Famous Cases Of Dissociative Identity Disorder
Juanita Maxwell's Alter Committed Murder
Juanita Maxwell has no memory of beating 73-year-old Inez Kelly to death with a lamp in 1979. Wanda Weston, however, remembers the incident with glee. She admitted as much during the murder trial. The catch: Juanita and Wanda happen to occupy the same person.
Maxwell had been working as a maid at the hotel where Kelly was staying. According to Wanda, Kelly had borrowed her pen, but refused to give it back. Wanda went into Kelly's room, and when the older woman asked her to leave, killed her.
After Maxwell's alter was coaxed out during her trial, the judge ruled that she was not guilty due to insanity. Maxwell was committed to a mental institution.
Herschel Walker Has A Personality That Excels At Football
- Photo:
- Braydon Williams
- U.S. Air Force
- Public Domain
Former NFL running back Herschel Walker wrote about his struggle managing multiple personalities in his book, Breaking Free. As a child, Walker was overweight and had a speech impediment. He thinks that he first began developing DID as a coping mechanism. The highly motivated "warrior" was one of Walker's alters who drove his physical fitness and football ability. Another alter, "the hero," was his public face. For years, he managed the disorder without really understanding what it was. He doesn't even remember receiving the Heisman Trophy.
After Walker retired from football, his different personalities started to become jumbled. He fell into depression, at one point playing Russian Roulette with himself. Walker's wife, Cindy Grossman, left him after an episode where he pointed a gun at her head. It was at this point that Walker sought psychiatric help and was diagnosed with DID.
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The Real "Three Faces Of Eve"
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- The 3 Faces of Eve
- Fawcett Popular Library
The book and 1957 film The Three Faces of Eve were based on the real case of Chris Costner Sizemore. Sizemore, who died in 2016, actually had 22 distinct personalities. In the book and film, she was portrayed as having only three: Eve White, Eve Black, and Jane.
In reality, Jane's emergence was not the end of Sizemore's suffering. Jane, like Eve White and Eve Black, died, being replaced by ever more personalities. There was the Banana Split Girl, who would only eat said dessert, the Spoon Lady, who collected spoons, and many more. The personalities also ranged in skill sets; some could drive, and others couldn't.
It wasn't until four years of therapy with her eighth doctor, Tony Tsitos, that Sizemore was able to start integrating her personalities. She once said she had a dream where "the personalities were in a kind of Greek arena. They all joined hands and then walked behind a screen and then everything disappeared. They have never come back."
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Karen Overhill
Is it possible to cure DID? In the case of the patient known as Karen Overhill, the answer was yes. When she was 29 years old, Overhill was referred to Dr. Richard Baer for treatment for her depression. Throughout their sessions, she began revealing how she had been abused by both her father and her grandfather. Dr. Baer treated Overhill for over 20 years as he slowly discovered the truth: she had 17 different personalities.
By using hypnosis and visualization, Dr. Baer was able to help Overhill reintegrate her personalities into one functioning whole. He wrote about her fascinating case in Switching Time: A Doctor's Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman With 17 Personalities. Overhill contributed some of her letters, journal entries, and art to the book.
Kim Noble Has Four Switches Per Day
Imagine keeping over 100 different personalities straight. That is the life of Kim Noble, told in the autobiographical book All Of Me.
Noble was born in 1960 to two unhappily married factory workers in England. Her childcare was outsourced to friends and family, and at some point between the age of one and three she suffered from extreme and repeated abuse. It was at this point that her psyche splintered, completely compartmentalizing the trauma.
Her condition went undiagnosed through adolescence, even when she was put on suicide watch in a psychiatric hospital after frequent overdosing. In her 20s, a sudden switch resulted in her plowing a van into a line of parked cars. This resulted in another mental health examination, and the diagnosis of schizophrenia.
After being released from the mental hospital, Noble somehow ended up caught up with a pedophile ring. When she reported it to the police, she started receiving threats of retaliation. A man threw acid in her face, someone lit her bed on fire with her in it, and while she escaped, her house was completely gutted. She has no recollection of the incident.
In 1995, Noble was finally diagnosed with DID. Her dominant personality is named Patricia, and under her care, Noble has become an artist and lives with her daughter.
Shirley Mason Made Up Her DID
- Photo:
- Lorimar Productions/NBC
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public Domain
One of the most famous cases of DID ever recorded is likely a lie, according to a new book, Sybil Exposed, by Debbie Nathan. The book and miniseries Sybil - starring Sally Fields - follows the life of a woman who has DID. It was supposedly a true story, but it seems that the real-life Sybil, Shirley Mason, faked her condition.
Mason initially sought psychiatric attention because she was emotionally unstable. She became attached to her physician, Dr. Connie Wilbur, who had a fascination with multiple personality disorder (as DID used to be called). To get more attention, Mason came in one day and starting claiming to be a different person, talking in a childish voice and changing her mannerisms.
On one occasion, Mason tried to admit that she was faking it, but her confession was dismissed as part of her psychosis. Interestingly, therapist Herbert Spiegel, who saw Mason from time to time, also said that she was probably malingering (faking it) in 1997.
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Louis Vivet's Alter Couldn't Walk
Louis Vivet was one of the most extensively studied cases of DID in the early days of psychiatry. Vivet lived in the latter part of the 19th century. His youth was marked by abuse and neglect, and at eight years old, he was sent to a house of correction.
By the age of 17, Vivet was a functioning and intelligent man. While working in the field one day, a viper wound itself around his arm. This event frightened him so much that he lost consciousness and began having violent convulsions that evening. These attacks returned several times, eventually resulting in the paralysis of his legs.
Vivet was sent to Bonneval Asylum in 1880. On April 23, he suffered a severe bout of epileptic fits, losing consciousness at times. When he recovered about 50 hours later, he had regained his ability to use his legs. His mannerisms completely changed as well. He was then released as healthy. He eventually wound up in another asylum, where he continued to have epileptic fits, and alternated between being able to walk and not being able to.
Doctors studied him extensively, performing experiments and hypnosis to try and draw out the different personalities he manifested. In total, Vivet manifested at least three and up to ten different personality states.
Truddi Chase Had 92 Personalities
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When Truddi Chase was just two years old, she moved out to the country with her mother and stepfather. At this time, she was sexually abused by her stepfather, and the trauma ultimately caused her DID.
For years, Chase was able to suppress her memories by holding them in alternate personalities that rarely came to the surface. Each of her 92 personalties served different roles and held different memories. One personality named Black Catherine held most of her rage. Another personality, Rabbit, held the pain.
Chase wrote a book about her life, When Rabbit Howls. Her life was also turned into a made-for-TV movie called The Voices Within: The Lives of Truddi Chase starring Shelly Long, and Chase was interviewed by Oprah as well.
The Strange Case Of Mary Reynolds
- Photo:
- Wellcome Images
- Wikimedia Commons
- CC BY 4.0
Mary Reynolds was born in 1785 and moved from England to Pennsylvania as a child. She had a solemn and melancholy demeanor and spent a lot of time in religious devotion.
At the age of 19, she became blind and deaf for six weeks. Three months after that, she suddenly forgot how to read and write, though she eventually taught herself again. Then, Reynolds's demeanor changed, and was described as "buoyant, witty, fond of company and a lover of nature." After five months, she changed back to her original self, and alternated between the two types for 16 years. When Reynolds reached her mid-30s, the second personality took over once again, and she remained "buoyant and witty" until her death at age 61.
Reynolds was studied by Dr. Samuel Latham Mitchel, who published an account of her "double consciousness" in the 19th century.
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Eberhardt Gmelin's Diagnosis Of "Exchanged Personality"
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The first well-documented case of what would later become known as DID was studied by Eberhardt Gmelin in 1791. The case involved a 20-year-old woman living in Stuttgart, Germany. She was divided into two personalities, the "French Woman" and the "German Woman." The French Woman spoke perfect French, behaved like a French aristocrat, and knew about the German Woman.
The German Woman, in contrast, had no idea of the French Woman's existence, and spoke German with a French accent.
Robert Oxnam Didn't Know He Had DID
In the 1980s, the scholar Robert Oxnam suffered from alcoholism, bulimia, and blackouts, and his marriage was failing. In 1990, during one routine session with his psychiatrist, Dr. Jeffery Smith, Oxnam's entire demeanor changed. Suddenly, it was not Oxnam in front of Dr. Smith, but an angry little boy named Tommy.
As a young boy, Oxnam suffered sexual and physical abuse and from that he developed DID. He has identified 11 distinct personalities, including Tommy; Bobby, a troublemaker who enjoys rollerblading; The Witch, a frightening presence; and Baby, who holds the memories of Oxnam's childhood trauma. Oxnam wrote a book about his experience called A Fractured Mind.
Ansel Bourne Had Dissociative Fugue
- Photo:
- Fremont Rider
- Wikimedia Commons
- Public Domain
One day in the mid-19th century, a man named A.J. Brown arrived in Norristown, PA, and opened a small shop. Around two months later, Brown woke up and had no idea where he was. It turns out that Brown was really one Ansel Bourne, a preacher from Rhode Island.
Bourne had dissociative fugue, a condition similar to DID. It's a condition in which a person loses all memory of his identity and personal past, but essentially goes on functioning in an automatic state. Dissociative fugue can last a few months, or a lifetime.
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