I confess that I just watched, for the first time, the 1957 film, The Three Faces of Eve. It stars Joanne Woodward, who won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Eve. I forgot how much I love classic films – the acting, the framing, the execution, and the sets. I was expecting something more sensational, more melodramatic. But instead, I engaged with a thoughtful and sensitive portrayal of a woman struggling with what was then called Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), now known as DID, or dissociative identity disorder. It was fascinating to watch how the doctors at that time approached the case even though MPD/DID was not well known.
I have been interested in the history of parts work (I briefly chart it in Appendix C of my book, Litanies of the Heart on page 261) for quite some time. And this film is an important cultural marker for an understanding, although very imperfect, of multiplicity.
The film can be streamed on Amazon Prime Video, Apple TV, and YouTube.
Meet Eve White and Eve Black
(Spoiler Alert!) Do I need to warn of spoilers for a movie that is nearly 70 years old?
The film’s narrator announces that this is a true story, even based on the clinical notes of a real psychiatrist, and that there is no need for them to sensationalize. When we first meet Eve White, she lives in Georgia, is married to Ralph, and has a 4-year-old daughter named Bonnie. She appears depressed and her emotions are rather flat. They decide to see a psychiatrist because she reports having “spells,” blackouts and headaches. After a few weeks of treatment, she seems to improve and so discontinues therapy.
One year later, there are new incidents where she has no memory of buying expensive and fancy dresses. When she attacks her daughter for whining, her husband, who is not a very sensitive soul, threatens to kill her. She has no memory of the attack. They return to the psychiatrist.
Eve assumes her husband is trying to drive her crazy. Eve confesses to having “spells of amnesia” and hearing voices. The voices sound like her own. At this point, Eve “switches” personalities and becomes Eve Black, a flirtatious, fun loving, dangerously charming woman. She doesn’t believe she’s married to Ralph, and she doesn’t see herself as Bonnie’s mother. She is aware of everything that Eve White does, but Eve White is not aware of her.
When Eve Black appears, the psychiatrist, Dr. Luther, brings in his colleague to help him with the case. This is a great example of consultation but I thought it was funny the way Dr. Luther just barges into his colleague’s office without knocking. Does he have no clients of his own?
In any case, they learn that Eve Black wants to convince Eve White to leave Ralph. Eve Black propositions the good Dr. Luther who appropriately refuses her advances. Eve Black believes Eve White is getting weaker while she is becoming stronger, and she’s hoping to take over.
Eve is admitted to a hospital (not an asylum) where she is treated by the hospital physician while still receiving treatment from Dr. Luther. Eve admits she is not happy in her marriage. There are more incidents in the hospital where Eve Black emerges. Dr. Luther tells Eve Black that he wants to tell Eve White about her multiple personality disorder, which he describes as one of the rarest cases in the history of psychiatry.
A Compassionate and Insightful Film
Joanne Woodward’s performance stands out. She’s believable in all three personalities especially as Eve White, the depressed housewife, and Eve Black, the unmarried and uninhibited flirtatious “playgirl.” We don’t see much of Jane until the very end of the film. Although there’s some humor with Eve Black, I feel that the character is depicted in a sensitive way.
There’s a real effort here to destigmatize mental health disorders. The doctors are clear that she is not psychotic or “crazy.” At the end of the day, she is a woman who is suffering and seeking help. We see two psychologists collaborating over a difficult case and providing compassionate care. For the 1950s, this film is surprisingly compassionate and insightful.
Oversimplifications May Undermine Film’s Accuracy
Many reviewers complain about the way Dr. Luther quickly accesses Eve’s parts and the way hypnosis happens so quickly. When Dr. Luther calls on the different parts, they respond. This is mostly true in my own clinical experience with people’s parts. When parts are cooperative and the therapist has a level of trust with all of them, they are willing to come and go easily.
The way clinical hypnosis is portrayed, however, is less realistic. I realize that in a film such as this, they may take shortcuts. For someone to enter a trance state (focused attention, accessing a deeper state of consciousness), it requires a process called induction. In the film, Dr. Luther merely counts to three and says a few calming words.
Real induction typically involves more than this. Perhaps they didn’t want to provide too much clinical information, perhaps they didn’t want to focus on this aspect of the treatment, or perhaps it was just Hollywood magic, but it was far too brief. It was so brief and simple that it caused more than a few reviewers to question the veracity of the story itself. A more detailed and accurate depiction of a true clinical induction would have made the film more intriguing and believable.
The ending where Jane takes over and the two Eves “die” is a rather quick wrap up for such a long and complex case. In the history of MPD/DID, there has long been a debate between whether parts (or ego states or alters) are meant to be integrated into one single personality or whether the parts are meant to coexist in a harmonious balanced multiplicity.
IFS and most current Ego State therapists do not take the position that the parts are meant to be integrated into one single personality. We do not believe that any parts are meant to die or disappear. We take the position that all parts have good intentions even if their methods are problematic. We recognize that multiplicity is not a defect but a positive aspect of being human. Our personality is a multiform creation of God. The goal of treatment is to bring all the parts into a harmonious balance. Integration, then, means that no parts are acting independently of the self. Instead, the parts are working in tandem under the leadership of the self.
The Jane “part” in many ways resembles either the self (as understood in IFS) or a self-led part that is compassionate, reasonable, and well-balanced. The film does not explicitly identify “the self” and sees all three faces of Eve as fragmentations. The film promotes the idea that parts are created by trauma and can go in and out of existence.
The IFS position is one I share and that is the idea that we are born with all our parts, at least in a nascent form. When the human person experiences trauma, one or more parts may take on the burden from that memory and may even be exiled as a form of self-protection. But parts are with us for life. It is better to work with them than to try and extinguish them!
The Real Story
The Three Faces of Eve is based on the real-life story of Chistine (Chris) Costner Sizemore (1927-2016) from South Carolina. She was married to Gene Rogers (Ralph in the film) and had a daughter Sarah (Bonnie in the film). She later married Don Sizemore (Earl in the film). We have videos of several clinical interviews with her psychologist Dr. Corbett H. Thigpen. Another one shows her being asked to choose multiple different dresses, and we also see many more intriguing conversations from the 1950s. In these interviews, we can observe her three parts: Eve White, Eve Black, and Jane, and how the psychologist accessed them.
These interviews, in my view, are powerful and convincing. Dr. Thigpen and Dr. Hervey M. Cleckley worked with her and wrote a book (also called The Three Faces of Eve) about their clinical experiences. They claimed that her three personalities were ultimately integrated into the personae of Evelyn Lancaster.
The rights to her story were purchased by 20th Century Fox and the film The Three Faces of Eve was produced. In the late 1980s there would be a lawsuit against Fox by Sizemore for the rights to her life story as she claims it was not really her (Chris) who signed the papers but Jane and the two Eves.
I found it interesting that the trauma depicted in the film focused on her being forced to kiss her dead grandmother. As disturbing as that would be, other traumas experienced by the “real Eve” were more serious and would have helped explain her condition in a more believable manner. As a young child Chris Sizemore witnessed her mother being wounded by an exploding glass jar, she saw a dead homeless man being retrieved from a ditch, and she saw the dismembered body of a factory worker. These traumas would better explain the burdens carried by her various parts.
As it turns out, Christine did not recover in the way that is depicted in the movie. She continued to struggle into the 1970s and saw many different therapists after her work with Drs. Thigpen and Cleckley. She worked with a psychologist in the 1970s, Tony Tsitos in Florida, and discovered that she actually had over 20 subpersonalities, which appeared in groups of three. She wrote several books about her life describing her journey, and she became an advocate for mental health. She believed that due to the work she did with Dr. Tony Tsitos, she was able to integrate her parts into one coherent personality. Interestingly she claims:
“Despite authorities claims to the contrary, my former alters were not fragments of my birth personality. They were entities, whole in their own rights, who coexisted with my birth personality before I was born. They were not me, but they remain intrinsically related to what it means to be me.” (from her 1989 book A Mind of My Own: The Woman Who Was Known as “Eve” Tells the Story of Her Triumph Over Multiple Personality Disorder)
I would argue that instead of having one coherent personality, Christine learned to work with her parts. She had parts, for example, that were good at art, different parts expressing different art forms, and she allowed them to express themselves. She would go on to sell various works of art, with very different styles. I would argue, based on the interviews she did in the 1980s and up to her death, that she found a way to work with her parts in an integrated way, but her parts remained a part of her. She found a way to achieve a greater level of internal harmony.
Postscripts
Several good (or at least interesting) summaries of her life and experience after the film can be found here in 1989 on NBC news and here after her death in 2016.
Chris Sizemore later said she felt exploited by the media blitz following the release of the movie. She had to fight 20th Century Fox for the rights to her life story in 1989 and she accepted a settlement in court and no further movies were made about her. The case brings up ethical questions about therapists exploiting their patients.
Another disturbing side note is that Dr. Tony Tsitos was convicted of possessing child pornography in 2021. The article about Dr. Tony’s conviction can be found here.
Despite all the controversies, the case of Eve, Chris Sizemore, helped the world to understand mental illness and multiplicity by bringing it into the public consciousness. Although her case is about parts in extreme dissociative distress, her experience can speak to the reality of multiplicity in each one of us.
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Dr. Gerry Crete is the author of Litanies of the Heart: Relieving Post-traumatic Stress and Calming Anxiety Through Healing Our Parts which is published by Sophia Institute Press. He is the founder of Transfiguration Counseling and Coaching, Transfiguration Life, and co-founder of Souls and Hearts.
Interested in learning more about your own multiplicity?
While The Three Faces of Eve illustrates an extreme clinical case, Internal Family Systems (IFS) posits that all of us have parts that play different and important roles in our lives. A primary goal of the Resilient Catholics Community is to help our members get to know our parts, primarily to better love them. As St. Thomas Aquinas makes clear, love ourselves in an ordered way is critical to loving God and our neighbor more fully, more wholeheartedly. And that’s what the RCC is all about.
Our 10th cohort of the RCC, the St. Jerome cohort, will open in June. Learn more about this community, now 400 Catholics strong, on our landing page and sign up on our interest list. We’ll then reach out as the time grows closer.
Dr. Gerry on Interior Integration for Catholics episode 163: You Are One and Many
Join Dr. Gerry, Bridget Adams and Dr. Peter for IIC episode 163, just released today, the seventh in our Deep Dive in 2025 into Catholic Parts Work. Here’s the description:
Fearfully and wonderfully made – that is what you are. And made not just as a single, homogeneous personality – but as a system. But what is a system? How can we understand ourselves not just as a monolithic personality, not just as a unity, and not just as a multiplicity, but in terms of our inner relationships with ourselves? Join Dr. Gerry, Bridget Adams, and Dr. Peter as we explore how each of us has a “kingdom within” – and how understanding that kingdom, understanding our multiplicity of our system allows us to better love God, our neighbor, and ourselves, the three loves in the two great commandments, firmly grounded in a Catholic understanding of the human person.
Check in out in video or in audio.
And don’t forget to register for our live recording of Interior Integration for Catholics podcast episode 165, which will have an experiential exercise and lots of Q&A and discussion. Join Catholic IFS therapists Marion Moreland, David Edwards, and Dr. Peter on Zoom on the evening of Thursday, April 24, 2025 from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM Eastern Time. Registration is free, but required here. We will be answering questions, and going deeper into the content from IIC episodes 157 to 164.
Formation for Formators Retreat, August 11-14, 2025 in Bloomington, Indiana
Catholic counselors, coaches, and spiritual directors, and any other adult Catholic who accompanies others in their formation – you need your own formation first. And specifically, your own human formation, which is the basis of all formation according to St. John Paul II in Pastores Dabo Vobis. Why? Because you can’t help those you accompany get to places you haven’t gone yourself.
Find out more about this unique retreat here.
Leading with Love in-person workshop in Steubenville, OH on May 5, 2025, led by Dr. Peter
When we can get together in person, in real life, it’s a great gift. Dr. Peter has space for a total of 22 attendees in this small meetup. The full title is Leading with Love: Inner Work for Catholic Leaders and you can find out so much more here. Here are some critical points:
- Thomas Aquinas provides a metaphysical foundation for the connections between self-love and self-governance, providing the conceptual base (as Catholic philosopher Anthony Flood covers in detail in his excellent book The Root of Friendship: Self-Love and Self-Governance in Aquinas. In short, for this presentation, Aquinas provides the “gold of the old.”
- Internal Family Systems provides a practical model for living out inner self-love and self-governance. IFS is the “silver of the new” — offering us actionable steps to increase our internal self-governance and then, by extension, increasing our capacity to lead and guide other effectively in love.
- This workshop is highly experiential – it offers Catholic leaders an opportunity to go inside and connect with the parts of themselves whom they have difficulty loving and leading effectively.
- The workshop runs from 11:30 AM to 3:30 PM on Monday, May 5, 2025 at the Eat N’ Park in at 100 Mall Drive in Steubenville, OH. Lunch and dessert can be purchased directly from the restaurant.
More details, including the complete schedule are in this PDF Flyer. Register and pay the $40 non-refundable fee here; remember, space is limited to the first 22 registrants. Dr. Peter hopes to see many of you there. If you have questions, reach out to Dr. Peter at crisis@soulsandhearts.com or at 317.567.9594.
Pray for us
All of our endeavors at Souls and Hearts needs the support of much prayer and much grace. Please pray for us. We are praying for you.