The study, which was published in 1957, declared their therapy successful, but for Chris Sizemore there were further struggles ahead. Jane died and more personalities took over, always in groups of three. They would function together for a time, then drop away and be replaced by others. Their ages would vary, as did their characters and even their physical health. “The Purple Lady”, who appeared when Chris Sizemore was 46, felt herself to be 58 years old, suffered from joint pain and sprayed her hair grey, while “the Strawberry Girl” thought she was 21, went barefoot and ate only strawberries.

Each switch would be accompanied by headaches and facial contortions, which her second husband Don had initially mistaken for signs of a stroke. She struggled to hold down a job and attempted suicide. In 1970 the family moved to Fairfax, Virginia, where she finally made progress under the care of Tony Tsitos, her eighth therapist.

For four years the two of them worked at reintegrating her various “psychic sisters” to form a coherent personality. “For me, being one person isn’t easy”, she told an interviewer in 1976. The final “sister”, who was mute, emerged briefly and then receded while she was trying to finish her autobiography, I Am Eve, written with the help of a cousin.

The book was an attempt to reclaim her identity from Thigpen, Cleckley and the mythmaking of Hollywood. Yet when the actress Sissy Spacek expressed an interest in making a film based on Chris Sizemore’s follow-up work, A Mind of My Own (1989), Twentieth Century Fox pointed to the wording of the 1956 contract that she had signed for The Three Faces of Eve, which surrendered the rights to “all versions of my life story heretofore published or hereafter published” to the studio. Chris Sizemore’s attorney contended that the contract proved she had not been in her right mind when she signed it: Eve White, Eve Black and Jane had all added their names. The case was settled out of court.