Essay On Truddi Chase

This autobiography is an account of Truddi Chase’s experiences through her various personalities. We see through the eyes of herself and her multiple personalities what the sexual abuse she received from her stepfather had done to her. Truddi Chase has not been present since the age of two and the sexual abuse from her stepfather continued until the age of sixteen. Truddi lived in short periods asleep, this would be when her person was taken by a succession of another person. Since she first fell “asleep” 92 separate individuals have taken over her body. This group of people are known as the Troop Formation. The Troops come together to write this book throughout their sessions with Truddi’s therapist Dr. Phillips. We connect with Dr. Phillips as we read about the progress made at each therapy session and we watch him struggle to diagnose and treat her. The Troops come together and manage to tell the story of both Truddi’s childhood abuse and her journey through therapy. Truddi herself says she only has but five memories of her entire life. The empty shell of Truddi says, “I don’t believe I have what most people would call emotions or feelings- just an awful fear, a guilt I can’t explain, and a sense
of impending doom.” We learn that most of Truddi’s memories are kept locked up by the Troops. Each person was created to deal with a particular set of tramatic events that occurred throughout her life or are there to serve a given purpose. Many of the people are child, the child are the ones that were created to experience the pain the rest of the Troop cannot handle. The rest of the Troop are mostly adult who acquire various skills and identities.
Mean Joe is the large black man who was created to serve as protector of the more sensitive and vulnerable of the Troop members.
Sister Mary Catherine is a nun that keeps the sexuality of the other member in check. Some of the member are dead because they could not live through a particular bad part of Truddi’s life. Truddi begins to become aware of the Troops as they emerge to write or tell their stories. Once a member of the Troops is done telling the story a person called the Weaver forms a wall so Truddi cannot gain access to the memories of her horrible and damaging past. Dr. Phillips soon realizes the woman who comes in to speak to him is not at all the actual Truddi Chase but only a shell of her person that is taken over by the 92 characters that control
her.
One of Truddi’s members of the Troop had once said about Truddi , “I cherished her individuality, that spark of independence no child should lose to life’s restrictions and parameters.” This quote had a major impact on me because as child we are all outgoing and not afraid to be who we are but as we grow up society strips us of that. Society has told us it is wrong to be who we are unless we are the way society has told what perfection is. Society has stripped a lot of us of our individuality just like how the horrible events that happened throughout Truddi’s life stripped her of her’s.