Identifying stressors is not as easy for most people as it was in Janet’s case. While some of us can point to different stress factors that have occurred recently in our lives, others have absolutely no idea why we are stressed. In some cases, the original stressor can be something that happened in our childhood.

In the film “The Three Faces of Eve,” a woman is depicted as having a “split personality disorder.” The film follows this very usual psychological disorder until they get to the root of the problem which was the fact that she was made to kiss the face of her dead grandmother as she lay in her coffin. This was not done as a form of abuse, but was a cultural belief. Her mother, who made her kiss the dead woman’s face, did not do this to abuse her child, but believed that by kissing the face of the dead, it would cause you not to miss them and for them not to haunt you.

Unfortunately, the trauma that this girl endured caused her so much stress that she actually felt it necessary to retreat into her own mind and develops other “personalities” who usually emerged whenever she was under any sort of stress. The personalities took over her life and Eve had no recollection of what the personalities were doing when she was “out of it.” She would simply black out and one of the personalities that she created in her own mind, would take over for her.

The film ended, of course, with the woman being helped. The simple recollection of the incident in her childhood that had been buried in her mind was able to “cure” her of her split personality disorder. She no longer needed the personalities that she created to help her cope with stress in life.