“Breaking Free” by Herschel Walker (post 10):  Brief examples of his vague, functional references to alternate personalities (alters)

When Walker had an anterior shoulder dislocation while playing American football, the doctor said “Reducing the shoulder on-site would be too painful. There could be complications. You’d need to be under anesthesia.” But Walker refused to leave the game, and “Together, the Hero and Warrior alters chimed in, ‘They don’t know me. This ain’t no big deal. I’ve come too far to let this stop me’ …and the alter who takes on all my pain came into play” (1, pp. 123-124).

“There was me, there were the alters, and there was some other part of me that acted as a mediator between us—another part of my identity whom I wasn’t conscious of, but must have been conscious of me and those other sides of me. He was the one who was in control, I guess” (1, p. 131).

“I would refer to myself in the third person…I’ve already said that there was the essential Herschel and other satellite Herschels as well…(1, p. 158).

Comment: The above may strike many readers and reviewers as being too vague to be real multiple personality, but this is not a movie.

1. Herschel Walker with Gary Brozek and Charlene Maxfield. Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder.  Foreword by Dr. Jerry Mungadze. New York, Touchstone/Howard Simon & Schuster, 2009.