Chris Sizemore, multiple personality disorder patient – obituary

Initially, the doctors had put her symptoms down to the stress of raising a family. Several months into therapy, however, a completely different personality emerged, as brazen as Chris Sizemore’s other self was demure. Thigpen and Cleckley dubbed this provocative self “Eve Black”, while the dominant yet quieter personality was “Eve White”. It was Eve Black who had tried to choke Chris Sizemore’s two-year-old daughter, leading her to seek psychiatric help for the first time.

While Eve White liked reading, Eve Black preferred to spend her days at the cinema and her evenings in nightclubs. In The Three Faces of Eve, Thigpen and Cleckley described their efforts to encourage the emergence and eventual dominance of “Jane”, a third, more capable personality.

 .. The study, which was published in 1957, declared their therapy successful, but for Chris Sizemore there were further struggles ahead. Jane died and more personalities took over, always in groups of three. They would function together for a time, then drop away and be replaced by others. Their ages would vary, as did their characters and even their physical health. “The Purple Lady”, who appeared when Chris Sizemore was 46, felt herself to be 58 years old, suffered from joint pain and sprayed her hair grey, while “the Strawberry Girl” thought she was 21, went barefoot and ate only strawberries.
.. Yet when the actress Sissy Spacek expressed an interest in making a film based on Chris Sizemore’s follow-up work, A Mind of My Own (1989), Twentieth Century Fox pointed to the wording of the 1956 contract that she had signed for The Three Faces of Eve, which surrendered the rights to “all versions of my life story heretofore published or hereafter published” to the studio. Chris Sizemore’s attorney contended that the contract proved she had not been in her right mind when she signed it: Eve White, Eve Black and Jane had all added their names. The case was settled out of court.
.. Of all her personalities she claimed to like Eve Black best, since she was “an honest person”. Husband Don, however, had fallen in love with Jane.