Some psychotherapists have a variety of patients with a variety of issues. Candace Orcutt '57, who specializes in patients suffering from psychological trauma and multiple personalities, sometimes finds that variety in a single case. "It's a real dilemma when you work with multiples because you have to work with all of the different personae," she said, recalling one patient whom she counseled seven days a week in order to deal with all the parts of the personality that had split apart in the wake of severe childhood trauma. "It's very time consuming."

Orcutt might have been tempted to major in psychology at Colby, but the department was just taking shape when she was a student so she didn't have the choice, she says. As it is, she has never regretted majoring in English and studying with professors Richard Harrier and Mark Benbow. "It was a wonderful foundation," she said. "I'm glad I didn't major in psychology, but I wish I could have minored in it."

She took a job at Oxford University Press in New York and, among other duties, wrote copy for the back covers of paperback versions of books, including editions by Edmund Wilson and Conrad Aiken. She even earned Wilson's rare approbation for her efforts, she says. In the ferment of the '60s, however, she decided she didn't want to stay in the ivory tower of publishing, and she hit the streets of East Bronx as a social worker. She has master's degrees in English literature and in social work from Columbia University.

She moved from welfare casework to hospital-based social work and earned a Ph.D. at International University in St. Kitts. As a clinical psychotherapist she has worked with a range of patients‹from career professionals to a New Jersey hit man‹and learned that severe personality disorders and schizophrenia afflict people of all classes indiscriminately.

Associated with the Masterson Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy for more than 17 years, Orcutt recently was cited by institute founder James F. Masterson, M.D., for her contributions, including treatment, teaching, supervision, articles and lectures that "helped shape the Masterson Institute."

Orcutt says she is winding down her career as a clinician, currently works part time, and plans to devote her full energies to writing beginning later this year. On the professional side she is working on a book about her specialty in psychic trauma and its effects as manifested in abused patients and those with Multiple Personality Disorder. "It's a real how-to guide," targeted toward clinicians, she said.

On the creative side, "I've always wanted to return to fiction," she said. "This is where I got to be an English major in the first place." She has novels as well as short stories in mind. They will draw from family reminiscences as well as from the colorful people she has worked with during 30 years in the mental health professions‹perhaps even "the kid who used to ride his bicycle down the hallway of the Payne Whitney Clinic, insisting it was a pony. When the receptionist spoke to him about it he said, 'Lady, you're hallucinating. This is a horse.'"

Between "acter-outers" like that and her multiple-personality cases, "There's never a dull moment," she said.

—Stephen Collins '74