A Doctor's Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities
November 26, 2007
Lloyd James delivers a powerful, honest and compassionate reading of Dr. Baer's emotional experiences treating a highly unstable woman with 17 different personalities. Told from Baer's perspective, the gripping accounts are brought to life in a remarkably understated reading by James that showcases his inherent performance ability. With a soft, almost unnoticeable change in tone, James perfectly captures patient Karen Overhill's loneliness and heartache. His voice is firm and unwavering, creating a poignant experience for the listeners, who will immediately find themselves entrenched in the powerful story. The story could easily have been overdone in narration, with the abundance of personas that enter the picture; however, James remains true to Baer's written word, underplaying the roles and letting the story speak for itself. An incredibly personal account that will have listeners feeling like a fly on the wall inside Baer's office. Simultaneous release with Crown hardcover (reviewed online).
October 1, 2007
Psychotherapist Baer's compelling and engaging memoir traces his journey through the treatment of a patient's extraordinary case of multiple personality disorder. When Karen Overhill seeks out Baer's help for her depression, she soon divulges lost hours and past abuse. Baer soon receives a letter from seven-year-old Claire who "lives inside Karen," and discovers there are more personalities, or "alters," living within adults, teenagers, children, boys and girls. Realizing that all he knows about multiple personalities he's gleaned from journals and textbooks rather than clinical experience, Baer uses hypnosis to communicate with the alters, discovering the horrendous abuse that led to the creation of each personality. By nurturing them-especially the children-over several years and with the aid of Holdon and Katherine, the alters who function as parent/guardians to the rest, Baer guides them to accept integration. Meanwhile, Baer's marriage dissolves and budget cuts force him to release all his patients except Karen, for whom he comes to care deeply. In this moving and informative memoir, Baer gives readers fascinating insights not only into a rare disease, but also the journey of two individuals determined to understand and overcome all the odds.
August 1, 2007
This riveting first-person narrative of a purportedly authentic instance of psychotherapy reads more like a novel than a case study. Baer, a Chicago psychiatrist and former president of the Illinois Psychiatric Society, delivers a blow-by-blow account of his sessions with a woman named Karen. Showing symptoms of depression and complaining of spousal abuse, Karen initially fails to make much progress; then Baer discovers that she has "alters," or alternate personalities, each of which came into being at different times in response to the horrific childhood abuse that Karen experienced. As the alters reveal themselves in therapeutic sessions and via letters, Baer gradually understands Karen. Ultimately, he helped her destroy her alters so that Karen could become whole. This fascinating, extraordinarily detailed narrative will appeal to mental health professionals as well as general readers who enjoy books such as Flora Rheta Schreiber's "Sybil" and Truddi Chase and Robert A. Phillips's "When Rabbit Howls". Recommended for public and academic libraries. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 6/15/07.]Lynne F. Maxwell, Villanova Univ. Sch. of Law, PA
Copyright 2007 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
September 15, 2007
Nearly 19 years after meeting Karen Overhill in his waiting room in south suburban Chicago, both psychiatrist Baer and Karen feel she is mentally healthy enough to publish their work together in delving for and then integrating her 17 personalities. At first, it wasnt apparent that Karen had multiple personality disorder (MPD). She sought Baers help, she said, for depression. After getting off to a rocky startshe skipped sessions, and he didnt press for complianceBaer noticed there was a lot more going on. As Karen related more and more stories about her abusive childhood (Baer has more than 5,000 of her letters and journal entries), the others in her began to emerge. The unspeakable horrors she suffered at the hands of her father, grandfather, and family friends leave little doubt as to why Karen survived as she did, by blocking off portions of her personality to protect herself from total psychic annihilation. As with other, similar accounts of MPD, theres a lot of grim experience to get through before the happy-ending unification arrives.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)