Christine Sizemore was reassuringly normal for a lady who changed the history of Psychology. No glitz, no glamour, just a petite figure who spoke quietly and confidently through the slide show of her art. The paintings were of such a variety of styles and skills that it was difficult to reconcile this to the knowledge that a single person had painted them all. This was when I realised that this was not someone who had done painting-by-numbers – these were all really fashioned by different people at different times. When she commented on one painting that she said she hadn’t remembered doing, it seemed to make perfect sense (being middle-aged and forgetful) until you realised that she couldn’t remember who (of the people with whom she’d shared her life for forty years) had done it.

After the slide show, she spent over an hour answering questions on her life with the ‘alters’. Once again there was no unnecessary drama – just a factual recounting of her experiences with these people. The audience of students was attentive and respectful – one thousand bright young things – captivated by what they were listening to, and unusually quiet. There was no inappropriate and unnecessary chatter. Like me, they were overwhelmed by what they were hearing, the story of a very unusual life, recounted with sensitivity and humour. There was no Hollywood drama, unlike the film we are all so fond of – the artistic licence that made the film so fascinating was absent, and in its absence, the true story was just as appealing, told, as it was, from the perspective of the woman whose life it was. The trauma that triggered the ‘splitting’ (not mentioned in the film or in the article we use to teach it) convincingly supported the post-traumatic model.

The little girl who had witnessed a man’s body pulled from the ditch in which he had drowned, who then experienced her mother bleeding profusely from a cut accidentally inflicted whilst preparing dinner, and saw ‘the other girl’ go and get help. She calmly told us about the ‘purple lady’ who was mostly responsible for bringing up her daughter, and the ‘strawberrygirl’, a character she didn’t like because she was so selfish, and chuckling as she told us about how lucky she had been that Eve Black was frigid – a feature that kept her, Christine, safe and out of trouble! We were all charmed and intrigued, not just by her life-story, but with how spookily normal she made it all sound – convincing, because they supported the conviction that the therapy she had undergone had resulted in complete integration of all the ‘alters’ and that she is now leading a full and happy life.

Elizabeth Loftus presented an equally captivating contrast to the morning session with Christine Sizemore. Gone was the cosy sitting-room atmosphere of the morning – replaced with the lecture theatre run by the consummate expert. She took us through research into false memory syndrome, emphasising the importance of scientific examination and analysis of testimony, demonstrating the importance of internal validity and control in order to achieve essential accuracy leading to true justice in the courtroom. She highlighted the dangers of post-event information with what seemed like a very trivial scenario – not ‘Lost in the Mall’, but the egg-salad sandwich (egg mayonnaise, to those of us who speak the lingo prevalent on this side of the pond) – and demonstrated that we can so easily be misled into recalling things that simply did not happen that we should treat our memories with extreme caution. It made me realise that when someone says to me, ‘You never said that!’ or “You never did that!’ that because they have forgotten it, it is tantamount to the claim that it never really happened – quite a revelation.

The young people, some of whom did seem to struggle a bit with the complexities of her presentation, were brought straight back tob full concentration when they realised that she had been expert witness for the defence in the Michael Jackson trial. Her response to the student’s question on whether she felt he was guilty or innocent was well fielded and intelligently presented. Not tempted into giving us her own personal opinion, Elizabeth Loftus took the opportunity to emphasise the importance of scientific method in the field of criminal psychology, and led the discussion to raise awareness of the pitfalls of hypnotic evidence and the fragility of human memory when used by individuals who use guided imagination to elicit rich false memories that are impossible to falsify.

All in all, it was a very mentally challenging day, and by the end of it, all I could do was to eat an egg mayonnaise sandwich and go off to bed!