Nightmare: Uncovering the Strange 56 Personalities of Nancy Lynn Gooch

by Lucy Freeman, Nancy Gooch, Emily Peterson

Chronicles the story of Nancy Gooch, whose split personalities were triggered by vicious sexual abuse, and the sympathetic teacher, Emily Peterson, who lifted the veil from each of the destructive personalities

Genres: Nonfiction

Hardcover

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

Lucy Greenbaum Freeman was a reporter and an author. Her early coverage of psychiatry and mental health for The New York Times led to wider reporting on the subject. Ms. Freeman persuaded editors to allow coverage of the growth of psychiatry and the preservation of Sigmund Freud's private papers.

She graduated from Vermont's Bennington College with a B.A. in 1938 and was hired by The New York Times in 1940.

Her nonfiction books, ranging from detailed studies of Freud to those exploring sources of anger and anxiety, helped familiarize a popular audience with what had long been a hush-hush practice.

Ms. Freeman's first book, Fight Against Fears, recounted her own experience as a psychoanalysis patient who struggled to overcome her shy, whispery voice and social fears. Published in 1951, the book was in print for 47 years.

Her work earned the Writers Award from the American Psychiatric Association in 1976 and the National Media Award from the Chicago Institute of Psychoanalysis in 1986. Ms. Freeman also wrote 77 other books, including mystery novels and memoirs.

Reviews

[Iamshadow · Rating 3 out of 5]

Finished this one today. I've no idea where we got it from or how long it was on our shelf. I liked it pretty well. A solid three of five stars, maybe even three and a half. Don't be misled by the number on the cover - only fifteen system members are even mentioned, and only half dozen or so are discussed in any detail, so if you want a good breakdown of what it's like being part of or working with a high number system, this doesn't explore that at all. This was published in 1987, the same year as When Rabbit Howls, but unlike that one, this is a story told at a remove by a professional writer who focusses on Nancy&'s teacher-cum-therapist's perspective, rather than Nancy&'s, though a number of letters and notes by various system members are included, and Nancy&'s name and photograph are on the dust jacket. In writing style, it reminded me a lot of mental health and special ed memoirs of the seventies I've read before, and the relationship between therapist and patient extends from the early seventies through to publication date, so that stylistic tone of the era makes sense. Of notable interest, this is a book about a child system, which aren't written about much, and it also contains one of the earliest descriptions I've read of an age-slider that isn't linked to hypnotic therapeutic regression. I've no idea where Nancy& Gooch is now, or even if they're still alive. Google couldn't help me on that front. I think their therapist did the best she could, while admitting she didn't know what was best. The reparenting approach was very popular for a while in all kinds of therapy, and it seemed to be what a lot of Nancy&'s system members needed. I think things could have gone better if she'd focussed equally on establishing system communication, but that's something that's more done now than it was then, and Emily was a school teacher with a therapist degree, not a specialist in multiple systems. Read if you like unusual books about multiplicity, old popular psych books, biographical accounts of mental illness and trauma, accounts of recovery from drugs and self harm behaviours, child abuse memoirs.

[Kaleigh Garcia · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a wild ride. Not sure I could read it again, I'd probably have nightmares.

[Kirsten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nightmare is a really interesting story, and the different personalities that are told during this book are insane to think about. The book has great detail and is interesting in how a person there can be many personalities. I enjoyed how the author used the personalities to help tell the story and to help Nancy become an independent person. I thought the ending of the book was the best part because it told what caused the main personality to come out. The book tells about Nancy's life and the traumatic experiences she had and how she faced them. I thought that the author also did a good job with making the book make sense and is easy to understand.

[Fishface · Rating 1 out of 5]

Too boring to finish. Imagine, an English teacher wrote this! She appears to have no sense of narrative or dramatic tension -- the story of a horribly-abused child who's got 57 personalities by age 16 ought to be easy to render dramatically, but it doesn't happen here. On top of that, throughout the book the author connects sentences with commas instead of semicolons.