One afternoon in 1989, Karen Overhill walks into psychiatrist Richard Baer\u2019s office complaining of vague physical pains and depression. Odder still, she reveals that she\u2019s suffering from a persistent memory problem. Routinely, she \u201closes\u201d parts of her day, finding herself in places she doesn\u2019t remember going to or being told about conversations she doesn\u2019t remember having. Her problems are so pervasive that she often feels like an impersonator in her own life; she doesn\u2019t recognize the people who call themselves her friends, and she can\u2019t even remember being intimate with her own husband. <\/p>\n
Baer recognizes that Karen is on the verge of suicide and, while using various medications to keep her alive, tries to discover the root cause of her strange complaints. It\u2019s the work of months, and then years, to gain Karen\u2019s trust and learn the true extent of the trauma buried in her past. What she eventually reveals is nearly beyond belief, a narrative of a childhood spent grappling with unimaginable horror. How has Karen survived with even a tenuous grasp on sanity?<\/p>\n
Then Baer receives an envelope in the mail. It\u2019s marked with Karen\u2019s return address but contains a letter from a little girl who writes that she\u2019s seven years old and lives inside of Karen. Soon Baer receives letters from others claiming to be parts of Karen. Under hypnosis, these alternate Karen personalities reveal themselves in shocking variety and with undeniable traits \u2013 both physical and psychological. One \u201calter\u201d is a young boy filled with frightening aggression; another an adult male who considers himself Karen\u2019s protector; and a third a sassy flirt who says she emerges when Karen has sex. It\u2019s only by compartmentalizing her pain, guilt, and fear in this fashion \u2013 by \u201cswitching time\u201d with alternate selves as the situation warrants \u2013 that Karen has been able to function since childhood. <\/p>\n
Realizing that his patient represents an extreme case of multiple personality disorder, Baer faces the daunting task of creating a therapy that will make Karen whole again. Somehow, in fact, he must gain the trust of each of Karen\u2019s seventeen \u201calters\u201d and convince them of the necessity of their own annihilation.<\/p>\n
As powerful as Sibyl or The Three Faces of Eve, Switching Time is the first complete account of such therapy to be told from the perspective of the treating physician, a stunningly devoted healer who worked selflessly for decades so that Karen could one day live as a single human being. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One afternoon in 1989, Karen Overhill walks into psychiatrist Richard Baer\u2019s office complaining of vague physical pains and depression. Odder still, she reveals that she\u2019s suffering from a persistent memory problem. Routinely, she \u201closes\u201d parts of her day, finding herself in places she doesn\u2019t remember going to or being told about conversations she doesn\u2019t remember […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"layout2.php","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-49","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":857,"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/49\/revisions\/857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.switchingtime.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}