A Mind of My Own:A Mind of My Own: The Woman Who Was Known as "Eve" Tells the Story of Her Triumph Over Multiple Personality Disorder

by Chris Costner Sizemore

Her story, told in the movie The Three Faces of Eve and the author's 1976 autobiography, I'm Eve, has fascinated millions. Here is Chris' personal story of the integration of her several personalities into the woman she is today.

Genres: Nonfiction, Psychology, Biography, Mental Health, Memoir, Mental Illness, Autobiography

First published September 1, 1989

About the author

Christine Costner Sizemore was a medical figure, author, and mental health advocate. She was the subject of the book The 3 Faces Of Eve , which was made into a successful motion picture in 1957. Joanne Woodward received an Academy Award for her portrayal of 'Eve'. She is believed to be the first documented case of Multiple Personality Disorder during the 20th Century.

Also wrote under the pseudonym Evelyn Lancaster.

Reviews

[Katie Lynn · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some great insights for me in this book, but for some reason it was really just okay.

This is ridiculous that this is even an insight for me, but maybe more people can relate than I think if it was also an awakening for the author:
"When the headache was over I found that Tiny {author's sister} was on her knees and holding me in her arms. She said she heard me saying, "Please, God," and that she had prayed for God to give me whatever it was that I was asking for, or to let me be whatever I wanted to be.
This makes me realize that the people I love, and who love me, want me to be happy. They WILL accept whatever makes me happiest or gives me peace.
... I dare not disappoint my family and friends because they so loved me; even when I did not love myself."
from Rollo May:
"Creativity itself requires limits, for the creative act arises out of the struggle of human beings with, and against, that which limits the.... [And] consciousness itself is born out of the awareness of these limits....
It is not by accident that the Hebrew myth that marks the beginning of human consciousness, Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, is portrayed in the context of a rebellion. Consciousness is born in the struggle against a limit, called there a prohibition. Going beyond that limit set by Yahweh is then punished by the acquiring of other limits which operate inwardly in the human being--anxiety, the feeling of alienation and guilt. But valuable qualities also come out of this experience of rebellion--the sense of responsibility and ultimately the possibility, born out of loneliness, of human love. Confronting limits for the human personality actually turns out to be expansive. Limiting and expanding thus go together."
Does that mean obeying limitations actually makes you freer... you don't say! Interesting to see it puzzled out secularly.
"Money is no substitute for love, and only love can dispel guilt.
... It would take me a while to accept the cold reality that no matter how guilty I felt, I could not make up for the sacrifices that others had made for me. Giving things had become habitual.... As if to say in the giving, Who I am is too uncertain for me to give of myself, so please accept this object; its value is a known quantity, which is something I may never be."
Yikes! Anyone else see that within themselves? And I've never felt good at giving things either, perhaps because I've always been keenly aware of this truth. It's fascinating to me how much this woman struggling to recover from multiplicity has struggled with the same things we all do. The lessons are the same for each of us to learn, we just have different paths that lead us to that light. And, thank goodness for that! Last thing I need is to be able to compare myself to someone struggling with the exact same thing that I am. :)
This is amazing to contemplate:
From Julian Jaynes in her book about the bicameral mind: "Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of. How simple that is to say, how difficult to appreciate!..."
And, that, folks, is what eternal perspective is all about. We may be able to tap into it lightly occasionally, but we don't even know what we're missing. I think I'm very glad of this, because, honestly I HOPE I'm striving and struggling and seemingly sacrificing this hard for something far better than I can imagine!

[Iamshadow · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book has the special list of firsts that I think few others could claim - the first solo book by the first documented multiple system of modern psychiatry, one of the first books by an 'out' multiple system about their life after coming out as multiple, and possibly one of the first books by a multiple about life after integration. There are still quite few of those. It's not something every multiple system wants or that is even possible for them. This is something you follow Chris's evolution of opinion on. Her experience had given her the opinion that anyone who resisted integration was choosing to be sick and was being incredibly selfish. That changed - not all at once, but definitively - once she started to meet other multiple systems after the diagnosis was added to the DSM. The Troops (Truddi Chase)'s anti-integration stance shocked and even disgusted them at the time they met. But by working intensively with lots of systems and reading the data as studies came out on trauma-origin systems, she realised that her circumstances and her system was highly unusual. (I have still never read another account by a multiple system that shared Chris&'s specific trauma origin or revolving triad structure.) She realised that unlike her system, which came about through a strong negative reaction to being confronted with death, a large proportion of multiple systems with an MPD diagnosis attributed their origins to severe child abuse, the scale of which she, from a large, close-knit, non-abusive family, couldn't fathom. Also, even the smallest of systems often had simultaneous numbers much larger than her system ever had, which never had more than three active members at a time, despite numbering twenty-two throughout their life. The complexity of some of these higher-number systems she met, such as the Troops with 90+, often made the concept of integration something unfeasible. Chris realised, also, that what systems seemed to want more than oneness was stability and support, and that living multiple alone was not the problem - disharmony and lack of communication was.

I think it saddened Chris a lot that she was never able to meet Shirley Mason (Sybil) in person. She really tried, and was stonewalled by Cornelia Wilbur, apparently at Shirley's request. I don't really blame them. Shirley hid her multiplicity from all but her closest companions her whole life, and Chris's public stance would have been terrifying to them, especially as Shirley's integration, unlike Chris's, didn't stick. It wouldn't have taken much for a meeting to be leaked to the press. Chris's choice to go public could have cost her everything. Instead, she seemed to take a lot of empowerment from using their public, open stance to educate, to network, and to advocate for many people with mental illness, not just multiple systems.

I think it also meant a lot to Chris that they were alive to see the advent of imaging of the brain that consistantly showed clear differences between system members of the one multiple system, contrasted with singletons acting different characters. Chris had been told all along that her system mates weren't real, or were all creations of herself. Seeing the scans of other systems' brains vindicated their own, privately held consistent belief that their 'sisters' had been real. Science gave them the validation of their experience that mere autobiography of memory could not.

[Maria Wroblewski · Rating 5 out of 5]

Engaging book about the real Eve of The 3 Faces of Eve. If you read the book or saw the movie, you should read this book. If not, I'd suggest watching the movie first. The original book was written by her first therapists and called her cured, even though there were 18 more personalities and finally the true personality.

[Penney Knightly · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very well-written account of an MPD/DID sufferer putting her life back together after missing out on so much of it! There's a lot of hope and demonstrable healing in this book, which I found to be very encouraging. Her anecdote about growing flowers in her garden, and that in nurturing and caring for her plants in the physical world, she could feel the healing and metaphor it held for her own life experiences really touched me. Her ability to be a part of her current life and in-the-now moment, away from the ache of the past is astonishing. A must-read for anyone who suffers with the illness, to read and get into the mind of someone who has battled DID for many decades (she was one of the original cases in the 1950's that made the 'disorder' recognized) and came out victorious.

[Johari · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed this,

I find DID/MPD difficult to grasp but I loved reading Ms. Sizemore's own recovery and insight.

It's interesting to read a patient's perspective regarding their life, illness, and the effects on quality of life and their family.

I also liked the support of mental health services, advocacy, work with Rosalyn Carter.

[Marie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Having read "I'm Eve" and "When Rabbit Howls" as required reading for Psychology in college I wanted to know a bit more about Multiple Personality Disorder. I was delighted to see Ms. Costmore (Eve) reunited with all the bits and pieces of her many personalities. This book was written so the 'average Joe' could understand this very misunderstood condition.

[Vicki Gooding · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a personal account (free of drama) of the woman known as Eve in her own words, regarding her own life now after integration. Very interesting follow-up years after she first became known.

[Lisa]

Couldn't get into it. Bad font.