Sybil

The case of Sybil is the first account of a Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) in which 16 total personalities inhabited a person. The book emphasizes the importance of childhood in which Sybil had been abused by her mother and “ignored” by her father. In order to keep her sanity, Sybil dissociates herself into someone else and fails to recall any memory of the events after she had dissociated. Sybil is eventually advised to see Dr. Cornelia Wilbur. Sybil was reluctant to tell the psychoanalyst the problem. In one visit with the Dr, Sybil dissociated to Peggy Lou. Astonished at the sudden change in personality, Wilbur first assumed that Sybil might be a “duo-personality”. Later, Vicky was introduced and told the doctor that there were many more. Through the other selves, the Dr. was able to get to the root of the original dramas that created the alter personalities. Dr. soon realized that the personalities were originally Sybil’s but at some point Sybil had lost due to a trauma. With the use of hypnosis, Dr. Wilbur was able to aid Sybil by allowing Sybil to meet the alter personalities and have them fuse into Sybil’s own, allowing for different feelings and memories that that each personality had lived through while Sybil had “blacked out”. At the end, Sybil became a whole person with one self.
The first important fact about Dissociative Identity Disorder is that it is characterized with amnesia. (1 A very common complaint in people with DID is episodes of amnesia, or time loss. These individuals may be unable to remember events in all or part of a proceeding time period. They may repeatedly encounter unfamiliar people who claim to know them, find themselves somewhere without knowing how they got there, or find items that they don't remember purchasing among their possessions.” Sybil constantly has black outs in which she cannot recollect what happens but is told that she acted a certain way or did something. In (Schreiber, Flora R. “Sybil” Ch 9) Sybil’s...