---

My Imp made me do it!

---

In the 1957 film The Three Faces of Eve (Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation), Joanne Woodward put in an Oscar-winning performance as a woman with a multiple personality disorder who, at various times, called herself Eve White, Eve Black, and Jane.

     Eve White was a good citizen, a dutiful and decent but unhappy wife and mother who occasionally had severe headaches and blackouts. During her blackouts, Eve Black would take over her personality. Eve Black was an uninhibited, self-centered imp who wanted to have fun regardless of others. She would sneak away to a local club to dance, sing, flirt, drink, and smoke. She once tried to strangle her young daughter, who she felt prevented her from having fun.

     Eve Black knew who Eve White was, and thought she was a dope, a sap. But Eve White had no recollection of anything about Eve Black or her behavior during her episodic appearances. For instance, when Eve Black went on a shopping spree and ordered extravagant, low-cut gowns, and then Eve White and her husband later received the delivery with the bill, she had no memory of buying the dresses. When Eve White considered Eve Black’s behavior, she strongly disapproved.

     The Jane personality emerged toward the end of the film, after long psychiatric intervention. Jane was a successfully integrated, calm and mature woman with a happy gleam in her eye. She accepted and valued all of herself, and allowed both her “inner citizen” and her “inner imp” to peacefully coexist without needing to flip from one to the other.

Move over, Freud and Berne

     What language can we use to understand this film’s main character?

     Freud identified the id, the ego, and the superego as the three basic structures of personality. Presumably, the psychiatrists who treated the real “Eve” used Freudian terms to explain multiple personality disorder. Did Eve Black represent the id? Did Eve White represent the superego? Or some form of the ego? Regardless of the correct answers, these terms seem academic and obscure, offering the average moviegoer labels rather than deep insight into the subject.

     Eric Berne developed a psychological vocabulary using more common terms to describe roughly the same three aspects of personality. Berne ’s language—the “inner child,” the “inner adult,” and the “inner parent”—is intuitively more understandable. But Berne ’s writings reveal that he meant these terms to have very specific meanings that are narrow compared with the complex experience of being a child, adult, or parent in our society. Unfortunately, because most people learn best by reference to their own life experiences rather than textbook definitions, these terms have become muddled in general usage. The “inner child” is the one Bernean term that has really caught on, offering us an experience-based awareness of one important piece of the puzzle of who we are. 

     The Three Faces of Eve was intended as a case study to educate people about multiple personality disorder. But with all due respect to Doctors Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M. Cleckley, who did remarkable, trail-blazing work to heal their client and showed excellent drive in publishing their findings, and to Christine Costner Sizemore, the brave woman with multiple personality disorder who, by her own account, suffered from the disorder far longer than the film suggests, I look at this film more as a work of literature. As such, it provides a brilliant analysis of normal personality structure. The film may not reveal all there is to say about the human personality, but what it does reveal is a big step up from current street-level social discourse. In addition, it suggests to my ear language so familiar, unambiguous, and relatable to everyday life that everyone, even people who will never take time to see the film, people who will never have any notion of what multiple personality disorder is, people who hear the terms only as second-hand sound bites will be able to use them intuitively to peer into both self and society through the lens of their own complex experience and be enlightened.

The Imp and the Citizen

     You may not have multiple personality disorder, but you probably have first-hand experience with your inner Imp. An imp, in everyday usage, is a mischievous child. Similarly, the inner Imp is happy but self-centered; it just wants to play and have fun, regardless of how its behavior affects others. It is like Berne ’s “inner child” only more one-dimensional. It does not normally intend to cause harm to others, but it does not worry about other people’s feelings, either. Imps operate on feelings and urges, impulses and desires. Imps like to joke and tease and flirt and especially to get attention, praise, and approval.

     The Three Faces of Eve shows us that the Imp functions as a living entity inside our personalities. It needs time and attention and a chance to express itself daily, often through forms of fun such as joking around, goofing off, and theatrics. When the Imp within us is not allowed to get its share of attention and praise on a daily basis, it desperately seeks ways to barge uninvited into our personalities for its own survival. It may, like Eve Black, grab control of our behavior overtly, or it may pose as our Citizen and play a little underhanded game or two (see Berne ’s Games People Play). When the Imp is desperate enough to grab control, it often disdainfully disregards the Citizen, whom it usually blames for excluding it from the party of life.

     The outcast Imp is the internal character who makes the “Freudian slip” by blurting out an unintended insult in a social setting. The outcast Imp is also the one who, just for the momentary fun of it, tempts the dieting Citizen, who is struggling so hard to eat what she “should” eat, to indulge in that bag of cookies or have just a little slice of pie. And the outcast Imp is the one who, to get a momentary sense of power and victory after feeling beaten down for so long, may pick up a gun and shoot someone impulsively, while the tired and beleaguered Citizen, shocked by his own behavior, thought he carried a gun strictly for lawful self-defense. “My Imp made me do it!” is the hyper-Citizen’s plea.

     As a member of American society, you’ve no doubt had a great deal of experience with your Citizen. In common language, a citizen is somebody who lives in a civilized society, plays responsible roles in that society, and follows the society’s rules. Citizens are socialized by their environments to conform to the needs of others, so they operate according to shoulds and shouldn’ts, and in a broader sense, according to their consideration of others and their interpretations of rights and responsibilities. The inner Citizen, which functions as an entity inside your personality, is much the same. It tries to do what it is supposed to do according to rules of family, workplace or school, religion or spiritual contract, social contract, and peer culture, and it expects certain social rewards in return.

Our Hyper-Citizen Culture

     American life today is undergirded, interlarded, and overburdened with structured Citizen activities and responsibilities. We’re supposed to perform at peak levels of fine-tuned efficiency every day at work or at school, do ridiculous amounts of homework or overtime, and then behave as upstanding superpeople the rest of the day. We’re supposed to cooperate but be strong individuals, give in to adult pressure to get straight A’s but not succumb to peer pressure, dress for success but be authentic. If we need to stare off and channel surf after a long day’s unsatisfying work, we are to think of ourselves as lazy “couch potatoes.” We don’t understand why we can’t bring ourselves to use those loafing minutes to work out on our treadmill (hey—maybe it’s because we’re not super enough Citizens, and need to push ourselves even harder!). We’re not even supposed to need a full night’s sleep, a relaxing weekend, a seventh day of rest, or a day off when we get sick anymore. And above all, we are supposed to love our work, even though—for the majority—our Imps feel excluded on the job.

     Working parents are expected to give their best efforts to their companies and offer whatever is left over to their spouses and kids. But when they get home from their intense workdays, parents who desperately need to let their own Imps out to play still must make dinner and do more chores, leaving little energy to give to others. So our children are being cheated and turned into responsible young hyper-Citizens with increasingly enraged hidden Imps. We shouldn’t be so surprised that sex, alcohol, and rave parties are some of their secret getaways.

     America today exhorts us to exhaust ourselves as hyper-Citizens, cheating us out of our Imp time by labeling Imp behavior as “unproductive.” Maybe we can chalk it up to our Puritanical national roots. Or maybe we’re so consumed by notions of maintaining global competitiveness and being #1 (whatever that means) that we’ve made national economic superiority prerequisite in our collective concept of “the good life” or “the American dream.” As if none of us could find happiness if we all slowed down a little and let some other country or two move ahead of us. National “Citizenitis” prevents any chance of our living balanced lives.

     There are so many red flags being raised by our hyper-Citizen-desperate-Imp society that it’s not funny. Note well our record levels of obesity, especially childhood obesity; our worn-out sex lives, ground to a near-halt as we strain to be politically correct Citizens together; a majority of otherwise mature adults driving like maniacs; a dramatic increase in grade school sexual activity; a large percentage of high school and college students so alienated from their Imps that they have no idea what their real interests are, and are not at all sure they want to join the legitimate adult world; the dramatic rise of child porn and myriad other forms of child abuse and neglect, to name but a few. These red flags signal a grossly unbalanced social philosophy. How many kids out there with drugs and guns in the classroom and suicide pacts will it take until we hear what they are trying desperately to tell us— America needs an extreme makeover! Citizens, invite your Imps back to the party and give them some of the spotlight before they crash the party and ruin us all!

Jane

     Like Jane in The Three Faces of Eve, our society needs to learn both to value the productivity of its citizens and to honor their basic human need for more unproductive relaxation and fun time. Where Eve White and Eve Black represent the complete divorce of Citizen and Imp (with alternating custody of her body), Jane represents the happy marriage of the Citizen and Imp within the personality. Similarly, our society needs to start valuing this kind of marriage by rewarding a healthier balance of Citizen and Imp activities, rather than rewarding hyper-Citizen behavior while trying to over-regulate, discourage, or even stamp out Impishness.

     As human beings, we are more than these two entities. We have the ability to observe them in ourselves, to distance ourselves from them, and to re-evaluate their worth and proper roles in our personalities. We may have been taught that our Citizen is good and our Imp is basically bad or a trouble-maker ... or that the Imp is to be tolerated or kept underground. But we don’t have to go on believing what we were once taught. It’s time to Impify!

     Maybe the best place to begin morphing America into a healthier, more mature and stable society is to observe where your own individual Imp is being squelched by your over-active Citizen; where it has been squelched by your social environment, including institutions and individuals; and where it is popping up inappropriately in your life. Next, you might look for healthier ways to express your Imp, letting your Citizen chill out a little more often. Finally, you might need to think about how social groups and institutions are impinging on your Imp, and how to organize with other Impifiers to raise those issues. For hyper-Citizens, small steps toward Impification will feel surprisingly good.

---

Karen Field Bolek is a freelance editor and writer, a self-styled philosopher, and a futurist. She can be reached at karen.bolek@comcast.net.

---

Next Article

Return to This Month's Index

Go to the Home Page