SOURCE: "True Crimes of Motherhood: Mother-Daughter Incest, Multiple Personality Disorder, and the True Crime Novel," in Feminist Nightmares: Women at Odds, edited by Susan Ostrov Weisser and Jennifer Fleischner, New York University Press, 1994, pp. 142-58.

[In the following essay, Champagne centers on mother-daughter abuse and incest, and the multiple personality disorders that often result. In her discussion, Champagne focuses on two books, Flora Rheta Schreiber's Sybil and Joan Frances Casey's The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality.]

PATIENT: Mother, I am frightened.

CHARCOT: Note the emotional outburst. If we let things go unabated we will soon return to the epileptoid behavior…. (The patient cries again: "Oh! Mother.")

CHARCOT: Again, note these screams. You could say it is a lot of noise over nothing. (Charcot the Clinician)

Feminism has historically relied on the mother-daughter bond as a noncontested category for women's connection and social activism. And yet, with...