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change stories midstream without apparent loss of continuity or confidence. He
learned the power of a claim of abuse, and used the threat of it to control his
environment. Damon talked other children out of their candy allotments, cheated at
games and stole clothes from other children’s lockers.
Debbie, age eight, was the eldest of four children. Her mother was a street
prostitute with an expensive drug habit. Debbie was thin, restless and worried. A
self-appointed mother from the age of four, Debbie felt responsible for the care and
feeding of her brother and two sisters. With a history of physical and sexual abuse
by a series of her mother’s boyfriend-pimps, Debbie spent most of her time cleaning
and recleaning their small apartment and worrying about obtaining enough food for
her brothers and sisters. Her mother was often gone for one or two days at a time,
and food supplies were not dependable. On several occasions, Debbie was caught
stealing food from all night grocers. The investigative social worker reported that
Debbie had learned to sell oral sex to the men who loitered behind a neighborhood
bar. She used the money to buy food. For several days after admission to the crisis
home, Debbie was anxious and sleepless. She worried endlessly about the welfare
of her sisters and brother despite reassurances that they were in caring foster
homes. She checked on them as frequently as allowed by phone. In a playroom
therapy session, wielding a rubber knife, she pointed to a scar on her left forearm
and told a story about the time that she cut herself with a kitchen knife and fed her
blood to her infant sister when there wasn’t any food in the house. Debbie kept her
room very tidy, did all her chores and sometimes those of other children. Even after
several months in residence, always-busy Debbie didn’t have even one close
relationship with any of the other children or members of the staff.
Despite the superficial differences, there are subtle and pervasive similarities
among the personality styles of Alicia, Grace, Damon and Debbie. Like overgrown
and tasteless cabbages, pale and four feet across, growing from seeds over-treated
with gibberellin or auxin plant hormones, the inner lives of these prematurely big
little people are relatively empty of stable interpersonal objects. The pantheon of
indwelling companions are either malignant, absent or both. There is a deficiency of
internalized significant others with qualities we more healthy neurotics paste onto

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