Commentaries on US Tara Episodes

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S1 Episode 11: Snow

Speaking to her video diary, Tara reminisces, “We had a priest. He used to give us gumballs in the confessional at St. Anne’s. If you were really penitent and Father Roger could feel sorrow in your heart, he’d hit you with some Hail Marys and put a little gumball in the slot.”  Tara looks sad and wistful. She realizes that she has wounded her son very deeply. She has no Father Roger to help her deal with T’s betrayal of Marshall (see Episode 10), or to offer her compassionate forgiveness. In the meantime, Marshall has begun to take Xanax, an anti-anxiety medication, and wanders around the house in his pajamas. Max insists that Marshall goes to school. When Tara walks up and asks him what is wrong, Marshall dismissively says “Nothing!” and walks away. Tara says, “Everybody’s mad at me. To tell the truth, I’d even be mad at me right now, too.” Tara stands in the shower fully dressed, staring blankly, her clothes soiled by the fire. We understand that what she wishes to cleanse herself of has nothing to do with the fire. She feels she is filthy, and is profoundly ashamed of herself.

Afterwards, Tara overhears Kate and Marshall talking in the bathroom. Marshall says, “She should be put away.” Kate tells him, “Shut your gob!” Max walks in and tries to calm Marshall, but Marshall’s rage will not be silenced. “She’s insane.” Kate is hesitant, but says maybe Marshall is right. She asks, “Do we need a plan or something? Maybe she should go back on her meds.” Max says, “I know it’s messed up right now, but we’re not gonna bail on her like Dr. Ocean and all those other useless doctors we’ve dealt with. She made a commitment to stay off meds until she got better.” Marshall firmly replies that she is not getting better, and quotes Chief Brody from the movie Jaws: “We need a bigger boat.” Tara finally comes in and just stands there, staring at Marshall with an expression of unutterable sadness on her face. Marshall walks away. 

Apprehensive but determined, Tara checks herself in to an inpatient unit that specializes in the short-term treatment of dissociative disorders. She meets her therapist, Dr. Holden, purportedly an expert in DID. He interviews Tara and Max and reviews her treatment history. We learn that Tara was hospitalized in 1989 after driving into the back of an ice cream truck. Tara says that for a long time, none of her doctors could figure out what was wrong with her. Until her DID was diagnosed, she says, “We were just drowning.” This is the first time in 11 episodes that it is made apparent that Tara has been having serious problems for a long time. We appreciate how hard Max and Tara have worked to convince themselves that their approach to Tara’s illness has more rhyme and reason than has been apparent to the viewer.

Foreshadowing that he is not as skilled as we would wish him to be, Dr. Holden promptly mispronounces the word dissociation. “Disassociation,” he says, “is so tough. I commend you for making your way here.” Max asks what Tara can expect.  Dr. Holden explains, “Look, it’s pretty straightforward. You can’t get better until you know what happened to you. My program provides a two-week protected environment where patients can really dig in. Once we start breaking down walls between you and your alters, you’ll be able to get out of survival mode and really start to live.” He tells her she will have individual therapy, group therapy, and long term recovery planning. Dr. Holden then shocks Max by saying that he (Max) will have to participate in group and couples therapy to deal with his own issues.

We next see Tara and Max in group therapy with other couples. An annoyingly chipper woman begins joking about how she copes with her husband Marty, a combat veteran who started losing time and having fugue episodes after he came home from Iraq. The dissociative patients in the group share poignant experiences about not being able to account for time, not knowing what they did earlier in the day, not being able to remember their lives or their childhood, and so on. Tara describes how she “got really good at hiding it.” She says that her trauma happened at 16, “so I didn’t start switching until after that. But, whenever I would come back from a transition, I knew exactly how to cover and get by.” She tells the group that in the month at boarding school before summer, she wore her bathing suit every day under her clothes. She says she just sat in her dorm window, waiting for summer to come. “The next thing I remember…snow. Everywhere. I was at my parents and six months had gone by in an instant.  And it was just…white.” Asked about her reaction to the snow, Tara says, “It was not what I expected, but it was… beautiful.”
                                                                                                               
Marshall takes yet more Xanax at the water fountain in the school hall. Jason comes up to him and profusely apologizes. Marshall immediately says “It’s not your fault. My mom’s a total freak show. She’s actually at a hospital for the criminally insane now.” Jason said, “I feel really bad about what happened. I even talked to my dad about it. Listen, I think you are the most awesome kid in the school. Remember me when you win your Oscar, OK?” Earnest, determined, and ashamed, Jason walks away.

Tara has an individual session with Dr. Holden. She asks, “So… you really think you can get them to come out?” He replies that “some patients find it easier with hypnosis or sodium pentothal, but you’ve been experiencing co-consciousness which indicates permeability within your system.” Tara reflexively says, “I’ve never experienced co-consciousness with Gimmee.” Dr. Holden encourages her. “Look, you can do this, Tara. Once we can access the trauma by probing your alters…even if it’s hard to watch, you’ll finally know.” Tara says, “OK,” and Dr. Holden turns on a camera to videotape her session.

Meanwhile Kate goes to the corporate headquarters of Barnabeez to file a sexual harassment complaint against her boss, Gene. The woman who interviews Kate is stunningly unsympathetic. She tells Kate, “The food industry is a hotbed of sexual improprieties, it’s basically institutionalized. That’s why people work at restaurants. It’s not uncommon for young waitresses to develop feelings for their managers. It’s OK if you blew him. Did you blow him?” In this vignette, the viewer observes the might of a large corporation that is determined to conceal rather than address its employees’ indiscretions in order to protect its public image, something that seems to blindside Kate, who has never experienced it before.

In her session with Dr. Holden, Tara is acutely frustrated: “What is wrong with me? I was able to be co-conscious before I came here. It’s been four days! Why doesn’t hypnosis work?” Dr. Holden explains that therapy is a process and that “the alters are not ready.” “They just met me,” he says. Tara insists that she likes him and trusts him. Tara has yet to grasp the ongoing impact of her alters on her life and therapy, even when they are not in executive control.

Meanwhile, Max is having an even tougher time in group therapy. He oscillates between barely-contained impatience and contempt on the one hand, and continually talking about Tara’s problems on the other hand. One woman patient takes it upon herself to confront Max about Dr. Holden’s rules, asking, “Aren’t we supposed to keep our sharing focused on ourselves?” To which the group therapist says, “That’s right.” The group member then says, “Yeah, like what’s really going on deep down inside of you.”  The viewer is unclear whether this woman is trying to be helpful, buttering up the therapist, or putting Max down. Max folds his arms, looking frustrated and disgusted, and says, “I don’t know how that could help.” Like the intimate other of most DID patients, he sees the entire problem within Tara. Max is usually oblivious, as he is in group, to his own role in maintaining and at times reinforcing Tara’s DID.

At lunch in the cafeteria with Tara, Max describes group therapy as “a lot of useless yammering.” A patient, Jenny, stops at their table and starts a conversation. Jenny says that she is “integrated.” When asked how she accomplished that, she says, it took “a lot of time and hard work…like Tara is doing.” The exchange is puzzling to the viewer. Should we believe Jenny? Is Tara actually doing a lot of hard work? Or is Tara working hard while some other alters are blocking her and Dr. Holden’s efforts?

Kate finds Marshall taking more Xanax; she confronts him. “What is this, Anna Nicole Smith time? …this is really dumb.” Marshall frowns and says, “It makes everything better.” It is painful to see this sensitive, thoughtful young man reduced to stifling the anguish caused by his mother’s outrageous behavior with sedatives. Kate tells him that if he takes a pill whenever things are going wrong that he won’t know when things are really going wrong and won’t be able to fix them. Marshall angrily tells her that he knows exactly what is wrong. With focused intensity, Kate asks, “Do you even get what Mom’s alters do? They do stuff for Mom. She was protecting you!…He’s going to marry a girl. And he’s never going to love you the way that you love him.…So T came out to try to put a stop to it!”  The viewer may note that Kate and Marshall have reversed their usual roles. Here Kate is attempting to look beneath the surface of her mother’s behavior and understand what drives her, while Marshall, usually his mother’s staunchest defender, has completely withdrawn from his usual empathic stance.

Meanwhile, Max calls Charmaine to check on things at home. Max has slept in his truck to avoid the other patients and spouses who just want to talk and share. Charmaine tells him that he has a lot of issues and doesn’t want to deal with them because he’s afraid of falling apart if he does.  We are left unclear about why Max sleeps in his truck instead of going to a hotel room.

Dr. Holden, unable to access Tara’s alters and/or her hidden traumas with conversational therapy or hypnosis, resorts to a drug-facilitated interview, using sodium amytal. Sodium amytal is a sedative medication, administered intravenously. It induces a “twilight” state in which people may be more suggestible and less resistant to questions. When Tara is “under,” Dr. Holden asks, “I’m wondering if anybody inside Tara has a memory of a night when something happened with Tara and a boy named Tripp?” This question provokes visible signs of internal distress. Buck suddenly comes out and asks, “What’s in it for me?”

Later, Dr. Holden plays darts with Buck on the unit. Dr. Holden says that since Buck doesn’t want to have therapy in the office, “I’ll just hang with you.” Buck replies, “You can hang all you want, but nobody wants to talk to you. That’s why I’m here.” Buck then makes an extremely crude and hostile sexual comment to Dr. Holden to further distance him. 

Buck continues to be loud and aggressive on the unit. Max and Dr. Holden are observing through a window. Max asks, “How are we doing?” and Dr. Holden claims, “This kind of regression tells me I’m on the right track.”  Max impatiently disagrees. “You cost $6,000 a week; I can see this shit for free in my living room.” Dr. Holden asks Max to try and trust the program. The viewer may be confused by this exchange. From Dr. Holden’s perspective, he has broken through to an alter, and considers this to be progress. From Max’s perspective, Buck’s emergence represents “the same old same old,” and he is desperate to see something he can recognize as progress.

Back in group therapy, the woman who had confronted Max about talking about Tara rather than himself has collapsed into despair. “They say that God never gives you more than you can handle. That’s not true. Marty’s never getting better. And I can’t eff-ing handle it.” Max gives her a stiff and awkward pat on the back. No matter how different Max feels from this woman, and despite his previously unflagging optimism about Tara,  his often profound denial, and his dismissive stance toward the hospital’s program for significant others, his behavior now suggests that Max is beginning to slide toward this woman’s pessimistic point of view. This terrifies and demoralizes him.

In couples therapy, Buck tells a whopper about sliding his Harley under an 18-wheeler and popping out the other side without a scratch. Max loses it, pointing out that Buck stole this story from a Burt Reynolds movie (Convoy). “What the f*** are we doing here?” Buck angrily tells Dr. Holden that Max is impossible to communicate with. This pushes Max over the edge. “You want to know what’s f***ing hard, Tara? Waking up in the middle of the night, not knowing where you are. Yeah, that’s hard. Trying to piece together some kind of normal life. But down inside, you’re losing all hope that the sucker’s ever going to end. This is not what I had in mind for my life. This is a waste of time. I’m getting out of here.” He walks out. Buck angrily pursues Max into the hall, calling him a “pussy” for walking away. Max turns back. “Hey, Buck, do me a favor. If you see Tara, tell her I’m through. I’m not doing this anymore.” Max leaves; the feelings he had been trying to deny and stifle finally having broken through.

When Tara finally has come back out, she walks in to a party on the unit. Jenny, the integrated DID patient, wistfully tells Tara that she hopes her integration sticks. “I’ve been integrated before and it turns out some of the alters were just hiding.” Tara looks a bit shocked, but tries to reassure Jenny. Tara notices a photo of two small girls and asks who they are. Jenny says that they are her children, that they must be 10 and 12 now, and that she hasn’t seen them in a while. Her ex has full custody. Tara looks stricken, probably realizing that this could happen to her.

Tara gets in line at the unit telephone. For the first time, Tara imitates Buck in order to intimidate the person who is using the phone (who promptly ends his call). Tara calls Max, who is driving [home?], and says, “I want to find Tripp Johanssen. If my alters won’t tell me what happened, then I want to find him myself.” Max says he will help her and that he misses her. Tara looks out the window and sees snow coming down. “I miss you, too,” she says softly.  She watches the snow fall outside in wonder and hope. 
                                                    
Commentary:
Early in this episode, the Gregsons revisit the issue of medications for Tara. Kate and Marshall wonder if medications are necessary, and Max reminds them that
Tara is determined to stay off medication until she recovers. What would trained mental health professionals have to say about this issue?
Mental health professionals would respect Tara’s determination and her appreciation that, on medication, her alters felt controlled and were less accessible, but most would consider this brave experiment to be a failure (and, indeed, conceptually flawed from the outset). Medications do not control dissociation. Sometimes alters believe that they are controlled by medication, but this is a matter of expectation rather than a genuine effect of the medication itself.  Medications diminish the discomforts that are likely to promote dissociation, so while patients are on medication, their threshold for dissociating and switching alters may be higher. In view of the escalating frequency and seriousness of inappropriate alter behavior that has characterized Tara over the course of this series, it would be preferable to protect both Tara and her family from the impact of her alters’ out-of-control behaviors. Moreover, Dr. Ocean’s ongoing tolerance of these misadventures is yet another indicator of her less than optimal treatment of Tara. Similarly, Max and Tara’s ongoing tolerance of the alters’ problematic behaviors is another sign of their often questionable judgment as parents when it comes to Tara’s DID. That is, Max and Tara have been prioritizing their own profoundly deep and intense relationship over the well-being of their children.

Dr. Holden tells Tara that she cannot get better until she gets to know her alters and learns what happened to her. Is it true that people with DID don’t get better unless they remember and learn about their alters? This is actually a complicated question. The answer is yes and no. Yes, individuals with DID should have communication with their alters. But that communication must embrace negotiation and an inner cooperation that ensures smooth functioning in daily life. Dr. Holden is either (1) oversimplifying a very complicated situation in order to define therapeutic goals for Tara, (2) speaking only of the mission of this hospital stay, or (3) he is making a serious error (if he in fact assumes that just knowing about alters and traumatic memories is curative in itself). The viewer has no way of knowing which is the case. Dr. Holden is a minor character and there is no time for, or dramatic value in, clarifying his treatment philosophy in depth. We need to remember that a person develops alters and the other phenomena of DID for one fundamental reason: their early traumatic experiences were overwhelming and those experiences simply could not be accepted as ongoing aspects of their identities and memories. Persons with DID often can only get to know their alters and learn about their traumatic memories when they have sufficient strength and coping skills to tolerate, and ultimately accept, what has happened to them. Most individuals with DID continue to be extremely avoidant of their alters and the memories and feelings that the alters hold. As we have seen, Tara has had considerable difficulty just coping with the stresses of her daily life. This indicates that she is likely to have difficulty coping with the additional stress of delving into the traumatic events that made her dissociation necessary in the first place.

During this brief, two-week hospitalization, Dr. Holden must consider the risks and benefits associated with either (a) leaving Tara’s other alters and trauma history unexplored or (b) going forward with exploration and counting on the structure and support of the hospital setting and program (and the increased frequency of psychotherapy appointments) to safeguard Tara’s potential destabilization during that process.

On the one hand, Tara wants to know her alters. On the other hand, she does not. The fact that Tara has so little awareness of her alters (and continues to experience them as “not me”) shows that she is very avoidant of them. When such avoidance is challenged, persons with DID will usually increase their efforts to fortify their avoidance. Hence, Tara responds to Dr. Holden’s therapy sessions and hypnosis by being unable to remember her trauma and by her alters’ refusing to come out. When a DID person’s avoidance is confronted too strongly (i.e., before the individual is ready to face what is still being avoided), he or she is at risk for decompensating in some significant way. For example, Tara lost control and T behaved terribly toward Marshall after Tara had been overwhelmed by Dr. Ocean’s abrupt and intolerable termination. This brought about Tara’s psychiatric hospitalization.
                          
Once in the hospital, the apparent therapeutic objective initially is to access the alters and hidden memories that drive Tara’s dysfunctional behaviors. From this perspective, the attempts to use hypnosis and drug-facilitated interviews are reasonable steps to consider, but neither Tara nor the other alters are willing or able to cooperate with these objectives. When Buck emerges under amytal, he sneers at Dr. Holden, “Nobody wants to talk to you. That’s why I’m here.” Dr. Holden’s subsequent assertion to Max, that Tara’s regression “tells me I’m on the right track,” is difficult to understand. It suggests that Dr. Holden has not acknowledged Tara’s ongoing demonstrations that she and her alters are too defended to be accessed and worked with in the format of a two-week hospital stay. We have to wonder if Jenny’s series of integrations that fell apart reflect a treatment approach on Dr. Holden’s part that too greatly prioritizes uncovering over the need to strengthen and support his patients until they are capable of confronting traumatic material. Hospital treatment is usually only a very small aspect of an ongoing psychotherapy. However, the viewer knows that Tara does not have a strong ongoing outpatient psychotherapy to which she can return. In fact, it is not clear whether Tara has any treatment to which to return. The viewer may assume that Dr. Ocean meant to refer Tara to Dr. Holden, but Dr. Holden runs a unit and cannot be assumed to have a large outpatient practice. Even if he did, Tara would have a 400 mile commute to see him! We wonder how safe and/or feasible such an arrangement would be for an out-of-control DID patient.

A typical DID expert who is experienced with short-term hospital care would have been more likely to focus initially on the patient’s immediate crises and their consequences; namely, (1) Tara’s rejection by Dr. Ocean; (2) her need to become reestablished in a competent therapy; (3) the need to establish communication and cooperation among her alters; and (4) Tara and her alters’ need for expert help in coming to grips with the effect of their actions on her son, Marshall.  In all likelihood, a focus on Marshall would have brought the alters to the surface quite rapidly because they are all quite dedicated to him (however differently they may express their commitment and concern).

Max struggles with treatment for himself. He is also not pleased with Tara’s treatment. What is going on? Previous episodes have suggested that Max is too focused on Tara’s problems. Now we can see that Max is every bit as avoidant of his own problems as is Tara of her problems. In fact, Max may be even more avoidant than Tara. She, at least, is attempting to deal with her problems. We do not know what Max is avoiding, but it is clear that he is very defensive and not able to get help for himself. He has difficulty accepting that he cannot fix Tara’s problems. He pins his hopes on Dr. Holden’s intensive interventions, in the hope that everything will rapidly improve. Max is irritated with Dr. Holden when things do not progress in the first 4 days of treatment, yet we learn that Tara has had problems for decades. Max has pursued the notion that confronting Tara’s past would prove curative; hence his seeking out Tara’s prep school roommate and Tripp. Max’s notion of recovery is not realistic, and might prove to be traumatizing. However, in so doing he is following up Tara’s implicit theory of why she is mentally ill. Thus, Max’s efforts to dig up Tara’s past trauma are not as completely his own as Tara tends to protest.

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S1 Episode 12: Miracle

In the final episode of Season 1, much is resolved (at least for the moment) and loving reconnection is restored in the Gregson family. Tara and Max meet with Dr. Holden to prepare for meeting with Tripp Johanssen the following day. The affectionate banter, eye contact, and touch between Tara and Max makes clear that they are very much back together, the angry/hurt rupture in their relationship healed. Dr. Holden checks to see whether Tara genuinely wants to meet Tripp Johanssen. He yields to her preference about how to proceed despite his own misgivings about the proposed meeting. [Note: Confronting one’s alleged abuser is a very controversial and often unsettling experience, especially at a stage of treatment when the DID (or any other) patient remains quite unstable. See below.] When Tara reconfirms her commitment to go ahead, Dr. Holden says that he will do everything he can to facilitate the meeting and to keep her safe. After some additional cautions from Dr. Holden, Tara says that she is ready and that she is “not looking for a miracle.” Naively and hopefully she says, “Not knowing has got to be worse than anything that could happen in that room, right?” This wistful hope will not survive the encounter with Mr. Johanssen.

At home, Marshall and Kate are eating “miracle fruit” (which makes everything they eat subsequently taste sweet). We must wonder if this is a bittersweet metaphor for how the Gregson family, especially Tara and Max, try to sugar-coat and minimize the negative in their approach to Tara’s DID and dysfunction. With her cell phone in her hands, Charmaine asks if they have any messages for Tara. Kate says, “Yeah, tell her I said hi.” Marshall says, “Nope,” and receives a dark stare from Kate: “You’re never going to talk to Mom?”

Kate meets with two executives at the Barnabeez corporate headquarters. She is sure that they will give her money to “compensate” for her experiences with her boss at work. To her shock, they advise her to drop her case. Kate tries to stand up to them, but they turn her words against her and steamroll her. 

At home afterwards, Kate starts to tell Marshall about her experience with the Barnabeez executives. As they talk, Marshall receives a text message that informs him that Jason is out with a girl at Starbucks.  Marshall is thunderstruck. “Just like what you said would happen… You were right about everything—that Mom was just trying to protect me.” Kate gently replies, “Why are you telling me?” We know that Kate’s being right about Jason does not prove she has infallible insight. In fact, for all we know, her ideas about Jason may not have been on target – perhaps Jason’s talk with his father, who is unlikely to have been as permissive and non-judgmental as Max, has abruptly redirected his expression of his sexual behavior. However, both children desperately want to restore their relationship with their mother, and Marshall seizes upon Kate’s words. They are what he wants to hear. In fact, they are what he needs to hear.

In the hall at the hospital, Max tries to help Tara with her strong pre-meeting jitters. She sinks down against the wall and sits on her haunches. Max tells her he will get Dr. Holden. A moment later, she hears a voice saying, “Mom?” She looks up and finds a smiling Marshall standing in front of her. He kids with her about the hospital not providing enough chairs, and says she should write a letter of complaint. He offers to help her, saying that he is “an excellent scathing letter writer.” Tara is almost transformed as she melts with relief and love. Marshall pulls her to her feet, hugs her, and says, “I forgive you, Mom…and I love you.”

Tripp and Tara, accompanied by their spouses, are introduced to each other by Dr. Holden.  The two women facilitate the initial ice-breaking.  Tara says that she doesn’t remember what happened. Both she and Tripp admit to having been very drunk. Subdued and looking guilty, Tripp expresses what appears to be genuine willingness to “tell you anything I can remember.”

In the hall, Marshall and Charmaine chat. She asks which of her two recent boyfriends, Nick and Neil, he likes best. Charmaine smiles as she receives a text message from Neil, telling her to “hang in there.” Marshall defends Tara’s alter, Alice, to Charmaine. Charmaine is amazed at how “normal” Marshall is despite the craziness in his family.

Back at the Gregson home, Kate walks downstairs and finds her former boss, Gene, sitting in her living room, drinking a Sierra Mist that he has taken from the Gregson’s refrigerator. Kate is ‘creeped out’ and angry. Gene tells her that he has been fired, but “it was worth it. I’d lose anything to be with you. I’m in love with you, Kitty… You’re the one.” “No I’m not,” says Kate. Unfazed, Gene says, “I knew you only went to HR [Human Resources] to get my attention… So what’s next for us? Do we tell everyone?” Or run away together?” Faced with Kate’s growing confusion, Gene says, “Being apart is not an option, am I right? I know I can’t live without you.” Kate goes out to the kitchen “to get a glass of water.” She grabs her mother’s car keys and drives off in her mother’s car. This interaction finally reveals that Gene is not just creepy, he is a full-blown stalker (whose obsession with Kate verges on erotomania—the delusion that Kate secretly loves him).

Tara and Tripp talk awkwardly about what happened between them when they were in prep school. Max gets quite angry at Tripp and walks out. Tara follows Max into the hall, calms him down, and brings him back into the room. Tripp is remorseful. He admits that he “took advantage” of Tara. With sincerity, he says, “If I could go back, it sure as hell wouldn’t have happened.” As they are ending their meeting, Tripp says goodbye to Tara, calling her “T.” Tara, Max, and Dr. Holden are silenced by this; they all stare at Tripp. Was this the name Tara had gone by when she was with Tripp? The implications of this possibility start to sink in. Suddenly, T comes out and boasts about her sexual encounters with both Tripp and his buddy, Mike. Buck comes out and says, “This is BS. T is just trying to act all cool. If all the girls and Tara had let me out that night, I would have pulled your balls out your butt hole.” T immediately comes back out and continues to be obnoxious to Tripp and his wife. She taunts Tripp, accusing Tripp and Mike of having had a homosexual encounter after their sex with T. Shocked and flustered, the Johanssens make for the nearest exit.

After the Johanssens leave, Dr. Holden explains to Max that Tara was “already a multiple” before that night with Tripp. He points out that what happened at boarding school didn’t make Tara split, “It was a retraumatization.” T tries to disrupt this discussion by grabbing the photo of Dr. Holden’s wife, from her desk, pronouncing her “hot,” and saying, “I’m not a lezzo, but I’d suck her box!”  Max tells her, “Enough!” and Alice comes out and apologizes for T’s behavior. Alice refuses to let T come out back out (T apparently has more to say). Alice does her best to block Dr. Holden from talking to Tara, who he hopes may be listening from inside (i.e., co-consciousness).  Dr. Holden tells Alice that Tara is strong. “No, she isn’t. She’s weak and she needs me,” retorts Alice. “That you would dare to suggest that you know her better than I do, is just…” Her head drops and Tara comes back out, and softly says, “I want to go home.” When Tara and Max rejoin Marshall and Charmaine in the waiting area, Marshall, with, visibly concerned, asks,  “How’d it go?” Tara says, “It was a lot of things.”

Discharged from the hospital, Tara returns home. In the truck on the way home, Tara and Marshall are deep asleep, Marshall with his head on Mom’s shoulder, and Tara with her head leaning against Marshall’s head. Back home, their first family dinner at home is awkward and difficult. Max finally says, “What are we doing?  …Get your coats.” He takes the family bowling, an event that, as Max probably intended, turns out to a perfectly normal family outing. They tease one another, boast, are silly, and have a great time together. Tara notes with wonder that the kids’ bowling has improved. Max tells her, “They learned from Buck.” Tara waits a bit and then says, “You know, it could get worse before it gets better.”  Apparently untroubled, Max says, “I know.’ They both seem to be lost in thought as the camera pulls back to reveal Alice, T, and Buck gathered around them, with Gimmee crouched behind them, between the chairs.

Commentary:Tara meets with the man who raped her. This seems risky. How common is this in the treatment of persons with DID? It is risky, especially early in the recovery process. And, despite’s Tara’s and Max’s enthusiasm for this encounter, and their high hopes that this meeting will advance Tara’s treatment, most experts would have discouraged the meeting with Tripp. Such meetings (with a person who has abused the DID patient) have at least two major sources of risk: the behavior of the abuser and the emotional unpreparedness of the DID patient to handle the encounter. There is no guarantee that the abuser will be contrite and admit what he or she did. Tripp Johanssen’s ready cooperation is uncommon. In many (most?) cases, the abuser is uncooperative, denies having mistreated the patient, and implicitly or explicitly calls the patient a crazy liar. Needless to say, most DID patients do very poorly when that happens; acute suicidality and hospitalization are not unlikely consequences. In short, because of the risk of denial, uncooperativeness, and name-calling, it is inadvisable for DID patients to hazard such a meeting until they are very far along in their recovery process. Otherwise, they are simply not able to deal with a denying and unrepentant abuser. Another source of risk is that even if the abuser is well-motivated and cooperative, and the patient well-prepared, there is often a layer of depersonalization that has remained as a persistent shield against experiencing the full impact and implication of accepting the mistreatment as real, a layer which may be abruptly shattered, flooding the patient with pain and painful realizations.

The previous 11 episodes have consistently stated that Tara’s DID originated at age 16 when she was raped. Now, it appears that Tara was “already a multiple” at the time of that rape. What is going on? Several things. To begin with, DID-savvy viewers have known all along that DID originates in early childhood—not at age 16. Accordingly, these savvy viewers have been waiting for an explanation of the supposed age 16 onset of Tara’s DID. When Tripp innocently referred to Tara as “T,” he let two cats out of the bag. Not only do Tara, Dr. Holden, and Max now know that Tara was “already a multiple” at the time of her rape, but, more importantly, Tara’s alters and their protection and defensive deception of Tara have been “outed.” That is, Tara now realizes that T, Buck and Alice knew all along that Tara’s DID did not start at age 16; they have deliberately hidden this secret from Tara. They let Tara falsely believe that it all began at age 16 at boarding school. The disclosure of this long-protected secret is a major disruption to the system as a whole. The disclosure is immediately followed by rapid switches among T, Buck, and Alice. Despite their different public reactions to the disclosure, none of them are happy about this powerful revelation. For the first time (in the viewer’s, and perhaps in Tara’s experience), things have gotten beyond the alters’ control. T tries to distract Dr. Holden and Alice tries to block Dr. Holden’s (and Max’s) access to Tara. Both are unsuccessful. Tara, her family, and Dr. Holden now know that the answer to Tara’s DID lies further in the past. Tara’s alters had worked hard to keep that fact hidden. 

Tara is discharged to go home with her family. Is this because Tara made therapeutic progress in her meeting with her rapist?
We can approach this question two ways, first from the perspective of experts in the treatment of DID and second from the perspective of the development of the drama of the Gregson family within “The United States of Tara.”

Expert perspective: While the premise in the question is accepted by the Gregsons, and perhaps by Dr. Holden, most experts in the treatment of DID would not support such a course of action. Tara has just gone through a major confrontation with an alleged rapist. Her personality system may still be in disequilibrium. One cannot rule out the risk of some form of psychological aftershock. The main goals of this hospitalization from the perspective of a dissociative disorders specialist (see commentary on Episode 11) remain unresolved. The focus on the meeting with Tripp might be seen by experts as a diversion from the more important central issues of the treatment. As the episode ends, Tara has not been established in a new therapy, there is no reason to think T’s disruptiveness has been reduced, and although there are some nascent hints of increased awareness and connection among the alters, it is preliminary and has not been harnessed for therapeutic purposes. From this perspective, the press to hit a psychotherapeutic home run by confronting Tripp and implicitly eradicating the reason for being of Tara’s DID demonstrates that wishful fantasies, perhaps subscribed to by both the Gregsons and Dr. Holden, have hijacked the course of Tara’s hospital stay and diverted it from attaining its most important objectives.

Dramatic perspective: From the perspective of the drama of “Tara,” perhaps, in part the premise in the question is valid, but the major reasons that Tara was ready for a pass may have been that two major crises had been resolved. First, Max and Tara had fought and had a major disruption of their relationship; Max had erupted, saying that he had “had it’” with Tara and her alters. He had left the hospital, and headed for home. Nevertheless, Tara and Max managed to resolve this crisis on their own. The re-established strength of their bond is very visible during their meeting with Dr. Holden prior to the session with the Johanssens. Second, and of at least equal importance, was the resolution of the crisis that had precipitated Tara’s hospitalization—T’s sexual approach to Jason (which devastated Marshall and severely ruptured his relationship with his mother). Marshall’s ability to resolve his hurt and sense of betrayal in favor of forgiveness and love was transformative for Tara (and for the rest of the Gregson family—perhaps even including Charmaine). We can understand Marshall’s forgiveness as more a statement of his yearning to reestablish his close and loving relationship with his mother, despite the preferred rationale of Kate’s interpretation. Our commentary for Episode 11 (above) expressed our disquiet about Dr. Holden’s focus on uncovering the past (and his concomitant foregoing of crisis management). By the end of Episode 11, Tara was reeling from the impact of 3 crises: (1) being terminated by Dr. Ocean, (2) Marshall’s rage at his mother for what T did, and (3) the rupture in the relationship between Tara and Max. By the time Tara met with the Johannsens, the Gregsons had resolved the two family-based crises on their own. These, we think, are the therapeutic achievements that may have rendered Tara ready for discharge home. However, even this more sympathetic reading leaves Tara without meaningful treatment, lurching toward the further crises and complications that will both shock, educate, and entertain us in season 2 of “The United States of Tara.”

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