Meg And Sonya, One Too Many

Meg And Sonya, One Too Many.

Meg was in her late-twenties and had been married just over a year. Janice, her friend, accompanied her to her appointment. Her slim, quiet and withdrawn demeanour belied her driven motivation once her mind was made up. Janice was doing most of the initial talking, while Meg was watching and assessing me like a hawk. Janice was Meg’s neighbour in their growing-up years, and together had attended the same neighbourhood elementary and high schools. Meg was brought up in a fairly dysfunctional home and was a latch key child. Her father was an alcoholic seaman. Whenever he was home, after an overseas stint, the household would erupt with screams, fights and things being thrown around, often with the inevitable arrival of the police at the scene, an hour later. Meg had had her fair share of her father’s physical assaults. Her mother worked two jobs to provide for the family of five children; during the day, as an office cleaner, and at night, a hostess in a nightclub. Meg was the oldest of her siblings, and therefore, had witnessed most of the atrocities at home. When her father was away, her mother would regularly arrive home in the early hours of the morning with different men. When she was too drunk to notice, some of them would creep into Meg’s bedroom to abuse her. Fearing that if she had resisted, they may go for her younger sisters, she quietly acquiesced, putting up with their unsolicited advances to the point of sleeping with some of them, who were old enough to be her grandfather.

Midway through Janice’s storytelling, Meg chipped in and continued her own account, and it took a rather disconcerting turn. Meg went into a no-holds-barred journey of her sexual escapades prior to her marriage and her current involvements. She enumerated her numerous amorous adventures, as she called them, from her high school days into her early adulthood, including her numerous infidelities while dating her husband-to-be, and her current affairs. Her bold confession, naming all her ‘conquests’ by name, and when and where they took place, caught both Janice and I by surprise. Meg seemed to be enjoying sharing all her intimate information with a wry smile on her face. The outcome of one of her adventures was discovered by her husband, and he had initiated divorce proceeding the preceding week. She wanted to save her marriage, but seemed unable to overcome her addictive exploits.

At our second session, Meg remained quiet during the initial 15 minutes, while Janice began to fill me in on what had happened during the week between Meg and her husband. Midway through our conversation, Meg interrupted us, and launched into another session of her ‘adventures’ – filling-in the blanks she had inadvertently missed out at our initial appointment. This gave me an opportunity to test a psychological hypothesis that I had been developing. As she was talking animatedly, I stopped her, “Can I speak with Meg?”

“Who is Meg?” ‘Meg’ shot back rather loudly.

“May I know who I am speaking with?” I asked. By this time Janice was freaking out – her eyes indicated her shock.

“I am Sonya,” ‘Meg’ answered back.

“Thank you Sonya for coming out, and it has been really nice talking with you. Can you help me locate Meg? I wish to speak with her again?” I replied, as politely as I could.

“Wait a while, I will ask around to see who knows Meg,” Sonya answered. So, there are possibly more than one other dissociated part.

In less than a minute, Meg was speaking with me, her eyes closed. With the level of Meg’s earlier traumatic experiences when she was growing up, I had suspected that there may be an element of some dissociated identity disorder.