On the December 10 episode of The Young and the Restless, Ashley admitted she still didn’t know what caused her personality to splinter the way that it did earlier. But, surely, The Powers That Be aren’t just going to leave us hanging like that, are they? There’s got to be an answer!
The Early Years
When gently questioning her mother about her recovery, Abby (Melissa Ordway) noted that dissociative personality disorders like Ashley’s are usually caused by something horrifically traumatic happening in childhood. (We’ll skip the part where modern-day research is pretty sure DID isn’t a thing.)
Ashley (Eileen Davidson) said she and her therapists had tried to dig deep and see if they could figure out what initially triggered her and how Martin (Christopher Cousins) was able to take advantage of her vulnerability. But they came up empty.
MORE: Find out what else happens next on Y&R?
Seeing With Our Own Eyes
Y&R viewers only met Ashley after she’d graduated from college. We didn’t get to experience her childhood. But you know what we did experience? Her phenomenal relationship with her father, John (Jerry Douglas). (Yes, he turned out to be not her biological dad years later, but they didn’t know that when she was little, and it didn’t matter to Ashley once she was an adult.)
The John and Ashley relationship we didn’t see would make the most common cause of childhood trauma — sexual abuse from a parental figure — impossible. There is no way to say that John’s abuse of Ashley is what caused her split personality and make it fit what viewers know about the two of them.
Other Suspects
It also couldn’t have been Ashley’s brother, Jack (Peter Bergman), and, yes, her mother, Dina (Marla Adams), hung out around some unsavory men, but she left Genoa City when Ashley was a little girl and never came back until she was grown. Our point is, if the show ever does decide to clue us in on what damaged Ashley — and basic story logic says they have to — they better not be pointing the finger at any characters we already know because soap fans have long memories.
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