Though don’t you think it should have been “minds” instead of “faces?” Oh well, I think it was a play on old news stories related to the 1970s case of Billy Milligan. He’s one of the most prolific instances of multiple personalities, known today as DID (dissociative identify disorder), and his story is a wild one.
I mean, all things have to start somewhere, but I can only imagine what the public opinion was on this case on a larger scale. Especially in Ohio, where it all went down. To give you an understanding of how this all started, Billy Milligan committed four rapes across the Ohio State University campus before being caught. Very early on, it was clear to Billy’s lawyers that something was off with Billy. He would seem to slip in and out of time, exhibiting different personality traits each time. It was then decided to use the insanity plea, but also bring in the experts. A psychologist didn’t need long to determine that Billy likely had multiple personalities.
It was from there that they brought in the psychologist who was best known for working with Sybil, the first widely renowned case of multiple personalities. She was able to uncover at least six personalities and at that point Milligan’s trial was to be pushed so he could be observed and treated at a facility. Half the people that Billy encountered over the course of this whole publicized ordeal were really trying to fuse Billy back together and help him become a whole person again, mentally. The other half didn’t believe a word he said and made it their mission to treat him for all other sorts of mental illnesses that he simply did not have. I wonder if things had turned out differently if everything would have remained consistent. I think a person can only get burned so many times before they give up and fly the coop like he did.
What I didn’t like about this documentary series was that it did a pretty decent job of planting doubt in the viewers head about whether or not Billy had DID. They spent a considerable amount of time with interviewees trying to make it seem like Billy was just trying to pull the wool over everyone’s eyes. I agree that yes, he should be punished for what he did to those women, but there is a way to do that while also properly treating someone whose suffered with mental illness almost their entire life. I don’t think Billy was faking it, and who’s to say what happened later in life is factual or not. Only he has the real answers to those quetions.
Despite not being fully satisfied with the docuseries, I was still just as fascinated as I was after reading Daniel Keyes’ novel (though again, this docuseries planted doubts about the validity of that prose). I am even more interested now to see how the Apple TV+ series, The Crowded Room, turns out. I know that they definitely added some more fiction to the series – heck, they didn’t even use Milligan’s real name – but I’m sure there will be quite a few parallels that stand out. I’ll obviously be reporting back once I’ve watched it, so stay tuned.