Well that was interesting and does give insight into DID and abuse. But I felt like a was trying too wade through it by the middle of the book.

Gruesome. Like a train wreck, but in 42 parts.

Read as a late teenager, which I suspect was the perfect time.

Fascinating & frustrating...the structure / style seems fictional -- it's more time with the therapist than with Truddi -- and yet the reader is to believe this is Truddi's journal. It leaves me wondering: is the doctor real? One of her Troops? Ghostwriting?

Additionally, there is a bloat in the middle where it seems as if the reader gets the same chapter repeated about six or seven times. I realize therapy is a process, but an editor should have tightened that up.

In the end, MPD/ DID naysayers be darned, an interesting precursor to things like Jane from DOOM PATROL or the film SPLIT.

Endlich ein Buch über dissoziative Identitätsstörung, das von einer betroffenen Person bzw. ihren mehreren Persönlichkeiten geschrieben wurde. Es schockiert, rüttelt auf und zeigt schonungslos, wie die menschliche Psyche durch sexuellen Kindesmissbrauch zerstört werden kann. Es ist keine leichte Lektüre, aber authentischer als wohl jedes andere Buch, das sich diesem Thema widmet.

"Rabbits don’t scream. But if they could, the world would be filled with the sound of their howls."

A heartbreaking strong book, yet one of the most important ones that shows how trauma forms and affects a person from a young age.
Truddi Chase's mind couldn't bear the torture inflicted by her stepfather and the mother who conspired with him and failed her who couldn't even do the simplest thing a mother should do: be a mother. Her mind couldn't handle it to the point where it fractured into multiple identities, each carrying a piece of the trauma. And yet, Truddi Chase's life remained filled with suffering.
This book achieves its goal by making you truly feel how abuse especially incest in a young age can affect a child. It’s not just a minor wound that time will heal; it’s a brutal, lasting horror. Reading the words of the "spirits" within a fragmented mind immerses you in their reality.
The book does not end with a magical solution or a clear answer to "what comes next?" There’s no dramatic moment where Truddi Chase is suddenly "healed." Instead, it leaves you with the realization that the battle never truly ends and that each day is another fight. In most cases they think "the solution" is to be integrated but the "spirits" reject this solution. To them, their existence is not a mistake to be fixed but an identity to be accepted. This challenges the traditional perception of the disorder and makes the book even more powerful and realistic in my opinion.

I first read this book when it was originally out, after seeing Chase on Oprah. I was a teen. A turnkey event in my healing, I was deeply impressed not only by Chase's courage to have survived such a childhood, but to have written about it to help others. That said, the book is very difficult to read, as it's written in a variety of voices and styles. How could it not be? Still, it's hard to read, in that it doesn't flow with the literary smoothness that a finished book should. Yet, for that reason it clearly elucidates the mindspace and challenges in moving through life as a person with severe dissociation and a radically different perception of time/space. I do not advocate that anyone in crisis read this book. It is extremely triggering and not to be approached lightly. A classic re-wounding/denial family dynamic is detailed. Chase holds nothing back, within the parameters of her memory, regarding survivor guilt toward her siblings, confusion and dissociation from sex as an adult, grieving her lost childhood, and the tribulations of therapy as an adult. Her willingness to bare her story is amazing, but doing so from within her varied personalities for a culture that largely still fictionalized such psychological reorganization is extraordinary. Read with care.

Read in 1991, finally reviewed a couple decades later....

This was a true story of Truddi Chase, a victim of serious child abuse which caused split personalities. Many personalities.

I had been fascinated by Sybil years ago, reading that book two or three times. After I saw Truddi Chase on a television show I read the book. Whew, it was a much harder book to read. Sybil was a fascinating book....but after reading When Rabbit Howls, I decided to put away my fascination with multiple personalities.

very disturbing. Read this as a young teen ( maybe 13) and it haunted me for a long time. Took the MPD in stride as I know someone with that, but reading about the abuse was incredibly difficult.

i'm probably a terrible person. i read Sybil long ago and i loved the book (well…."loved" is not an appropriate adjective here, but i'm sure you get my meaning) and i thought the movie was incredible as well. without getting too tmi, i related a little too closely to the experiences Sybil went through. however, i found When Rabbit Howls to smell distinctly fantastical. i had an incredibly hard time believing in descriptions about how the lights would flicker when different personalities would show themselves, or how the tapes the psychiatrist would take during sessions would someone inexplicably become staticky when one of the "troops" were present. i gave the book 2 stars because nevertheless, i feel for an abused child no matter whether the story being told is true or fiction, but my bullshit meter went off so many times while reading this that i just couldn't completely believe. and that's fine, because you really wouldn't want to believe that such things happened to a little girl.

for a more believable account of dissociative identity disorder, check out the graphic novel Cuckoo. it is beautifully illustrated by all of the personailities and the story is touching and harrowing and full of hope and healing.

No matter who you are, this book will affect you and make you think.

From the introduction on, my desire to keep an open mind was at war with skepticism. On the one hand, multiple personality is an unusual topic, to say the least, and even stranger than Sybil, this book was written by the personalities themselves--the "Troops for Truddi Chase" as they call themselves. Naturally one would not expect it to read like any ordinary book. On the other hand, a label that says "NF" with some official-looking numbers after it on the spine does not make the contents necessarily true.

For some reason, though, I didn't want to look up Truddi Chase until after I finished the book. I guess I needed to come to terms with the story on my own, which was difficult, because it really read like a science-fiction novel, just like Dr. Phillips warns in the intro.

Once I had resolved to just read and decide how I felt about it later, it was completely engrossing. My heart went out to Truddi and " the woman" and Elvira, and Lamb Chop, and I adored Twelve and Miss Wonderful, and Mean Joe. I hated the stepfather and although I know in my head that it would be wrong to kill him, I am not positive that I would not have done it, myself. I was also continually impressed by Dr. Phillips' kindness and acceptance and willingness to understand. That is not something you can learn in Psych 101. If he wasn't born with that kind of understanding, he worked and sweated and suffered to earn it. As a story, it held my attention.

However, it is hardly a feel-good book. I an very picky about what I read--language, lewd detail, violence. There was a great deal of that, simply because of the nature of the subject, and I found this difficult to read. Some of the material will always haunt me and make me ill every time I think about it. But I don't regret reading it. These horrible things really did happen, and they happen to other people, too, and while I prefer subjects of a more uplifting nature, I'm not going to hide my face and plug my ears and chant nonsense words when I'm confronted with it. It wasn't gratuitous guck, by any means; _When Rabbit Howls_ is an accusation, a means of closure for Truddi Chase's Troops, and an effort to save other victims from the suffering what they went through. And it is told with a hope and humanity that leaves the reader saddened, but not despairing when they reach the end.
And I did look up Truddi Chase after I finished. She died just last year at the age of 74.

I find it difficult to write a review for this book. I would definitely not describe it as an entertaining read by any means. It is deeply upsetting and unfathomable the abuse inflicted and experienced by a child starting at age 2. What did intrigue me however is the human brain's coping mechanisms to withstand such atrocities through the emergence and existence of multiple personalities.

I am unwell.