Audiobook12 hours
Switching Time: A Doctor's Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities
Written by Richard Baer
Narrated by Lloyd James
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
4/5
()
About this audiobook
Switching Time is the first story centering on multiple personality disorder to be told by the treating physician. It is the incredible saga of a young woman stranded in unimaginable darkness who, in order to survive, created seventeen different versions of herself.
In 1989, Karen Overhill walked into the office of psychiatrist Richard Baer complaining of depression. She poured out a litany of complaints, but in the disengaged way of someone who has experienced a terrible trauma. Slowly, Baer began to peel back the layers, eventually learning that Karen had been the victim of childhood sexual abuse. As time passed, though, his patient worsened and began to talk continually of suicide. Details of her abuse accumulated until he saw, via hypnosis, the true dimension of what Karen had suffered.
Baer was at a loss to explain Karen's sanity, precarious though it was, until he received a letter from a little girl, Claire. One by one, Karen's "alters" began showing themselves-men, women, young boys, a toddler, black, white, vicious, nurturing, prim, licentious. And their "stepping out" confronted Baer with the challenge of a lifetime. Somehow, to save Karen, he would have to gain the trust of her alters in order to destroy them.
In 1989, Karen Overhill walked into the office of psychiatrist Richard Baer complaining of depression. She poured out a litany of complaints, but in the disengaged way of someone who has experienced a terrible trauma. Slowly, Baer began to peel back the layers, eventually learning that Karen had been the victim of childhood sexual abuse. As time passed, though, his patient worsened and began to talk continually of suicide. Details of her abuse accumulated until he saw, via hypnosis, the true dimension of what Karen had suffered.
Baer was at a loss to explain Karen's sanity, precarious though it was, until he received a letter from a little girl, Claire. One by one, Karen's "alters" began showing themselves-men, women, young boys, a toddler, black, white, vicious, nurturing, prim, licentious. And their "stepping out" confronted Baer with the challenge of a lifetime. Somehow, to save Karen, he would have to gain the trust of her alters in order to destroy them.
Related to Switching Time
Related audiobooks
Visions, Trips, and Crowded Rooms: Who and What You See Before You Die Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Sister of Darkness: The Chronicles of a Modern Exorcist Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Another Kind of Madness: A Journey Through the Stigma and Hope of Mental Illness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ghost Boy: The Miraculous Escape of a Misdiagnosed Boy Trapped Inside His Own Body Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5January First: A Child's Descent into Madness and Her Father's Struggle to Save Her Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Lobotomy: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey Through Madness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Suicidal: Why We Kill Ourselves Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Manic: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Divided Minds: Twin Sisters and Their Journey Through Schizophrenia Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Weekends at Bellevue Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Crazy: A Father's Search Through America's Mental Health Madness Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I'll Be OK, It's Just A Hole In My Head Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDevil in the Details: Scenes from an Obsessive Girlhood Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Dark Side of Innocence: Growing Up Bipolar Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dirty Mary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Irritable Hearts: A PTSD Love Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Denial: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Lithium: A Doctor, a Drug, and a Breakthrough Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Slave Across the Street: The True Story of How an American Teen Survived the World of Human Trafficking Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Estranged: Leaving Family and Finding Home Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5My Lovely Wife in the Psych Ward: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Some Girls: My Life in a Harem Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Obsessed: A Memoir of My Life with OCD Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Everything You Ever Wanted: A Memoir Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Medical Biographies For You
I Wasn't Strong Like This When I Started Out: True Stories of Becoming a Nurse Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Tennis Partner: A Doctor's Story of Friendship and Loss Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5All in Her Head: The Truth and Lies Early Medicine Taught Us About Women’s Bodies and Why It Matters Today Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5God in the ICU: The inspirational biography of a praying doctor Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Women in White Coats: How the First Women Doctors Changed the World of Medicine Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic's Wild Ride to the Edge and Back Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Healthy Brain, Happy Life: A Personal Program to Activate Your Brain and Do Everything Better Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Call the Midwife: A Memoir of Birth, Joy, and Hard Times Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The 2% Way: How a Philosophy of Small Improvements Took Me to Oxford, the NFL, and Neurosurgery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Facemaker: A Visionary Surgeon's Battle to Mend the Disfigured Soldiers of World War I Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Mengele: The Complete Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Life Is a 4-Letter Word: Laughing and Learning Through 40 Life Lessons Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Unthinkable: An Extraordinary Journey Through the World's Strangest Brains Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Father's Brain: Life in the Shadow of Alzheimer's Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Confessions of a Surgeon: The Good, the Bad, and the Complicated...Life Behind the O.R. Doors Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Brave New Medicine: A Doctor’s Unconventional Path to Healing Her Autoimmune Illness Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5In My Own Way Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Big Lie: How One Doctor’s Medical Fraud Launched Today’s Deadly Anti-Vax Movement Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Valedictorian of Being Dead: The True Story of Dying Ten Times to Live Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Double Dose of Dilaudid: Real Stories from a Small-Town ER Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5My Lobotomy: A Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Reason I Jump: The Inner Voice of a Thirteen-Year-Old Boy with Autism Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Anatomy of an Illness as Perceived by the Patient: Reflections on Healing and Regeneration Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Neuroscientist Who Lost Her Mind: My Tale of Madness and Recovery Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Year of the Nurse: A 2020 Covid-19 Pandemic Memoir Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Oh Sh*t, I Almost Killed You!: A Little Book of Big Things Nursing School Forgot to Teach You Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi - Book Summary Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Code Gray: Death, Life, and Uncertainty in the ER Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5
Related categories
Reviews for Switching Time
Rating: 4.023364420560747 out of 5 stars
4/5
107 ratings12 reviews
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5I appreciate the detail and the candor of his work. He was not afraid to describe his fears and the moments if uncertainty. As a physician, I know these moments well and it is reassuring to hear from others of their own difficulties.
To see in Karen the ways in which the brain works to caretake itself is nothing short of fantastic. To see how each alter can have it’s own physicality and it’s own physiology requires me to think again about what it is I think I understand.
Thank you for writing this book. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Imagine pretending to be asleep in order to overhear conversations between your family and friends, so that you can learn your mother's name, or where your husband works. Karen was continually searching for ways to hide her obvious insanity until a desperate call to a crisis hot-line in 1989, led her to Dr. Richard Baer. The complexities of the human mind have never before been revealed with such detail, dimension and compassion. Horrific, unimaginable abuse had forced Karen to create different personalities, with widely varying characteristics and abilities. As new personalities were introduced, the depth of Karen's suffering became obvious, as did the fear that the darkness would consume her. With careful guidance and unwavering patience, Dr. Baer was able to gain the individual trust of the seventeen alters, convincing each that although they had been created to protect Karen, her very survival now depended upon their complete and total destruction. . This is an amazing read! The level of abuse, the detailed characteristics of the created alters are almost beyond comprehension and leads you to question how it is someone that has suffered so greatly could ever be whole again. Which is, yet another testament to the human will to survive. Switching Time is by far one of the best non-fiction books I have read in years. Just as the alters were created as a means of survival, during the darkest and most frightening experiences imaginable, their destruction became a necessary step in the journey from divided survival to whole living. I highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys a compelling, thought provoking, inspiring read... absolutely 5 stars!Happy Reading!RJ
- Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Dr. Baer's book is one of the most informative books on MPD/DID I have ever had the opportunity to read. Not only is this book extremely interesting and easy to understand, it is groundbreaking. This is one of the first, if not the first, book to ever detail the process by which a patient is cured of MPD. Dr. Baer dives right into uncharted territory in his treatment of Karen and her seventeen alternate personalities. The abuse Karen went through is disturbing enough to be unbelievable. At the hands of her sadistic family, she coped with her pain in the only way she could, by creating alters who could deal with it. This book describes in detail interviews with Karen's alters and their explanations for why they were created in the first place. I strongly urge anyone with any interest/experience with MPD to give this book a chance. It should be a must read for everyone in the mental health industry.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This was a strange read. It was reminiscent of Sybil, which made me skeptical as Sybil was found to be a fraud years after the book and movie. Apart from the similarity to Sybil the story of Karen is interesting. The descriptions of abuse are heartbreaking. The description of the therapy sessions by Dr. Baer keep the story and context flowing, which I appreciated.
The book is well written. I cannot say it has made a believer out of me. It has convinced me that Dr. Baer believes in the story he wrote. In particular it was his afterward that persuades the reader that he documented this case all the way through and truly believed in the multiple personalities of Karen. - Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This book was amazing - right from the start, the story gripped me and i wasn't able to put it down.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Interesting yet disturbing account of real multiple personality patient, the abuse she suffered, and her journey to recovery.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5It is hard to beilive this is the true story of a woman who was so abused as a child that she developed 17 distint personalities. When Dr. Baer first met Karen he couldn't quite figure out wht was wrong with her other than she appeared severely depressed and ready to commit suicide. As the weeks turn to years Dr. Bear begins to learn that Karen's "loss of time" is really the times when her different personalities are out. As the years go by Dr. Bear and Karen work towards recovery together by getting to know each and every alter. A great book that is hard to put down.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Anybody who is interested in psychology and human behavior will find "Switching Time" to be an interesting read. The book details the story of a severely abused woman who developed 17 personalities in order to cope with her pain. The book is written in a very easy to read fashion and once you start it's hard to put it down. At times it gets hard to read about the abuse though and it's almost impossible to understand how anyone could hurt a person like that. On the other hand I found it very interesting to learn more about the integration process that was used to make a whole out of all the different personalities again. Fascinating work!
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This was a fascinating account of one therapist's experience treating a woman with 17 personalities. The story was interesting, although some of the accounts of abuse suffered by this woman were difficult to read and made me feel a bit like a voyeur. Still, the work that Dr. Baer did in helping "Karen" to integrate her personalities was monumental. I can't imagine embarking on a task that would take close to two decades to reach a conclusions. The mind is a fascinating thing.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I found this book at the local bookshop, and thought it would be interesting. This book explaines how one woman who had multiple personalities was able to cope with her life and become whole again. Reading about portions of the abuse this woman suffered as a child, was very emotional. This is not a light read, this is something that will make you feel compassion for this woman, and want to protect every child you see. This is definately a story that will stick in my mind forever.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5This story is of a young woman coming to a psychologist for seemingly a case of depression. What emerges is far more harrowing and terrifying. Over a period of years, it becomes apparent that there are 17 distinct personalities living inside her. They were necessary for her to survive the horrendous abuse she endured as a child. Baer does an excellent job of telling enough to help the reader understand the circumstances that precipitated the mental illness of his patient, but did not get morbid or voyeuristic in the details. We are witnesses of the process of integration of the personalities which is told in a very readable and engrossing form. I couldn't help but get drawn into the process and its incredible complexity and difficulty. Excellent read.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Imagine pretending to be asleep in order to overhear conversations between your family and friends, so that you can learn your mother's name, or where your husband works. Karen was continually searching for ways to hide her obvious insanity until a desperate call to a crisis hot-line in 1989, led her to Dr. Richard Baer. The complexities of the human mind have never before been revealed with such detail, dimension and compassion. Horrific, unimaginable abuse had forced Karen to create different personalities, with widely varying characteristics and abilities. As new personalities were introduced, the depth of Karen's suffering became obvious, as did the fear that the darkness would consume her. With careful guidance and unwavering patience, Dr. Baer was able to gain the individual trust of the seventeen alters, convincing each that although they had been created to protect Karen, her very survival now depended upon their complete and total destruction. . This is an amazing read! The level of abuse, the detailed characteristics of the created alters are almost beyond comprehension and leads you to question how it is someone that has suffered so greatly could ever be whole again. Which is, yet another testament to the human will to survive. Switching Time is by far one of the best non-fiction books I have read in years. Just as the alters were created as a means of survival, during the darkest and most frightening experiences imaginable, their destruction became a necessary step in the journey from divided survival to whole living. I highly recommend this book to anyone that enjoys a compelling, thought provoking, inspiring read... absolutely 5 stars!Happy Reading!RJ