My letter to the editors of CNN news
reference something missing from their report.
April 15, 2008
Herschel Walker’s alter personalities
I have email coming across my desk that are telling me they are trying to input and get some reply back from Dr. Gupta on this and all they are getting is "thank you" for visiting.
When ever this get's into the main news for what it really is we are all happy, yet others feel like it wasn't that important to follow up on because no one response back.
Sure I understand that you probably get much more mail then I do but I feel that what was left out of this article is that there are thousands of us with sites/groups/newsletters who have been out here for twenty years supporting all those that the medical profession have said "don't exist" .
MY hope is that someone there will go to sites like ManyVoicesPress.com and LadyJztalkzone.com I've been out here for ten years holding up the sky for others plus just go to msn groups, google, yahoo and see how many of us do this every day.
I was asked to day how to reach you so I'm trying this part as what they have tried has not worked. I guess if I get a phone call or email back I can safely think someone actually read this. Thanks and look for more people who are Multiple. The good doctor can call us by their new term Dissociate Identity Disorder yet since we have been Multiple much longer their label we are still Multiple Personalities of course it's hard to accept the Disorder part of it, yet we learn from each other. Lady J
Listen to the video then the article is under that.
first link goes to a full interview and second one is partial
Herschel Walker’s alter personalities
Posted: 12:10 PM ET
By Dr. Sanjay Gupta
Chief Medical Correspondent
When I first heard that former football great Herschel Walker had multiple personality disorder, I was pretty stunned. Even though, I am a doctor, I had to admit that I knew very little about this particular psychiatric disorder. For starters, it is called DID, or dissociative identity disorder, instead of multiple personality disorder. Most people think of Sally Field’s character Sybil, but another thing I learned is neither Sybil nor Walker actually has multiple personalities, but rather the lack of one cohesive personality. In Walker’s case, he has 12 - yes 12 - alter personalities, which are all better described as fragments of one. (Here is an article I thought was very informative: http://www.dana.org/news/cerebrum/detail.aspx?id=11122)
Herschel Walker
Sitting down with Walker, I met an extremely charismatic and likeable man who certainly didn’t overtly flip from one alter to the next. It became clear, though, throughout our conversation that these alters were just under the surface. From stories of playing Russian roulette while still an extremely successful football star to rapidly switching from one alter to the next with absolutely no recollection, it was mind boggling, confusing, and a little bizarre. Again, unlike uncontrolled rage or depression, Walker really could not remember from one alter to the next. He even had names for his alters. The one that showed up on the football field was the General, and he was a competitive killer.
Because of the lack of memory of these various alters, we found it important to speak with people who witnessed this firsthand. So, we flew to Dallas and met with his former wife, Cindy. She described many incidents, including a chilling one of waking up with a straight razor to her neck and Herschel threatening to slit her throat — and then having Herschel quickly flipping and asking her if she was OK. She saw that flipping back and forth and it scared her - eventually leading to their divorce.
Medically, I was fascinated to learn that DID is much more common than people realize - about 1 percent of the population has the disorder. It is often associated with psychological and physical abuse as a child; in fact it is a childhood disorder that is often diagnosed as an adult. The child starts to separate his or her personality into fragments in order to deal with different aspects of life. By adulthood, these fragments become full-fledged alters. Herschel himself admitted he was bullied a lot as a child, because he was overweight and stuttered.
In Walker’s case, sometimes the alter personalities worked for him as the General did on the football field, but most of the times they were destructive. He is getting help nowadays, but there is no specific medication that can be prescribed. Instead, he goes through counseling to sort of teach his alters to know one another and become one cohesive personality. While he seemed to have things in control as we talked for a long time and even threw the football around, the alters are still very much there.
As I said, I found the story of Herschel Walker to be absolutely fascinating. And I wondered how many more stories like his are out there. Have you ever seen or heard anything like this?
Programming note: Watch Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s interview with Herschel Walker and report on dissociative identity disorder on Anderson Cooper 360 tonight at 10 ET.
Editor’s Note: Medical news is a popular but sensitive subject rooted in science. We receive many comments on this blog each day; not all are posted. Our hope is that much will be learned from the sharing of useful information and personal experiences based on the medical and health topics of the blog. We encourage you to focus your comments on those medical and health topics and we appreciate your input. Thank you for your participation.
Now let's see what the replies are......
Thank you, Herschel for speaking out for us. Lady J
Posted: Friday, January 18th 2008 at 2:29pm
Herschel Walker to reveal multiple personalities in new book
By The Associated Press
Email Contact Editor Print
Herschel Walker ATLANTA (AP) -- Georgia football legend Herschel Walker is expected to reveal in an upcoming book that he has multiple personalities - a revelation that surprises the man who coached the 1982 Heisman Trophy winner.
"That's all news to me," former Georgia coach Vince Dooley said. "All I know is whatever personality he had when he had the football was the one I liked."
"Breaking Free" will chronicle Walker's life with multiple personality disorder, according to Shida Carr, the book's publicist at Simon & Schuster.
Carr said the book will be published in August, but gave no other details and declined to provide excerpts.
"There's some buzz out there and we're letting people know we have this book coming out," Carr told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
In three seasons at Georgia, Walker led the Bulldogs to a 33-3-1 record, three straight Southeastern Conference championships and the 1980 national title. He won the Heisman as a junior, then left school a year early to sign with the now-defunct U.S. Football League.
Walker went onto play in the NFL for the Dallas Cowboys, Minnesota Vikings, Philadelphia Eagles and New York Giants. He has lived in Dallas since his playing career ended.
A former Georgia teammate also was caught off guard by Walker's revelation.
"I'm probably one of his closest friends and that's news to me," said Frank Ros, who was captain of Georgia's 1980 national championship team. "I knew he was working on a book but I just thought it was about football. He does 100 things at once and always has projects going on, but that blows me away."
The newspaper said Walker could not be reached for comment.
Multiple personality disorder, also known as dissociative identity disorder, is a rare mental condition in which one person has two or more distinct personalities, according to the Merck Manual of Medical Information.