The Three Faces of Eve Psychology Analysis

The Three Faces of Eve, the 1957-true-based Hollywood film, deals with the case based on a true woman’s mental illness and her treatment as well. In the film, she is presented as “Eve White”, who is a shy wife and mother, just a common woman of the era. This woman is subject to severe headaches and blackouts, that’s why she is sent to see Dr. Luther, a personality psychiatrist. During a conversation with his patient a new personality, “Eve Black” emerges, at this stage “Eve White” self is unaware of “Eve Black”, but Eve Black knows everything about Eve White. “Eve Black” had an extroverted, insinuating and liberal personality, she liked to smoke, dance and date men, she was single.

After “Eve Black” becomes the dominate personality, Eve White’s husband abandons her and their daughter. After that “Eve White” is hospitalized after “Eve Black” tried to kill Eve White’s daughter. After that, Dr. Luther considered that both self’s personalities are inadequate, through hypnosis he attempts to get a traumatic event in Eve’s childhood, this is when he finds out that, when she was six, her grandmother died and every relative was supposed to kiss the dead body, as a way of making it easier to let go. According to the film, that was the reason she split into several personalities. During a hypnosis session, a third personality arrives, “Jane”, who was more stable. This personality eventually merges the other two into a single one, becoming a normal person again. Later she marries again and reunites with her daughter.

During the film, some persuasive fact was that Dr. Luther asked for some other doctor’s opinion for the case, given the situation of not having previous studies available nor the necessary reference information at that time.

The film reveals different methods to convey messages such as Dramatic, for example, the way in which the switch from one personality to another was made, understanding this was a way for the audience to know that this was happening, the acting and the sound. Another method was Humorous, an example is a way they presented “Eve Black” and how she behaved in the film, sometimes when she appeared, the background music was insinuating, and another one was when “Eve Black” tried to dance with her doctor. The last method was Factual when she was taken as a subject of studies and also when they showed all the symptoms Eve had, such as headaches, hearing voices, amnesia, and blackouts.

Humor was used as a way of establishing the difference between one personality and another, thereby, the audience could perceive clearly the difference between the different personalities the character had.

Some techniques are used to set the mood /give insight into the character’s mood state, for example, sometimes “Eve White” cried as an evidence of sadness and worries when she was talking to Dr. Luther. The film also showed an “Eve Black” always happy when she danced with the music. “Eve Black”, by lying in bed, she showed she was also mad because she was tired of being in the mental hospital. She cried when her husband yields at her. The movie used music combination to show saddens.

This film reveals a mental illness called “Dissociative Personality Disorder” (DPD), in which a person could adopt up to 100 new identities. Each self or identity, simultaneously coexisting with each other. One hundred alters is considered extreme, but cases around 15 is an average. In some cases, the identities can be complete and they have their own physical gestures, the tone of voice. The transition from one personality into another, it is called a switch. Even though the switch is usually quick, it may be exaggerated in movies, just like happened in this case.

As in the real-life case of DPD, just like from which this film was based upon, rarely manifest so few personalities, actually, the woman who inspired this movie, in fact, said that she had twenty-six different personalities inside her psyche. Others documented cases run into dozens of personality manifestations. The portrayals of this mental illness in this film could be considered positive somehow because in the 50’s there was not enough information about this mental illness. As a start, the way to present the symptoms, the complete personalities, could be considered somewhat right but not accurate.

The portrayal showed that and early-childhood trauma was the cause for this woman to have DPD, but people with dissociative identity disorder tend to have histories of recurring life-threatening traumas such as physical or sexual abuse before age of nine, and the cause may also be extreme emotional abuse or neglect. So, in this case, the abusive husband’s treatment could have been the reason too.   

Work cited page

David Schuette (2016, November 22). Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtBpM2Z98Xs

Wilcox, D. L., Cameron, G. T., & Reber, B. H. (2014). Public relations: Strategies and tactics (11th ed.). Boston, MA, United States: Pearson College Div.