Dr. Lewis has long believed in the diagnosis of multiple personality disorder, or dissociative identity disorder, in the cases of certain famous killers. With such a condition, the subject seemingly changes characters before Dr. Lewis’ eyes, using these personalities created as protections from childhood traumas. Such transformation can include the changing of a voice, posture, and/or gaze. To some it looks simply like theater, like how Arthur Shawcross changes his tone of voice to that of his mother. For Shawcross’ case and others, Dr. Lewis had an uphill battle in proving her theories, and faced a great deal of scrutiny from her peers.
Gibney approaches Dr. Lewis’ life’s work as a fan himself, revisiting her major cases (including John Frank Garrett, and Ted Bundy) with straightforward hopes of promoting her way of addressing some of the most reprehensible people on the planet. As she speaks from her home, surrounded by natural light, boxes of tapes, and a hairless cat, Lewis details the different cases she’s had in the past, and the way she experienced what felt like DID in different cases, and connected to the damaged brains and psyches of those subjects. Gibney presents a great deal of this interview footage from the ’80s and early ’90s, which sometimes is fittingly warped by either the passage of time, or perhaps the malcontent of its subject matter. Select stories told by Dr. Lewis are animated as stark, beautiful black and white sketches, with faces changing to emphasize the subject’s psyche. As Gibney’s predominant interview subject, Dr. Lewis is lively and with a delicious dark sense of humor, a psychiatrist who has seen and heard it all, but hasn’t lost her sense of how to approach another human’s pain.
In Gibney’s own way, “Crazy, Not Insane” is a full immersion into the different psychologies of various murderers and their own graphic childhoods of disturbing abuse and trauma. But the documentary does offer some breathing room, as in between long sequences about serial killers, it shows Dr. Lewis drawing with charcoal, or working alongside her son. The serene voice of Laura Dern sometimes speaks over the sequences, sharing Dr. Lewis’ notes from these sessions, depicting a mind that was working through something extraordinary, and persisted beyond her naysayers. (Dern will star in a future dramatic series from Gibney about a psychiatrist working with death row inmates.)