew he was multiple and continued to work with him after his release. He was convicted at his first trial, in 1995, after the judge didn't allow the jurors to hear anything about MPD/DID or that Greene was multiple.
Note from ChaosTiny@ a ol.com on this: "I just want to say that I personally know the "unnamed therapist" in that story, and i have met Bill's wife, and seen originals of his art, etc.... I know the therapist he is accused of attacking quite well, as she was a group leader of mine until Dateline aired this. I hope the people that reviewed this will see this... I know that Bill only began to use his MPD/DID as a defense after Maryalyce (the therapist one of his alters attacked) encouraged him to. She was not allowed to testify on his behalf. ALL mention of MPD/DID was stricken from the court record; therefore he was not allowed to use it anyway. He has been granted an appeal that should happen soon.. Please, if you can, pass this on to the reviewers... I would like them to know the real story, not the dateline crap version."
That was why there was a retrial, in 2003. This time the judge allowed the MPD/DID defense, and the therapist was allowed to testify. Greene was convicted again and sentenced to life in prison. This Dateline interview took place in 1999 while he was waiting for the retrial.
Good points: The way the group presented itself during the interview. Sam in particular was articulate and well-spoken. He expressed his concern that this was an opportunity to have a case study of someone who was being traumatized by the system, but that the interviewer had focused on the group members' ability to smoothly step forward and back (damn those bizarre convulsive gruesome Hollywood changes!) and on the "bizarre" aspects of multiplicity, repeatedly referring to it as a possible fake and con.
They referred to it as "one of the most unusual forms of psychological illness, especially for a man." Of course, it is neither a psychological illness, nor unusual, nor unusual for a man. There are plenty of male multiples, as Dr. Frank Putnam has abundantly documented.
They then displayed scenes from the movie Sybil, showing her losing it and being hysterical. *yawn*
And again with the shopworn old claim that multiple personality is almost universally caused by child sexual abuse. Even if you believe that multiplicity is caused by or is a response to abuse, it is not necessary for it to be sexual abuse.
They repeated all the old cliches. The withdrawn, introverted "host", the childlike persona, the deep-voiced, aggressive protector, the creative intellectual, yadda yadda yadda. The most hilarious line was "The characters pop up in times of stress to assist the weak host personality." In the Walt Disney world in which these mediamongers want us to live, we are all "characters" that an abandoned child is play-acting. These people are not interested in reality... like that some "hosts" are powerful, competent people. Or that a lot of systems don't even have a host.
This is the picture of multiple personality that the public has. It's like back in the 1950s when all the black people you ever saw on TV were maids. The public aren't supposed to see us living, working, having mature relationships, owning our own businesses, having fun. The more functional we are and the smoother our changes, the more we're likely to be accused of faking the whole thing. Everybody knows that REAL multiples are mental patients, criminals and, above all, victims.
Jay Young & E.J. Chen
1998: William Greene's case and his entire story at Findlaw
Who Am I This Time? An analysis of Bill's case as it pertains to portrayals of multiplicity in popular culture.
2003: Insanity Defense Fails for Attacker Greene got his new trial, was found guilty of kidnapping and indecent liberties.
DNA Evidence Reveals Homicide Case Forensic tests have linked William Greene, already in prison under the 3-strikes law, to the murder of a classmate. In 2005, he was tried and convicted of the murder.
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Oprah, You're Not Helping...
The Oprah Winfrey Show
February 10, 1999
Cameron West, author of "First Person Plural", appeared on Oprah Winfrey for a
publicity interview. Oprah's party line view of multiplicity as "a result of
horrific child abuse" is perhaps understandable given her personal history.
However, there was no need for her production company to pull out those ghastly
file tapes of the highly fictionized "Three Faces of Eve", featuring Joanne
Woodward as a dull-eyed madwoman with her shoes off, a sleazy bar girl,
screaming hysterically etc.
Oprah consistently mispronounced dissociation as "disassociation" which is
something completely different. Cameron West was obviously trying to avoid
losing control on television and came across like a stiff windup toy. Al Gore
has more spontaneity and range of expression and gesture.
As a further contribution to the cause of multiples everywhere, Mr West
displayed his journal which included entries written in blood by a "disturbed
alter" named, of all things, Switch, who once smashed his hand with a
sledgehammer to get Mr West to pay attention to him. Meanwhile, Oprah was doing
the same thing to the audience with the line "severe severe severe abuse before
the age of nine". I resisted counting.
To make matters worse, Oprah anounced that Robin Williams has bought the
rights to the book and will play the lead in the movie. (It would be much
better were Williams to produce or direct and cast Cliff Robertson as Mr West;
he would look fine, and is capable of delivering an appropriately low key
performance. Oprah's jibe at Williams as a "natural multiple" was cute, but
had a sarcastic edge that we didn't appreciate.
Tales of courageous survivorship notwithstanding, the Cameron West interview
did nothing to change people's image of multiplicity as a form of madness
requiring years of grueling therapy in order even to approximate the semblence
of a human being.
Andy Temple
Order -First Person Plural- by Cameron West now through amazon.com
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"You wouldn't like me when I'm angry.."
The Montel Williams Show
March 5, 1999
Hello Seeker, here we go again, and hello especially to those of you who might still believe that pigs live in trees and that daytime talk show hosts have any principles or ethics whatsoever.
Montel Williams has proved to the American public that as far as he is concerned, multiple personality is your basic freak show. He is no different from any of the other tabloid ringmasters, from Sally Jessy Raphael to Jerry Springer and Maury Povich, who believe in bringing multiples on stage simply to put them through their paces. When they're not telling stories of horrific abuse in flat monotones or lifeless whines, they'd better be switching in some gruesome Jekyll and Hyde fashion. Hopefully a vulnerable little child will step forward, or a powerful protective self with an attitude (Geraldo routinely calls these protectors "evil").
Montel callously manipulated the two female-body multiples, while virtually ignoring the male-body one (who professed to be "integrated", thus of no interest). One of the women held a teddy bear, and he snatched it away from her. Sure enough someone else came forward to protest.
He deliberately provoked a defender in the other woman's group by saying nastily "I don't like you!" Naturally, the response was "Well I don't like you either". The young fellow in question looked about to deck Montel (and could easily have done so) and Montel quickly backed away from that crew.
The alleged therapists on the show were there only to confirm that there is such a thing as multiplicity and to point out that it is often overdiagnosed. Neither was the actual therapist for the groups onstage.
The male-body group turned out to be the subject of the popular book "Magic Castle", thus rationalising this latest episode of America's love affair with multiples as freaks.
The point is often made on Usenet and in other forums for multiples, that the groups who appear on these shows have already been "traumatized" enough by the tragic childhood events that left them as damaged, fragmented souls, and that this is why such mind-rot is detrimental. This is a point of view that we do not share.
It makes no difference whether the multiples who are exploited in the media were victims in childhood or not. The mere fact that they are being exploited, manipulated, victimized now, on national television, before millions of viewers, is quite enough. Additionally, those viewers are receiving misinformation, half truths and outright lies about multiplicity, perpetuating a century-old stereotype and keeping healthy, functional groups "in the closet".
SOMEbody HELP the CAPTAIN!!!!!
Andy Temple and Jay Young
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"Up in Smoke"
The Susan Houdelette Story - May 11, 1993 (1993-1995)
I just got off the phone with Dr. David Halpern, who was the psychiatrist guesting on the Maury Povich show the day Ms. Susan Houdelette, her psychologist Dr. Preston Bailey, and her daughter Lorien were interviewed. Unfortunately, he knows no more about this case than I do.
The story of Susan Houdelette briefly screamed across national tabloid headlines in 1993 and then disappeared in a puff of.. well, I'm still trying to figure out what.
It seems that Susan was (and I think still is) the coordinator of a rape crisis center in Miami, and the news director of a radio station there. She was a habitual smoker, had been through numerous programs to quit, and was getting desperate. A co-worker, Morris Guss, offered to teach her self-hypnosis which had helped him quit smoking, and she let him.
According to Susan, Guss believed that Susan's compulsive need to smoke might be caused by an unresolved neurosis or conflict of some kind not in her conscious or immediate awareness. Susan was aware that she had been abused as a child, but Guss wasn't satisfied. He either suggested to Susan, or she actually remembered, or something, that she had multiple personalities as a "result" of the abuse, and that it was one of these other selves, a young girl who called herself Mary-Mary, who was doing the smoking.
Whether or not Susan was actually multiple, Guss' next move was nothing short of criminal. Instead of calling in someone who knew a little something about multiplicity and what can happen when a smoothly running operating system is disturbed, Guss continued to treat Susan himself, virtually playing God in his insistence that she become totally dependent on him and that the younger children in her group call him Daddy. He poked around in their operating system and uncovered a number of selves who revealed aspects of the abuse previously unknown to Susan.
Susan had been completely unaware of these other people, if in fact they were really other people. (I say this because she was so desperate to quit smoking that I think she'd have believed and cooperated with whatever Guss told her.) If there were others, it was one of those systems that ran smoothly behind the scenes while a strong, capable frontrunner, well, frontran. Now, that operating system was completely dismantled, people were coming out at all hours, three of them were heavy smokers, and at least fifteen were self-mutilators. There were 239 people in all, if you can believe John Ankerburg & John Weldon's Encyclopedia of New Age Beliefs, ('ware the Dominionism however) in the chapter entitled "Hypnosis and Hypnotic Regression." Susan became completely non-functional and unable to work, and Guss abruptly terminated therapy -- without referring her to a specialist, without referring her to anybody, and without even having a session to discuss termination. This is when Susan Houdelette filed a civil action requesting that Guss' license be revoked. (That court petition has to be read to be believed.)
Now fully believing that she was multiple, Susan went into therapy with a psychologist named Preston Bailey and at the time of the interview was preparing to sue Guss for a million dollars.
Susan Houdelette, Preston Bailey, daughter Lorien, and Dr. David Halpern were interviewed on May 11, 1993 on the most godawful segment of Maury Povich I have ever seen.
Povich as talk show host is the worst kind of loudmouthed, uncouth boor. He showed absolutely no respect for her as a human being. He was no better than a two-bit carny pitchman. He interrupted her each time she tried to explain something or answer one of his questions, clearly in an attempt to throw her off base and remind the audience that she was seen by co-workers and potential employers as "sick," a "freak", and that this was all "confusing."
Preston Bailey, her psychologist (not to be confused with the famous event designer), was little better. Naturally there was the usual dog and pony show with bringing out different people from her group and putting them through their paces. (Susan later said "I'll pay for that, physically," probably meaning the kind of bonecrushing headache a lot of us are familiar with.) He played openly to the audience and to Maury, explaining the statements of the children as if they were in fact performing animals.
Povich encouraged the audience to be skeptical and to denounce all this as fraud. He pointed out that during one of the breaks, Mary-Mary had seemingly "come out of personality" by standing up. Although the floor manager confirmed that she didn't respond to his request a few minutes later that she resume her seat until he addressed her as Mary, the impression -- as so often in these damn tabloid shows -- was that a change from one self to another can only be evoked by a Trained Professional, and that if they came forward and stepped back on their own, they must needs be fakes. We have yet to figure out why getting out of your seat means that someone else in your group has come up front.
I have to admit that we have never been too sure about this story. Was she in fact multiple? Was she one of those unfortunate people who thinks they have to act multiple in order to please someone with the utter control over their lives that Morris Guss seems to have had? Was it somewhere in between?
Dr. David Halpern was the "debunking" psychiatrist on this show. He is not actually a debunker; he believes multiplicity exists. His view on what multiplicity is and is not most closely resembles Billy Milligan's. He thinks there are real multiples, but also plenty of people who are play-acting for one reason or another. One of his criteria seems to be that there is usually a great deal more amnesia between selves than Susan exhibited (despite the fact she was in therapy, and communication is usually one of the first goals). He referred to her as "a parliament of fragments". He did not seem comfortable with the notion of a cooperative group; he said "these people all know each other". (Note the confirmation that they are people.) I would have been interested in hearing more of this view (old-fashioned as it may be). He did not advocate the FMSF or in any way state that multiple personality itself did not exist. He thinks there are a lot of myths about it.
However, he never really got a chance to explain this side of the story. The show quickly turned into a shouting match between Preston Bailey, Dr. Halpern, and Lorien Houdelette, with Povich as ringmaster.
Lorien's statement that the audience might not recognize Susan as a genuine multiple because "they are not well-read" on this subject was greeted with yipes of derision, apparently because a fifteen-year-old woman cannot tell older adults that they are not well-read, even if they're not. The audience also jeered and laughed when Lorien revealed that if the civil action filed by Susan against Guss were decided in her favor, Susan planned to place the million dollars in a trust fund for her daughters' education. This is hardly a Paris Hilton-like situation, but with Povich encouraging the worst, most cynical views of everything possible, the sneers were unavoidable. (The suit was settled for $105,000, but Houdelette's attorney claimed a $42,000 fee and about $40,000 in costs. He was subsequently reported by his own staff and ended up losing his license. Lorien's sister Andrea died in 2003 when her SUV slid across wet pavement and crashed into a tree on Interstate 75.)
Bailey completely disgraced himself. He didn't seem to have any facts at his disposal; he simply kept repeating that he knew this woman was multiple. He claimed that "many leading psychiatrists" had confirmed the diagnosis. Needless to say, he couldn't name a single one. He also committed a real howler for someone who is supposed to know at least the basics about this subject; he claimed that "Cora" Wilbur had written "The Three Faces of Eve" and had been Chris Costner's doctor. He followed that up with a claim to have worked with Dr. Wilbur.
Dr. Halpern's impatience with Povich's freak show was obvious. He said he'd worked with enough multiples that he could tell Susan was a fake within fifteen minutes. I would have been interested, partly because I myself am not sure she was really multiple. I think he would have explained more about his criteria if Povich and Bailey had given him half a chance. As it was, he repeated "This is not multiple personality, this is play-acting" several times. His one ghastly faux pas was his statement that real multiplicity is more like "Jekyll and Hyde" in that it was typical to find people of very different moral codes within one group (schoolteacher and thug, for instance). Maybe the ones he's seen. Curiously, he also refused to see Susan for any further examination when she volunteered, maybe because of the lawsuit.
When I spoke with Dr. Halpern today, he was very courteous. He said that he knew no more about the case now than he did then, and all he could tell me was that he stood by what he'd said on the show. Preston Bailey, he said, was some kind of psychologist, but he knew no more than that.
People who saw this show would conclude that multiple personality either doesn't exist at all or that most people who claim to be multiple are fakes. Povich should be flushed down the nearest toilet.
Jay Young
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and the Media Read more about our view on media portrayals
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