Dr. Richard Kluft
describes it as “the identity which developed just after birth and split off
the first new personality in order to help the body survive a severe stress”.
This
personality is not really an alter since she is the original.
She is often not
active. Often described as being asleep or incapacitated in some way because
she couldn’t cope with the trauma.
She usually doesn’t
surface until late in therapy after a lot of the trauma has been dealt with.
It
is a fruitless task to search for the primary or original personality; there
probably never was one. (The Fractured
Mirror see BOOKS, ARTICLES)
Dr.
Wilbur could see that the larger part of what the original Sybil had been –
much of her libido and many of her acquisitions and modes of behavior – had
been relegated to other selves, created in this first dissociation. What
remained as Sybil was a depleted personality, whose initial fear of her mother
had expanded to include not only maternal figures but everybody. Driven by
fear, this depleted personality had resolved never again to take the risk of
involving herself with human beings. A mere waking self, drained of feeling, it
was a self bereft, but it was also a self protected by powerful built-in
defenses against the very forces that had divided her. Not wanting to go home
from the hospital, the original child did not go home. She sent two internal
defenders as her deputies to represent her. (Sybil see BOOKS, ARTICLES)
What
was also clear was that the fourteen alternating selves … would have to be
integrated before the original child could be restored. (Sybil see BOOKS, ARTICLES)
Truddi
Chase – the ‘first-born’ has not been present since she was two years old. She
lived in a small recess, ‘asleep,’ and her place was taken by a succession of
persons. (When Rabbit Howls see BOOKS, ARTICLES)
