I watched Criminal Minds: Episode 4.20. (It can be accessed on YouTube)In this episode a DID victim named Adam had an "alter-ego," Amanda. "Amanda" was the identity who killed innocent people. Adam claimed to suffer from migranes, unable to recall murdering any of the victims. I compared Adam's timid personality to that of Eve White, whereas, I compared "Amanda" to "Eve Black." "Amanda" injured a friend of Adam's claiming that she was protecting him, just as "Eve Black" injured Bonnie. Joanna Landsvik
Other than the obvious headache that most alleged dissociative identity disorder patients suffer, I noticed more compelling ties between “The Three Faces and Eve” and the “Criminal Minds” episode. In “The Three Faces of Eve,” during hypnosis, Eve explains a traumatic event in her life when her mother forced her to kiss her dead grandmother. This incident was the first time when “Jane,” an ego of Eve White appeared. Her unresolved conflicts had been repressed into her unconscious, so she could only access them during hypnosis. In “Criminal Minds,” Adam was a victim of child abuse. His alter ego, “Amanda” first appeared after he had been abused to “protect” him. The final parallel I drew between “The Three Faces of Eve” and “Criminal Minds” was that both Eve and Adam had a highly dominant role in their lives. Eve’s husband, Ralph had authority over her just as Adam’s father had authority over him. Freud may suggest that both Adam and Eve repress their traumatic events and resort to defense mechanisms. In the end of “The Three Faces of Eve,” the most stable personality, Jane emerged, and the other alter egos, “Eve White” and “Eve Black” died. In a less optimistic ending, “Criminal Minds” ended with Adam’s personality disappearing and Amanda’s identity prevailing. Joanna Landsvik
For my comparison to The Three Faces of Eve I watched an episode of Psych titled “Who Ya Gonna Call?”. In this episode, the main character's client (Robert) suffers from DID and complains that he is being haunted. When the main characters uncover a secret room filled with women's clothes, they discover that Robert is a victim of DID with an alter-ego named Regina, and later discover a third personality named Martin Brody (yes, from Jaws). Similar to The Three Faces of Eve, the three personalities are very different. Regina is very timid, like Eve White, while Martin is aggressive and harmful, like Eve Black. Martin killed Regina's doctor, the same way that Eve Black tried to kill Bonnie. Just as Jane is a mix of Eve White and Eve Black, Robert is not at either end of the spectrum, like his alter-egos. Another connection that I made between Psych and The Three Faces of Eve is the portrayal of DID symptoms. In the episode, Robert suffered from frequent memory loss whenever his alter-egos appeared, and complained of being excessively tired, just like Eve White. Furthermore, Robert and Eve White had no knowledge of their other personalities, but their alter-egos were aware of them. The final connection I drew between this Psych episode and The Three Faces of Eve is that the alter-egos were not content being trapped in someone else's body. In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve Black stated that she felt constrained by Eve White. Similarly, Regina was a woman trapped in a man's body. She even went to a doctor for gender reassignment surgery, so that she was no longer restricted. One difference between this episode and the movie is that the various personalities are not all the same gender. In The Three Faces of Eve, all three personalities are female, while in Psych (and apparently in Criminal Minds), the personalities are different genders. Whether this twist plays better into the story or there have been real cases of DID with varying gender personalities, it provides an interesting look at the disorder. The final connection I made between Psych and The Three Faces of Eve is the disappearance of the two other personalities. In The Three Faces of Eve, the most stable personality prevailed. In Psych, it is unclear whether Robert, the most stable of the personalities, prevails, but it is said that he is being admitted to the “premiere mental health hospital in the country,” and that his prognosis is good. This provides a bit of optimism to the viewer, just like in The Three Faces of Eve. -Alex Geller
For my DID comparison I watched the film Fight Club in which the life of an unnamed narrator is documented. The narrator befriends Tyler Durden while on an airplane and the men eventually come to live together when the narrator’s apartment is blown up. Tyler is loud and impulsive and basically everything that the narrator is not. Together, Tyler and the narrator create Fight Club, which is a place where men can release their emotions through brutal fighting. Fight Club eventually intensifies and becomes Project Mayhem, which is dedicated to creating chaos in the world. Only near the end of the film is it exposed that Tyler and the narrator are the same person. Tyler explains to the narrator that the narrator created Tyler because Tyler is everything that the narrator wants to be. In a way, Tyler represents the narrator’s id because he expresses the narrator’s unconscious desires. A major difference that I found between Fight Club and The Three Faces of Eve, Criminal Minds, and Psych is that in Fight Club, the narrator directly interacts with his alter ego, Tyler Durden, whereas in the other films and television shows it seems that the personalities are aware of the main personality, but the personalities are present at different times so they do not interact. Eve White does not know about Eve Black and Jane until the psychologist tells her about them, and likewise it seems that Adam does not know about Amanda in Criminal Minds and Robert did no know about his altar egos in Psych. Another difference that I found in Fight Club is that the audience is not aware of the narrator’s DID until the end of the film because the two personalities are played by two different actors. The audience sees the events as the narrator sees the events, and the narrator believes that Tyler is a completely separate person, so that is how the audience sees him as well. In The Three Faces of Eve, however, the audience views Eve from the perspective of the psychologist, so the audience sees Eve White, Eve Black, and Jane and knows that they are all the same person. Another difference between Fight Club and The Three Faces of Eve and Criminal Minds, as Joanna pointed out above, is that Eve’s and Adam’s alter egos developed as a result of a major traumatic event, whereas in Fight Club Tyler’s development seems more hazy and less clear cut. At the beginning of the film, it explains that the narrator has insomnia and he is unhappy with his job, but there is no single event that causes Tyler to come out. I also find it interesting that Alex’s assertion that both The Three Faces of Eve and Psych end on an optimistic note, which can be applied to Fight Club as well. The end of the film shows the narrator taking control of the situation and choosing to kill Tyler.
This post has spoilers for the movie Psycho. I have seen quite a few of the movies listed which portray dual personalities or DID. Similar to the show Alex watched, the character Norman Bates from the movie Psycho has a dual personality in which one is male and one is female. In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve is aware that she has DID and can control which identity she has at each point in time once she is aware that all exist. In Psycho, the main character Norman Bates has a dual personality where one is a hotel manager, and the other is his mother. Bates always was jealous of his mother (Oedipus complex) and when she got a new boyfriend he became extremely jealous and killed them both. After this, part of his psyche became what he would imagine to be his mother. When this part of his personality is present it is as if his mother is living through him, he acts and dresses how his mother would. Bates believes that his mother would be jealous of him if he had a girlfriend so when he finds a woman attractive, the mother personality (dressed as the mother) kills the girl. This movie does not have many connections with The Three Faces of Eve, but in both situations each personality (well most in the case of The Three Faces of Eve) are not consciously aware of what the other personality has done. A movie more similar to The Three Faces of Eve would be Me, Myself, and Irene. This movie is about a police officer who has always followed the rules and allows himself to be pushed around by everyone, but eventually cracks. His personality splits and a new, rebellious, sexual personality emerges. In both of these movies, the excess personalities are extinguished and in some ways melted together to form a personality which takes the best of each of the personalities. Julia R.
In Secret Window, Johnny Depp played a character with DID. Originally, Mort Rainey (Depp) became paranoid, believing a man in a hat was stalking him and his girlfriend. This paranoia reaches a peak when he begins to hallucinate, believing in one instance that the man in the hat enters his home and attempt to attack him. He even believes this man kills his dog but in reality it was himself. Unlike Eve, Mort has no idea that this is all his doing, until the very end where this evil person takes over his life completely. Similarly to Eve though, neither identity remembers the actions of the other. Moral of the story: Never eat corn harvested by a madman. -Shoko Goodman
I chose to watch the Babylon 5 episode “Divided Loyalties”. The plot concerning DID is somewhat complex: At one point, a person who performs telepathy implanted a latent second personality within a member of the Babylon 5 control room community. This personality remains dormant, watching the happenings on the space ship, and spies on the people in control for the Psi Corps. When a “codeword” is telepathically transmitted to the DID member of the fleet, the latent personality will come to life, killing the old personality in the process and revealing the valuable information. Talia Winters was the DID character in this episode that is comparable to Eve White. Talia’s DID went completely unnoticed, like Eve’s, until an event brought it into “being.” Once the mental switch was flipped and Talia became Talia Two, Talia Two spoke of observing Talia One’s life. Like Eve Black, Talia Two expressed her frusteration at not being able to come out whenever she wanted. Talia Two was only allowed to arise at night, while Talia One slept. During one of these evenings, Talia Two arises and tries to murder a member of the Psi Corps who is trying to unmask her identity. Eve White’s alter personality, Eve Black tried to murder her daughter during one of her incidents. Much like Eve Black, Talia Two also was able to observe her counterpart in action. Eve Black knows everything about Eve White’s life because she has in a sense, lived it. Once emerged, Talia Two told Talia One’s friend, Susan Ivanova, about how she had watched the two of them interacting. She claimed to be surprised by how easily they gave away information and how ignorant they were. Got to love 90’s SciFi… -Allison Hall
*Warning: This synopsis contains spoilers - For my DID comparison I watched the 2004 Stephen King thriller Secret Window (same as Shoko). Secret Window focuses on one character (Mort Rainey) as he “copes” with DID. Rainey is an author suffering from writer’s block and the fallout from his recent divorce, living on his own in a secluded cabin. Soon a man begins showing up at his cabin and accusing Rainey of plagiarism (John Shooter), and when Rainey dismisses Shooter as a madman bad things happen. The situation soon rages beyond Rainey’s control as Shooter leaves behind a trail of murder victims. At the end of the film it is revealed that Shooter is an alternate personality of Rainey. However, unlike the Many Faces of Eve, the main character in this film is not aware of the other personality, and merely stumbles across the things that Shooter does. In fact, in the beginning of the film, Shooter torments Rainey and makes his life a living hell. Yet, when Rainey learns of the other personality, he seemingly embraces it. At the end of the film, and yes I’m going to really spoil it (sorry), Rainey becomes Shooter in order to kill his ex-wife and her boyfriend and gets a sense of satisfaction out of doing so. Throughout this film, Shooter comes out in order to do things that Rainey didn’t have the guts to do, as Rainey channels his hatred and anger towards his ex-wife through Shooter. I guess this is similar to Eve Black, who comes out to engage in behaviors that Eve White would consider socially unacceptable. At the end of the film, it’s unclear which personality has prevailed. Rainey / Shooter now grows corn on the patch of land where he buried the remains of his wife, and he seemingly taunts the sheriff, challenging him to pin the disappearance on him. Sorry about all the spoilers, but this movie only got a 46% on Rottentomatoes.com. Seriously, it’s not like I spoiled the ending of Citizen Kane or The Sixth Sense. -Justin Bronstein
Being a little pressed for time and not in my most creative mindset following exams, I watched "Me, Myself and Irene." I actually found that I loathed this movie, and would have much preferred watching something more interesting. I disliked it mainly because I thought it really did not paint an accurate picture of DID. Rather, it made fun of the disorder, when "The Three Faces of Eve" actually conveyed the trauma that the disorder entails. In "Me, Myself and Irene," a man named Charlie develops DID after his wife leaves him. He is a state trooper, and is assigned to take a woman named Irene back to her home. Unbeknownst to him, Irene is not only in trouble with the law, but with a mafia-like group of grumpy rich people. Basically, the main premise of the story is his "battle" between his introverted, passive self Charlie, and his wild, reckless alter-ego Hank. What is unfortunate about the movie is that it is so utterly shallow. The audience instantly knows the reason for his sudden development of DID when provided with the background story, so there is no deeper meaning of any sort to uncover. This is completely different from "The Three Faces of Eve," in which the trauma of Eve's past is uncovered through hypnosis. There were some similarities between the "Eves" and the "Charlies." They were both aware of their alter-egos, and their more passive personality seemed very fearful of their more aggressive one. However, the ways in which they sought treatment were very different, mainly, I think, because of the time difference. In "The Three Faces of Eve," Eve sees a psychoanalyst to help her solve her problem. In "Me, Myself and Irene," Charlie sees a doctor and is given pills to take that will supposedly "fix" his DID. Seeing the two depictions of the disorder was certainly interesting, though I still feel as if I would like to get a more realistic picture of someone with DID. I wonder what life is like for people with DID today, and am definitely interested in seeing more accurate portrayals of it. -Lilia Rubin
I also used Fight Club to compare alongside The Three Face of Eve. Fight Club is pretty different from The Three Face of Eve, mostly because of its more modern look at Dissociative Identity Disorder. Fight Club is really more of an indictment of modern society and how it can drive the average man into a state of insanity. The narrator was trying hard to find meaning in a modern world by purchasing furniture and items from catalogs that he clearly didn’t need. He didn’t really find meaning in the world until created a second personality, Tyler Durden, who represented the narrator’s vision of the ideal man who made the world work for him rather than the other way around. In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve creates the personalities in order to cope with a traumatic experience that occurred when she was a child. Eve also is having trouble coping with society and her home life, and these multiple personalities also allow her to play out her fantasies as a party girl. She no longer has to be reserved and submissive when she becomes Eve Black. The one thing I have a problem with is how dated the therapy sessions seem to be. The doctor helps Eve recover using some mixture of psychoanalysis and hypnosis, both of which are used scarcely today. Also, once Eve was able to remember the repressed memory she had of kissing her dead grandmother she seemed to immediately recover by turning into Jane for good. This seemed pretty unrealistic. In real life, it would take Eve years of therapy after having this revelation until she could even remotely be considered better. Fight Club has a more modern perspective on the disease and also shows how confusing life would be for a person who believes their second personality is actually a different person. Fight Club also has a way cooler ending than The Three Faces of Eve. If you didn’t know what it was prior to reading this, then my bad.
For my DID comparison, I watched the movie Fight Club. In Fight Club, the narrator meets this guy, Tyler Durden. When the narrator returns home, he finds that his apartment has exploded and he calls up Tyler to meet him at a bar. Tyler moves into whats left of the narrator’s house with the narrator, and the two establish a “fight club”. The fight club turns into Project Mayham, and when someone dies during a fight, the narrator tries to shut down the project. Then when he notices other fight clubs have started, he checks them out and where someone calls him Tyler Durden. Tyler then explains that he controls the narrator’s body and then leaves the narrator’s life. At two points in the movie, the narrator either believes he has fainted or is knocked on consious by Tyler, and cannot remember any of the destructive things Tyler has done. At the end of the movie, the narrator realizes that he shares the same body as Tyler and when trying to kill Tyler realizes that he is the one holding the gun to his own head and realizes that Tyler and the himself are opposite personalities within one person. In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve has similar “blackouts” and cannot remember things that “Eve Black” her other identity has done. Eve has two identities, Eve White and Eve Black, and can switch between them on cue. Generally, with DID disorders, people do not know when they are switching between identities and cannot do it on cue. Most common cases of DID are like those in Fight Club, where people think that are talking to another person who is in their life, when infact it is really them. -cjones
I also watched the Criminal Minds episode that Joanna watched. I also agree with her that Eve White was just like Adam, where as Eve Black was more like his alter ego, Amanda, except this man did not have 3 different personalities, only two. Adam could not seem to remember some events, just like Eve White could not remember events that had happened when she was a different personality. Both of them had traumatic events, such as child abuse, happen that made one personality come out over the other, for protection. I also realized that just like in the “Three Faces of Eve” Adam’s entire body language changes, as well as his tone of voice, when he switches to Amanda. This happened with Eve White as well when her personality switched. A major difference was that Adam’s alter ego was a girl, but Eve White’s other personalities were of the same sex, which I thought was very interesting. Adam also had knowledge that the other personality did not, such as how to solve a mathematical equation. This was the same in the “Three Faces of Eve” because Eve Black was able to describe some events that Eve White could not. Adam also only had 2 personalities, where Eve had 3. Another and final similarity I noticed was that eventually the DID patients are left with only one personality, but in Adam’s case, his alter ego takes over, and the nicest personality takes over Eve’s body, as Joanna noted.
I watched the made for TV movie "Sybil." WARNING: this film has a lot of very disturbing images and it's over three hours long. It is also a true story which makes it even harder to watch. The main characters Sybil and Eve have similar stories. Sybil has multiple personalities, about six, and Eve has three. Both of their conditions seem to stem from trauma during their childhoods that the audience learns about during these women's episodes. For Eve, it was when her mother made her kiss her dead grandmother, and for Sybil, it was years of abuse and torture from her mother. I don't know if it is a matter of a good film vs. a bad film or a old film vs. a new film but Sybil's DID is shown more in depth with a lot of detail that The Three Faces of Eve lacked. Sybil had more personalities which varied in age from infant to adult while it appeared that all of Eve's personalities were relatively the same age. Another similarity between Sybil and Eve was that they both experienced "black-outs" while their other personalities were present. Eve talked about black-outs that lasted about a day and Sybil mentions experiencing one that lasted around two years. Sybil could not control when and which of her personalities came out the way that Eve could when her therapist would ask for Eve Black or Jane. Both of these films showcased the vital bond between these women with DIDs and their therapists. A side note on the acting, Sally Fields' performance as Sybil was incredible, and I liked her, I really liked her. Joanne Woodward does a good job as Eve but she did an even better performance as Dr. Wilbur, Sybil's therapist. Desi Marquant
I watched "Me Myself, and Irene," starring Jim Carrey as a police officer with two distinct personalities. Like Eve White, from "The Three Faces of Eve," Charlie is a quite, reserved man who frequently gets taken advantage of and ignored. Conversley, Hank, like Eve Black, is an extrovert who lives by his own rules, often resulting in trouble. Hank also has a violent side, but this is not present in Eve Black. One main difference between the films is that Jane is the third personality in "The Three Faces of Eve," and there is only two known personalities in the other movie. Jane unlike Eve's other personalities, combines the best features of the two, resulting in a well-rounded person. In both movies, each personality knew of the others but did not want much to do with them. I think that Eve offered a more accurate portrayal of DID because her personality's were not as extreme as Charlie/Hank's. I did not enjoy, "Me, Myself, and Irene," nearly as much as I did, "The Three Faces of Eve." This was due to the fact that it was not realistic because of the plot and storyline. The character of Charlie worked only because the story was so far fetched, however Eve was more believable because she was in a situation that was completely possible. Overall, "The Three Faces of Eve," was a much better film. Daniella DiDiego
I found The Three Faces of Eve and Fight Club to be very different from one another. I believe that the differences had to do with what John had said; the movies were made at different times, and so their views on DID were reflected the time-period at which they were made. It was interesting to see how the doctor handled Eve’s DID through pyschoanalysis and hypnosis, whereas the unnamed narrator in Fight Club did not even receive help for his problems; his doctor simply thought that the narrator was stressed. The narrator’s original signs for having DID was insomnia, buying random items from magazines and various ads, and waking up in random airplanes and hotel rooms. However, we later found out that the narrator does not sleep because his “other” (Tyler Durden) comes alive at night. The narrator meets Tyler for the first time on one of his plane rides, and from their they become friends and eventually live together. Like other people have said, this is probably the biggest distinction from The Three Faces of Eve and the other portrayals of DID. Instead of being distinct separate personalities that do not come out at the same time, Tyler and the narrator are together most of the time, scheming plans or fighting. The times when the narrator blacks out is usually when Tyler takes drastic measures that the narrator would never do (similar to how Eve Black is more daring than Eve White). For example, Tyler is usually in charge of Project Mayhem, which commits many atrocities like blowing up buildings. I agree with Susannah with that Fight Club portrays DID through the narrator’s eyes; the audience does not realize that Tyler and the narrator are the same person until the very end of the movie. At the end of the movie, the director allowed the audience to see the narrator’s and Tyler’s interactions. For example, we saw Tyler and the narrator fighting with each other, only it looks incredibly awkward watching the narrator getting beat up by an invisible force. Overall, I would recommend watching Fight Club...although I totally just ruined the entire plot twist for the movie...sorry! :) -Alisha
"Fight Club" and "Three Faces of Eve" are two very different portrayals of dissociative identity disorder. In "Fight Club," the narrator has a second personality who he can see through hallucinations and interacts with. Tyler Durden (the second personality) enters the story as a sort of friend to the main character and they end up living together, and going everywhere and doing everything together. In "Three Faces of Eve," Eve White has “black out spells” in which one of her other two personalities (Eve Black and Jane) emerge. At first, Eve White is unaware of her other personalities, but by the end of the movie she learns how to control which one she brings out. This is different from Tyler who is usually with the main character in "Fight Club." However the main character does sometimes forget what he did recently which is when Tyler takes over his personality and goes and does things. The main character never remembers what he did as Tyler, but usually at a later point Tyler reemerges and tells the main character what they have been up to. Eve White’s DID was around ever since she was little. She says that she recalls the “black out spells” happening infrequently when she was a child, then they started happening more and more often as she aged. Tyler however entered the main character’s life at a very specific point in the movie. They met each other on a plane and then moved in with each other. He might have been around earlier, but he was not in the main characters consciousness. The main character did however have insomnia and was not very aware of himself for most of the time before Tyler came about, so that might have been when Tyler manifested himself without the main character knowing. -Laura Leone
I watched The Secrete Window with Johnny Depp. In the movie, Depp plays a character (Mort Rainey ) with DID. I feel like this movie really intensifies the disorder where as The Faces of Eve was a gateway to the disorder. For example, in Three Faces of Eve, Bonnie turns into her multiple personalities whenever Dr. Luther said the name of her other characters (Eve Black, Jane). She does so by nodding her head and suddenly becoming her alter egos-got to love the cheesiness. Although cheesy, we know today that one with DID does not turn into their alter egos by the snap of a finger and a call of the name. Because of these misconceptions in the movie, I feel the the Three Face of Eve portrayed the symptoms of DID a bit unrealistically. Secrete Window, however, portrayed the symptoms in a more realistic light. As Shoko mentioned before, Mort Rainey becomes paranoid, believing a man in a hat is stalking him and his girlfriend. Unlike Eve, Mort only becomes Shooter (his alter personality) when he drinks Jack Daniels. Also, Eve is aware of all her multiple personalities, Mort only realizes that Shooter is actually him when he sees his back, instead of his front reflected in the mirror above the mantelpiece. Not to make this post an essay, but overall, the Secrete Window did a better job at highlighting DID as we know it today.
I feel like something witty should go here but I got nothin'.
I watched the same episode of Criminal Minds as Joanna did. This episode was quite interesting because it involved a man named "Adam" and his alter ego "Amanda" raping and killing frat boys on Spring Break. In the episode, two dead bodies had been found in hotel rooms, but their ways of death were unknown. The investigators believed that a woman and a man had teamed up to conspire the killing of the frat boys, buy having the woman lure them into a hotel room and then having the man rape and kill them. After much investigation, "Adam", a hotel employee, becomes a suspect because of his aggressive and suspicious behavior towards other guests at the hotel. Through time, it is found that "Adam" was abused as a child by his father and he has been taken in by a woman named Julie. He ends up pushing her off a balcony and calling himself "Amanda" which is how it is determined that he is suffering from DID. Since he was a victim of abuse, his alter ego of "Amanda" was formed to protect him, but in the end she ended up being abusive and a murdered herself. I agree with Joanna's comparison of "Adam" to "Eve White" and "Amanda" to "Eve Black" because they both have opposite personalities that cause them to do different things, be extremely sad and regretful or really aggressive and harsh. Both of the Eves and "Adam" and "Amanda" all had traumatic events that caused them to form alter egos to help cope with their past. In this episode, "Amanda" eventually decides to put "Adam" to sleep because she thinks it's what's best for him, but "Amanda" is put into a psychiatric hospital and taken care of for mental problems. Eve never actually died. Both videos are similar becuase the alteregos injured someone to help protect someone and both alteregos had something against their psychologists. Lindsey Diranian
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I watched Criminal Minds: Episode 4.20. (It can be accessed on YouTube)In this episode a DID victim named Adam had an "alter-ego," Amanda. "Amanda" was the identity who killed innocent people. Adam claimed to suffer from migranes, unable to recall murdering any of the victims. I compared Adam's timid personality to that of Eve White, whereas, I compared "Amanda" to "Eve Black." "Amanda" injured a friend of Adam's claiming that she was protecting him, just as "Eve Black" injured Bonnie.
Joanna Landsvik
Other than the obvious headache that most alleged dissociative identity disorder patients suffer, I noticed more compelling ties between “The Three Faces and Eve” and the “Criminal Minds” episode. In “The Three Faces of Eve,” during hypnosis, Eve explains a traumatic event in her life when her mother forced her to kiss her dead grandmother. This incident was the first time when “Jane,” an ego of Eve White appeared. Her unresolved conflicts had been repressed into her unconscious, so she could only access them during hypnosis. In “Criminal Minds,” Adam was a victim of child abuse. His alter ego, “Amanda” first appeared after he had been abused to “protect” him. The final parallel I drew between “The Three Faces of Eve” and “Criminal Minds” was that both Eve and Adam had a highly dominant role in their lives. Eve’s husband, Ralph had authority over her just as Adam’s father had authority over him. Freud may suggest that both Adam and Eve repress their traumatic events and resort to defense mechanisms. In the end of “The Three Faces of Eve,” the most stable personality, Jane emerged, and the other alter egos, “Eve White” and “Eve Black” died. In a less optimistic ending, “Criminal Minds” ended with Adam’s personality disappearing and Amanda’s identity prevailing.
Joanna Landsvik
For my comparison to The Three Faces of Eve I watched an episode of Psych titled “Who Ya Gonna Call?”. In this episode, the main character's client (Robert) suffers from DID and complains that he is being haunted. When the main characters uncover a secret room filled with women's clothes, they discover that Robert is a victim of DID with an alter-ego named Regina, and later discover a third personality named Martin Brody (yes, from Jaws). Similar to The Three Faces of Eve, the three personalities are very different. Regina is very timid, like Eve White, while Martin is aggressive and harmful, like Eve Black. Martin killed Regina's doctor, the same way that Eve Black tried to kill Bonnie. Just as Jane is a mix of Eve White and Eve Black, Robert is not at either end of the spectrum, like his alter-egos. Another connection that I made between Psych and The Three Faces of Eve is the portrayal of DID symptoms. In the episode, Robert suffered from frequent memory loss whenever his alter-egos appeared, and complained of being excessively tired, just like Eve White. Furthermore, Robert and Eve White had no knowledge of their other personalities, but their alter-egos were aware of them. The final connection I drew between this Psych episode and The Three Faces of Eve is that the alter-egos were not content being trapped in someone else's body. In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve Black stated that she felt constrained by Eve White. Similarly, Regina was a woman trapped in a man's body. She even went to a doctor for gender reassignment surgery, so that she was no longer restricted. One difference between this episode and the movie is that the various personalities are not all the same gender. In The Three Faces of Eve, all three personalities are female, while in Psych (and apparently in Criminal Minds), the personalities are different genders. Whether this twist plays better into the story or there have been real cases of DID with varying gender personalities, it provides an interesting look at the disorder. The final connection I made between Psych and The Three Faces of Eve is the disappearance of the two other personalities. In The Three Faces of Eve, the most stable personality prevailed. In Psych, it is unclear whether Robert, the most stable of the personalities, prevails, but it is said that he is being admitted to the “premiere mental health hospital in the country,” and that his prognosis is good. This provides a bit of optimism to the viewer, just like in The Three Faces of Eve.
-Alex Geller
For my DID comparison I watched the film Fight Club in which the life of an unnamed narrator is documented. The narrator befriends Tyler Durden while on an airplane and the men eventually come to live together when the narrator’s apartment is blown up. Tyler is loud and impulsive and basically everything that the narrator is not. Together, Tyler and the narrator create Fight Club, which is a place where men can release their emotions through brutal fighting. Fight Club eventually intensifies and becomes Project Mayhem, which is dedicated to creating chaos in the world. Only near the end of the film is it exposed that Tyler and the narrator are the same person. Tyler explains to the narrator that the narrator created Tyler because Tyler is everything that the narrator wants to be. In a way, Tyler represents the narrator’s id because he expresses the narrator’s unconscious desires. A major difference that I found between Fight Club and The Three Faces of Eve, Criminal Minds, and Psych is that in Fight Club, the narrator directly interacts with his alter ego, Tyler Durden, whereas in the other films and television shows it seems that the personalities are aware of the main personality, but the personalities are present at different times so they do not interact. Eve White does not know about Eve Black and Jane until the psychologist tells her about them, and likewise it seems that Adam does not know about Amanda in Criminal Minds and Robert did no know about his altar egos in Psych. Another difference that I found in Fight Club is that the audience is not aware of the narrator’s DID until the end of the film because the two personalities are played by two different actors. The audience sees the events as the narrator sees the events, and the narrator believes that Tyler is a completely separate person, so that is how the audience sees him as well. In The Three Faces of Eve, however, the audience views Eve from the perspective of the psychologist, so the audience sees Eve White, Eve Black, and Jane and knows that they are all the same person. Another difference between Fight Club and The Three Faces of Eve and Criminal Minds, as Joanna pointed out above, is that Eve’s and Adam’s alter egos developed as a result of a major traumatic event, whereas in Fight Club Tyler’s development seems more hazy and less clear cut. At the beginning of the film, it explains that the narrator has insomnia and he is unhappy with his job, but there is no single event that causes Tyler to come out. I also find it interesting that Alex’s assertion that both The Three Faces of Eve and Psych end on an optimistic note, which can be applied to Fight Club as well. The end of the film shows the narrator taking control of the situation and choosing to kill Tyler.
-Susannah P.
This post has spoilers for the movie Psycho.
I have seen quite a few of the movies listed which portray dual personalities or DID. Similar to the show Alex watched, the character Norman Bates from the movie Psycho has a dual personality in which one is male and one is female. In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve is aware that she has DID and can control which identity she has at each point in time once she is aware that all exist. In Psycho, the main character Norman Bates has a dual personality where one is a hotel manager, and the other is his mother. Bates always was jealous of his mother (Oedipus complex) and when she got a new boyfriend he became extremely jealous and killed them both. After this, part of his psyche became what he would imagine to be his mother. When this part of his personality is present it is as if his mother is living through him, he acts and dresses how his mother would. Bates believes that his mother would be jealous of him if he had a girlfriend so when he finds a woman attractive, the mother personality (dressed as the mother) kills the girl. This movie does not have many connections with The Three Faces of Eve, but in both situations each personality (well most in the case of The Three Faces of Eve) are not consciously aware of what the other personality has done. A movie more similar to The Three Faces of Eve would be Me, Myself, and Irene. This movie is about a police officer who has always followed the rules and allows himself to be pushed around by everyone, but eventually cracks. His personality splits and a new, rebellious, sexual personality emerges. In both of these movies, the excess personalities are extinguished and in some ways melted together to form a personality which takes the best of each of the personalities.
Julia R.
In Secret Window, Johnny Depp played a character with DID. Originally, Mort Rainey (Depp) became paranoid, believing a man in a hat was stalking him and his girlfriend. This paranoia reaches a peak when he begins to hallucinate, believing in one instance that the man in the hat enters his home and attempt to attack him. He even believes this man kills his dog but in reality it was himself. Unlike Eve, Mort has no idea that this is all his doing, until the very end where this evil person takes over his life completely. Similarly to Eve though, neither identity remembers the actions of the other.
Moral of the story: Never eat corn harvested by a madman.
-Shoko Goodman
I chose to watch the Babylon 5 episode “Divided Loyalties”. The plot concerning DID is somewhat complex: At one point, a person who performs telepathy implanted a latent second personality within a member of the Babylon 5 control room community. This personality remains dormant, watching the happenings on the space ship, and spies on the people in control for the Psi Corps. When a “codeword” is telepathically transmitted to the DID member of the fleet, the latent personality will come to life, killing the old personality in the process and revealing the valuable information. Talia Winters was the DID character in this episode that is comparable to Eve White. Talia’s DID went completely unnoticed, like Eve’s, until an event brought it into “being.” Once the mental switch was flipped and Talia became Talia Two, Talia Two spoke of observing Talia One’s life. Like Eve Black, Talia Two expressed her frusteration at not being able to come out whenever she wanted. Talia Two was only allowed to arise at night, while Talia One slept. During one of these evenings, Talia Two arises and tries to murder a member of the Psi Corps who is trying to unmask her identity. Eve White’s alter personality, Eve Black tried to murder her daughter during one of her incidents. Much like Eve Black, Talia Two also was able to observe her counterpart in action. Eve Black knows everything about Eve White’s life because she has in a sense, lived it. Once emerged, Talia Two told Talia One’s friend, Susan Ivanova, about how she had watched the two of them interacting. She claimed to be surprised by how easily they gave away information and how ignorant they were. Got to love 90’s SciFi…
-Allison Hall
*Warning: This synopsis contains spoilers - For my DID comparison I watched the 2004 Stephen King thriller Secret Window (same as Shoko). Secret Window focuses on one character (Mort Rainey) as he “copes” with DID. Rainey is an author suffering from writer’s block and the fallout from his recent divorce, living on his own in a secluded cabin. Soon a man begins showing up at his cabin and accusing Rainey of plagiarism (John Shooter), and when Rainey dismisses Shooter as a madman bad things happen. The situation soon rages beyond Rainey’s control as Shooter leaves behind a trail of murder victims. At the end of the film it is revealed that Shooter is an alternate personality of Rainey. However, unlike the Many Faces of Eve, the main character in this film is not aware of the other personality, and merely stumbles across the things that Shooter does. In fact, in the beginning of the film, Shooter torments Rainey and makes his life a living hell. Yet, when Rainey learns of the other personality, he seemingly embraces it. At the end of the film, and yes I’m going to really spoil it (sorry), Rainey becomes Shooter in order to kill his ex-wife and her boyfriend and gets a sense of satisfaction out of doing so. Throughout this film, Shooter comes out in order to do things that Rainey didn’t have the guts to do, as Rainey channels his hatred and anger towards his ex-wife through Shooter. I guess this is similar to Eve Black, who comes out to engage in behaviors that Eve White would consider socially unacceptable. At the end of the film, it’s unclear which personality has prevailed. Rainey / Shooter now grows corn on the patch of land where he buried the remains of his wife, and he seemingly taunts the sheriff, challenging him to pin the disappearance on him. Sorry about all the spoilers, but this movie only got a 46% on Rottentomatoes.com. Seriously, it’s not like I spoiled the ending of Citizen Kane or The Sixth Sense.
-Justin Bronstein
Being a little pressed for time and not in my most creative mindset following exams, I watched "Me, Myself and Irene." I actually found that I loathed this movie, and would have much preferred watching something more interesting. I disliked it mainly because I thought it really did not paint an accurate picture of DID. Rather, it made fun of the disorder, when "The Three Faces of Eve" actually conveyed the trauma that the disorder entails. In "Me, Myself and Irene," a man named Charlie develops DID after his wife leaves him. He is a state trooper, and is assigned to take a woman named Irene back to her home. Unbeknownst to him, Irene is not only in trouble with the law, but with a mafia-like group of grumpy rich people. Basically, the main premise of the story is his "battle" between his introverted, passive self Charlie, and his wild, reckless alter-ego Hank. What is unfortunate about the movie is that it is so utterly shallow. The audience instantly knows the reason for his sudden development of DID when provided with the background story, so there is no deeper meaning of any sort to uncover. This is completely different from "The Three Faces of Eve," in which the trauma of Eve's past is uncovered through hypnosis. There were some similarities between the "Eves" and the "Charlies." They were both aware of their alter-egos, and their more passive personality seemed very fearful of their more aggressive one. However, the ways in which they sought treatment were very different, mainly, I think, because of the time difference. In "The Three Faces of Eve," Eve sees a psychoanalyst to help her solve her problem. In "Me, Myself and Irene," Charlie sees a doctor and is given pills to take that will supposedly "fix" his DID. Seeing the two depictions of the disorder was certainly interesting, though I still feel as if I would like to get a more realistic picture of someone with DID. I wonder what life is like for people with DID today, and am definitely interested in seeing more accurate portrayals of it.
-Lilia Rubin
I also used Fight Club to compare alongside The Three Face of Eve. Fight Club is pretty different from The Three Face of Eve, mostly because of its more modern look at Dissociative Identity Disorder. Fight Club is really more of an indictment of modern society and how it can drive the average man into a state of insanity. The narrator was trying hard to find meaning in a modern world by purchasing furniture and items from catalogs that he clearly didn’t need. He didn’t really find meaning in the world until created a second personality, Tyler Durden, who represented the narrator’s vision of the ideal man who made the world work for him rather than the other way around. In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve creates the personalities in order to cope with a traumatic experience that occurred when she was a child. Eve also is having trouble coping with society and her home life, and these multiple personalities also allow her to play out her fantasies as a party girl. She no longer has to be reserved and submissive when she becomes Eve Black. The one thing I have a problem with is how dated the therapy sessions seem to be. The doctor helps Eve recover using some mixture of psychoanalysis and hypnosis, both of which are used scarcely today. Also, once Eve was able to remember the repressed memory she had of kissing her dead grandmother she seemed to immediately recover by turning into Jane for good. This seemed pretty unrealistic. In real life, it would take Eve years of therapy after having this revelation until she could even remotely be considered better. Fight Club has a more modern perspective on the disease and also shows how confusing life would be for a person who believes their second personality is actually a different person. Fight Club also has a way cooler ending than The Three Faces of Eve. If you didn’t know what it was prior to reading this, then my bad.
For my DID comparison, I watched the movie Fight Club. In Fight Club, the narrator meets this guy, Tyler Durden. When the narrator returns home, he finds that his apartment has exploded and he calls up Tyler to meet him at a bar. Tyler moves into whats left of the narrator’s house with the narrator, and the two establish a “fight club”.
The fight club turns into Project Mayham, and when someone dies during a fight, the narrator tries to shut down the project. Then when he notices other fight clubs have started, he checks them out and where someone calls him Tyler Durden. Tyler then explains that he controls the narrator’s body and then leaves the narrator’s life. At two points in the movie, the narrator either believes he has fainted or is knocked on consious by Tyler, and cannot remember any of the destructive things Tyler has done. At the end of the movie, the narrator realizes that he shares the same body as Tyler and when trying to kill Tyler realizes that he is the one holding the gun to his own head and realizes that Tyler and the himself are opposite personalities within one person.
In The Three Faces of Eve, Eve has similar “blackouts” and cannot remember things that “Eve Black” her other identity has done. Eve has two identities, Eve White and Eve Black, and can switch between them on cue. Generally, with DID disorders, people do not know when they are switching between identities and cannot do it on cue.
Most common cases of DID are like those in Fight Club, where people think that are talking to another person who is in their life, when infact it is really them.
-cjones
I also watched the Criminal Minds episode that Joanna watched. I also agree with her that Eve White was just like Adam, where as Eve Black was more like his alter ego, Amanda, except this man did not have 3 different personalities, only two. Adam could not seem to remember some events, just like Eve White could not remember events that had happened when she was a different personality. Both of them had traumatic events, such as child abuse, happen that made one personality come out over the other, for protection. I also realized that just like in the “Three Faces of Eve” Adam’s entire body language changes, as well as his tone of voice, when he switches to Amanda. This happened with Eve White as well when her personality switched. A major difference was that Adam’s alter ego was a girl, but Eve White’s other personalities were of the same sex, which I thought was very interesting. Adam also had knowledge that the other personality did not, such as how to solve a mathematical equation. This was the same in the “Three Faces of Eve” because Eve Black was able to describe some events that Eve White could not. Adam also only had 2 personalities, where Eve had 3. Another and final similarity I noticed was that eventually the DID patients are left with only one personality, but in Adam’s case, his alter ego takes over, and the nicest personality takes over Eve’s body, as Joanna noted.
--Jessica Poirier
I watched the made for TV movie "Sybil." WARNING: this film has a lot of very disturbing images and it's over three hours long. It is also a true story which makes it even harder to watch. The main characters Sybil and Eve have similar stories. Sybil has multiple personalities, about six, and Eve has three. Both of their conditions seem to stem from trauma during their childhoods that the audience learns about during these women's episodes. For Eve, it was when her mother made her kiss her dead grandmother, and for Sybil, it was years of abuse and torture from her mother. I don't know if it is a matter of a good film vs. a bad film or a old film vs. a new film but Sybil's DID is shown more in depth with a lot of detail that The Three Faces of Eve lacked. Sybil had more personalities which varied in age from infant to adult while it appeared that all of Eve's personalities were relatively the same age. Another similarity between Sybil and Eve was that they both experienced "black-outs" while their other personalities were present. Eve talked about black-outs that lasted about a day and Sybil mentions experiencing one that lasted around two years. Sybil could not control when and which of her personalities came out the way that Eve could when her therapist would ask for Eve Black or Jane. Both of these films showcased the vital bond between these women with DIDs and their therapists. A side note on the acting, Sally Fields' performance as Sybil was incredible, and I liked her, I really liked her. Joanne Woodward does a good job as Eve but she did an even better performance as Dr. Wilbur, Sybil's therapist.
Desi Marquant
I watched "Me Myself, and Irene," starring Jim Carrey as a police officer with two distinct personalities. Like Eve White, from "The Three Faces of Eve," Charlie is a quite, reserved man who frequently gets taken advantage of and ignored. Conversley, Hank, like Eve Black, is an extrovert who lives by his own rules, often resulting in trouble. Hank also has a violent side, but this is not present in Eve Black. One main difference between the films is that Jane is the third personality in "The Three Faces of Eve," and there is only two known personalities in the other movie. Jane unlike Eve's other personalities, combines the best features of the two, resulting in a well-rounded person. In both movies, each personality knew of the others but did not want much to do with them. I think that Eve offered a more accurate portrayal of DID because her personality's were not as extreme as Charlie/Hank's. I did not enjoy, "Me, Myself, and Irene," nearly as much as I did, "The Three Faces of Eve." This was due to the fact that it was not realistic because of the plot and storyline. The character of Charlie worked only because the story was so far fetched, however Eve was more believable because she was in a situation that was completely possible. Overall, "The Three Faces of Eve," was a much better film.
Daniella DiDiego
I found The Three Faces of Eve and Fight Club to be very different from one another. I believe that the differences had to do with what John had said; the movies were made at different times, and so their views on DID were reflected the time-period at which they were made. It was interesting to see how the doctor handled Eve’s DID through pyschoanalysis and hypnosis, whereas the unnamed narrator in Fight Club did not even receive help for his problems; his doctor simply thought that the narrator was stressed. The narrator’s original signs for having DID was insomnia, buying random items from magazines and various ads, and waking up in random airplanes and hotel rooms. However, we later found out that the narrator does not sleep because his “other” (Tyler Durden) comes alive at night. The narrator meets Tyler for the first time on one of his plane rides, and from their they become friends and eventually live together. Like other people have said, this is probably the biggest distinction from The Three Faces of Eve and the other portrayals of DID. Instead of being distinct separate personalities that do not come out at the same time, Tyler and the narrator are together most of the time, scheming plans or fighting. The times when the narrator blacks out is usually when Tyler takes drastic measures that the narrator would never do (similar to how Eve Black is more daring than Eve White). For example, Tyler is usually in charge of Project Mayhem, which commits many atrocities like blowing up buildings. I agree with Susannah with that Fight Club portrays DID through the narrator’s eyes; the audience does not realize that Tyler and the narrator are the same person until the very end of the movie. At the end of the movie, the director allowed the audience to see the narrator’s and Tyler’s interactions. For example, we saw Tyler and the narrator fighting with each other, only it looks incredibly awkward watching the narrator getting beat up by an invisible force. Overall, I would recommend watching Fight Club...although I totally just ruined the entire plot twist for the movie...sorry! :)
-Alisha
"Fight Club" and "Three Faces of Eve" are two very different portrayals of dissociative identity disorder. In "Fight Club," the narrator has a second personality who he can see through hallucinations and interacts with. Tyler Durden (the second personality) enters the story as a sort of friend to the main character and they end up living together, and going everywhere and doing everything together. In "Three Faces of Eve," Eve White has “black out spells” in which one of her other two personalities (Eve Black and Jane) emerge. At first, Eve White is unaware of her other personalities, but by the end of the movie she learns how to control which one she brings out. This is different from Tyler who is usually with the main character in "Fight Club." However the main character does sometimes forget what he did recently which is when Tyler takes over his personality and goes and does things. The main character never remembers what he did as Tyler, but usually at a later point Tyler reemerges and tells the main character what they have been up to.
Eve White’s DID was around ever since she was little. She says that she recalls the “black out spells” happening infrequently when she was a child, then they started happening more and more often as she aged. Tyler however entered the main character’s life at a very specific point in the movie. They met each other on a plane and then moved in with each other. He might have been around earlier, but he was not in the main characters consciousness. The main character did however have insomnia and was not very aware of himself for most of the time before Tyler came about, so that might have been when Tyler manifested himself without the main character knowing.
-Laura Leone
I watched The Secrete Window with Johnny Depp. In the movie, Depp plays a character (Mort Rainey ) with DID. I feel like this movie really intensifies the disorder where as The Faces of Eve was a gateway to the disorder. For example, in Three Faces of Eve, Bonnie turns into her multiple personalities whenever Dr. Luther said the name of her other characters (Eve Black, Jane). She does so by nodding her head and suddenly becoming her alter egos-got to love the cheesiness. Although cheesy, we know today that one with DID does not turn into their alter egos by the snap of a finger and a call of the name. Because of these misconceptions in the movie, I feel the the Three Face of Eve portrayed the symptoms of DID a bit unrealistically. Secrete Window, however, portrayed the symptoms in a more realistic light. As Shoko mentioned before, Mort Rainey becomes paranoid, believing a man in a hat is stalking him and his girlfriend. Unlike Eve, Mort only becomes Shooter (his alter personality) when he drinks Jack Daniels. Also, Eve is aware of all her multiple personalities, Mort only realizes that Shooter is actually him when he sees his back, instead of his front reflected in the mirror above the mantelpiece. Not to make this post an essay, but overall, the Secrete Window did a better job at highlighting DID as we know it today.
I feel like something witty should go here but I got nothin'.
Danielle N.
I watched the same episode of Criminal Minds as Joanna did. This episode was quite interesting because it involved a man named "Adam" and his alter ego "Amanda" raping and killing frat boys on Spring Break. In the episode, two dead bodies had been found in hotel rooms, but their ways of death were unknown. The investigators believed that a woman and a man had teamed up to conspire the killing of the frat boys, buy having the woman lure them into a hotel room and then having the man rape and kill them. After much investigation, "Adam", a hotel employee, becomes a suspect because of his aggressive and suspicious behavior towards other guests at the hotel. Through time, it is found that "Adam" was abused as a child by his father and he has been taken in by a woman named Julie. He ends up pushing her off a balcony and calling himself "Amanda" which is how it is determined that he is suffering from DID. Since he was a victim of abuse, his alter ego of "Amanda" was formed to protect him, but in the end she ended up being abusive and a murdered herself. I agree with Joanna's comparison of "Adam" to "Eve White" and "Amanda" to "Eve Black" because they both have opposite personalities that cause them to do different things, be extremely sad and regretful or really aggressive and harsh. Both of the Eves and "Adam" and "Amanda" all had traumatic events that caused them to form alter egos to help cope with their past. In this episode, "Amanda" eventually decides to put "Adam" to sleep because she thinks it's what's best for him, but "Amanda" is put into a psychiatric hospital and taken care of for mental problems. Eve never actually died. Both videos are similar becuase the alteregos injured someone to help protect someone and both alteregos had something against their psychologists.
Lindsey Diranian
p.s sorry this is 4 minutes late!
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