Switching Time: A Doctor’s Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities by Richard Baer

Switching Time: A Doctor’s Harrowing Story of Treating a Woman with 17 Personalities by Richard Baer is a fascinating true story by a therapist who helped a Chicago woman, called Karen, integrate 17 discrete personalities she developed to protect herself from a childhood of sexual abuse. Karen came to Dr. Baer as a suicidally depressed married mother in early 1989. By 1998, Baer had helped Karen face her abusive childhood, manage her marital issues, avoid suicide, and merge all 17 personalities back into one — Karen.

Dr. Baer used copious progress notes, letters, journals, drawings and dreams provided by Karen, and research from the limited field of professional literature on multiple personality disorder to tell Karen’s remarkable story of the human ability to cope with curelty and violence. Even though Switching Time is non-fiction, it reads like a novel, and one you don’t want to put down.