Tess has Multiple-Personality Disorder. Struggling to meet the demands of her professional life while desperately trying to keep her personal life private, she becomes introverted and friendless. She feels her alters "switching" and the unraveling of her mental being, viscerally. Her tenuous hope for recovery is as fragile as her emotions. "Shattering" is her constant fear. Marlene writes with great facility. Her writing is intelligent; her prose is poetic. In my practice, I've treated patients with Multiple-Personality Disorder. It would be unprofessional of me to give a definitive diagnosis without interviewing Tess and the "alters" However, there is no doubt that Tess has dissociative episodes. To survive the horrific traumas of childhood, she would have had to develop an escape mechanism, and dissociating was; probably, the only way. Dr. David Yeung MBBS, FRCPC.