First Person Plural

[pleiades-rising.livejournal.com]

I just finished reading "First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple" by Dr. Cameron West, after reading the review on it over at astraeasweb.net... I thought it would be interesting to see if I could spot any discrepancies or anything in the book that would even hint at Dr. West being a fraud.

I couldn't find any, and to me he seems to not be making it up! So I'd just like to know... what about First Person Plural makes some people think he's a fraud? Just curious.

Comments

[caitlin.livejournal.com]

I'm not as sure about him "making it up", but that's because I know from experience that each Multiple's "perception" of the thing is unique and different.

However, he did strike me as a bit "off", but then who am I to say one way or the other...

I read the book... once... and ended up selling it because I didn't find it all that interesting.

But that's me.

C.

[happyberserk.livejournal.com]

i really liked the book, and from what i've heard people think it's made up because of the whole switching mess thing...

[pilgrimchild.livejournal.com]

I really like that book. I dont know why anyone would think Dr West is a fraud. He's simply describing his own experiences as a multiple. Maybe some people think there is a certain way, and only 1 way, to be a true multiple. Which just isn't true. There are as many ways of living in this world as there are people in it. Every system works in its own way, I suppose.

[forever-alone.livejournal.com]

I don't really know why I think he's a fraud, it's just a hunch I got as I read the book (the same feeling I got when reading Dave Pelzer's "A Child Called It", but we won't go into that.)

[idianshire.livejournal.com]

I know for me it wasn't so much the book but the interviews he/they did that made me wonder. Some of it I put down to differences in styles, and maybe a little, umm...postive spin when he and his wife were talking. There were things they said that seemed different from what was written in the book. Also I found his whole switching routine very over dramatised, even more than Sybil. And although that could just be how it is for his system I wonder how that would work real life.

[amusedinsanity.livejournal.com]

arr, now I have to read the book again, it's been a couple of years - I remember enjoying it, soaking it up like sponge even, because I was so desparately in need of something, someone, to explain how I felt, to show me something similar to what I was going through. I didn't think he was a fraud at the time, as is said, each multiple has different experiences - who is to say how the extreme ability of the mind might differ in indeviduals? I remember being iffy about things here and there (like how so many of his 'alters' had odd disorders of their own, in our personal experience, while odd disorders occur, they don't seem as prevelent as he showed), but overall putting it down to being his personal experience.

- Ghost for the Shadowalkers

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

I didn't think he was a fraud, though a lot of it seemed to be rather overdramatised, probably so that the book would attract more attention (although this is the case with just about all 'case studies' about multiples). I thought his wife was a shrewish bitch who seriously needed a clue phone, and I got rather tired of all the descriptions of his affluent lifestyle (I know this could be after the intent of saying that plurals can be successful, but Truddi Chase managed to make clear in their book that they were very successful, without all the brand name-dropping).

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Jay: We have yet to post our full review of First Person Plural. We have some incoherent notes which were written at a very distracting time about two years ago. What irked us about the book was the constant reiteration of brand names ("Gee, did I drive the BMW this morning or the silver Ferrari with torsion bar suspension and imported Venturi carburators?"), the lame attempts at a sort of Mickey Spillane narrative ("I'd just as soon take a dive off the Sears Tower into a brassiere full of tapioca pudding... and how do I make my voice do this?"), and his Chase-like word-for-word accounts of his wife's conversations with other people in situations where he, West, wasn't there. And there's more, but I've got to open the notebook and tackle the damn review sometime.

Andy: The reasons we have heard people give for suspecting him of faking it are as follows: "He got to know his other people too quickly after being diagnosed", and "He's got a psychology degree; so it's obvious that he faked it in order to understand more of what it was like to see it from the view of potential clients."

Personally, I think it's nonsense. The rate at which persons in a multiple household come to know one another must vary with the temperaments and willingness to communicate of the people involved. And in view of the fact that Dr. Cru Gordon (his real name) himself says that he only went for the degree in order to understand multiplicity and more about his own system, why not take him at his word?

I noticed that he obtained his degree not from a mainstream-reputable APA-approved institution, but from the Association for Humanistic Psychology. An AHP doctor is what you want if you feel you need therapy following a "spiritual emergency", that is, something along the lines of visions and voices, cosmic consciousness, past life memories, uncontrollable telepathy, &c., &c. AHP doctors are coming from approximately the same perspective as voyager_system in that they believe there is something to all these experiences and that they are not merely delusions.

That said, the AHP is much more loosely structured, does not present members with the APA's stifling requirements, and it is much easier to obtain a degree through an AHP-approved school.

[iamshadow.livejournal.com]

I didn't feel he was genuine. His writing style irritated me (going on about his wife's figure in the first chapter wasn't a good start), and it didn't make sense where he was writing about times when he a) wasn't there b) was insensible...etc etc...

I never actually got further than about fifty pages in. I put it down and read something else. I think it was Becoming Anna by Anna J. Michener. Not a multiplicity book, but a very good account of a family using institutionalisation of a child as an abusive tool. I ended up buying that one, and found it a much more interesting read than Cameron West's book!

But I don't know for certain or anything that he is a fraud. And I wouldn't claim to know that for certain, just based on the fact that I don't like his writing style. He came across as false and melodramatic. That was my reason for putting down his book. A while after I read about the 'fraud' rumours, and my reaction was 'it wouldn't suprise me'.

[qilora.livejournal.com]

"He came across as false and melodramatic."

hell.. maybe he was just a really bad author! ;-)

should have got himself a ghostwriter.

Dok.

[pthalo]

Dave Pelzer went on to write a book called "Help Yourself." I couldn't even finish the damn thing. It was all "I survived my horrible problems which are a lot worse than what you ever experienced so just pick yourself up by the bootstraps and decide to be happy." except long winded and not really phrased that way.

[withfangs.livejournal.com]

Judging from the one sentence up above, it sounds as though that's the case.

/art major
/used to artists and their doublespeak

[marrke.livejournal.com]

It really felt kind of fake when we read it. That was probably more because of it's third person ominscient style, though, not particularly used to reading that in non-fiction.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

I really couldn't judge fake from a book, but I didn't find anything glaringly unbelievable. I haven't seen any of his interviews.

I found his economic position was what was least easy to relate to, and also a lot of the book seemed geared to make his wife look good (I wondered if she edited the parts with herself in them; at the very least he took on her point of view for at least two chapters).

What I did like about the book was that it didn't end in integration or in fact really any kind of resolution other than "so that's where we are." I found that to be a bit less mythological than the 'happy integration' stories. I also liked how there wasn't one central therapist that was The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread.

[elfgoyle.livejournal.com]

***Andy: The reasons we have heard people give for suspecting him of faking it are as follows: "He got to know his other people too quickly after being diagnosed", and "He's got a psychology degree; so it's obvious that he faked it in order to understand more of what it was like to see it from the view of potential clients."***

Okay one of these days I will figure out how to quote.
I also dissagree with that mentality that because he has a psych degree he is faking it. I have a BSc. minor in Psychology and I was like this BEFORE I took psych classes. Hell I did my Abnormal papaer on DID. And once again I was like this BEFORE I wrote that paper. While my reason's for taking the courses were not originaly to findout why I was like this it actually helped me deal with the trauma based splits. My reason was that I originaly needed a few lower psychology classes to take the animal behaviour course and found out I was good at Psych and it bumped up my GPA and hence wound up with a minor in psych to accompany my Zoology major. So It may just be on general principle that I object to that arguement.
Second there is not "time limit to getting to know the others" in my experience the quicker we got to know someone new the easier and less disrupted the life of the system was. Getting to know them quicker ment less classes we were enroled in and didn't know etc.

For us the book was a little too close for comfort at times especialy with describing the switching although ours has gotten smoother over time, and we could see a lot of parallels between people in his system and people in ours. I haven't seen any interviews he/they did but there was nothing in the book to make me think he was faking it. Maybe a little stylized and the dialoge between his wife and other people may not have been exact but his side, his views seemed legit to me.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Sure, same way as not all multiplicity originates in extreme abilities of the mind, either. Even a thing like, was he multiple because he was abused or because he was born that way, could make a difference.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

We've got tapes of at least one of his interviews. I know we've seen a couple. He has a wooden, dead-level presenting style. He's like a machine. His voice is also very low-key, unmodulated and uninflected. He seems much more like someone on heavy medication or who's had a certain kind of brain surgery.

Iris said her immediate impression was that he did that on purpose in order to maintain who was at the front -- he was afraid if he loosened in the slightest someone else might come up without his permission. Then when he did switch for the cameras, the next person had largely the same presentation as the first one.

After reading the book, with its descriptions of his wife's reactions and attitude toward his plurality, some of us wondered if his rigidity was something he developed for his wife's sake. She was present, almost hanging over him, in every interview. (Andy: So was the child, which I felt was a mistake.)

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Yeah, we really almost could hear Nick Danger doing the narrative.

"There was something fishy about the butler. I think he was a Pisces. Probably working for scale."

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

"Advice" like that reeks distinctly to me of a certain river in Egypt, quite frankly.

[pthalo]

exactly. it's like he gloats about being California's worst child abuse case. He sure mentions it enough. My CPS case worker told my mother that mine was the worst case she'd seen personally, but I was devestated by that fact. It was the last thing I wanted to hear. I was much happier believing that what happened to me was normal. Minimising, etc. So maybe I had a name (not It) and I never broke a bone or had to steal my food. So what. Abuse is abuse. It's not a fucking pissing contest where you get points for how much shit you survived and how screwed up you end up as a result. And I get pissed off when people start going "well of course I've never been through anything as bad as you've been through, but..." your abuse hurt you. mine hurt me. someone died and that hurt another person. someone else was bullied in school. hurt is hurt. full stop.

he preaches about forgiveness and how he was able to forgive his mother so blahblah

he gives advice like:

settle your problems as promptly and as thoroughly as you are able.
let go of a past you cannot change.
in the midst of fighting life's battles, relax!

people pay to be told this shit?

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

I will never, ever buy that you need to forgive people who abused you in order to move on or to 'heal.' No way. Nothing doing. You can come to get a better picture of their life circumstances and their emotional state and perhaps an idea of why they behaved as they did, but that isn't the same as forgiving them. If you can, great. Sometimes focusing on anger and outrage can actually be healthy, in that it reminds you that what happened was not your fault and that you didn't deserve it.

I've seen a lot of people get hung up on 'my abuse was worse than yours' as a form of dicksizing. I agree with you definitely-- abuse is abuse; if it hurt you, it hurt you. There used to be a *lot* of abuse one-upmanship that went on in multiple communities with a 'therapy' focus-- everyone always trying to top each other; no matter what happened to you, someone else always had to prove they had been through worse.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, some of us think of the Troops, however briefly, every time we go into a 7-11.