Sybil+(1976)

= Sybil (1976) = == ==

Top Ten Scenes from Movie
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Dissociative Identity Disorder (aka Multiple Personality Disorder)

 * Dissociative Identity Disorder is a condition where a person displays more than one identity or personality. In other words, there is more than one person living inside the body

Symptoms

 * The person clearly shows radically different personalities, each with a different identity - in the movie, Sybil had sixteen different personalities, each with a different name and age and personality
 * Pranoia
 * Unexplainable headaches or other body pains
 * In the case of Sybil in the movie, she had "blackouts," where she would not remember the non-Sybil life and think she has "waken up" after long time
 * Flashbacks of traumatic experiences
 * Unexplainable phobias

Causes

 * The disorder is linked to traumatic experience
 * It can also be caused by insufficient childhood nurturing, which was definitely the case for Sybil
 * The patient has an innate ability to "dissociate" memories from experiences
 * Usually the patients have been sexually abused as a child
 * After the traumatic experience, the patient splits the memory and develops a subconscious as a different persona

Treatments

 * The goal of the treatment of the Dissociative Identity Disorder is to "put together," as Dr. Wibur says, the different personalities back
 * Psychotherapy or medication can be used
 * In the movie, the doctor treats Sybil using psychotherapy, by talking to all the different identities to understand the situation and then comforting and accepting each one (rather than denying) but at the same time questioning the different identities about the relation

What I learned

 * I had never actually seen a patient with Dissociative Identity Disorder, so I did not know that the symptoms were this serious. It was almost frightening to see the different characters in Sybil, all of which clearly had its own strong identity. I didn't know that the person could name each one and give each one a different age either. I was also surprised that Sybil had two male self identities. From this movie, I also learned that Dissociative Identity Disorder is strongly related to traumatic childhood experiences. I thought it was more of a personality issue, but it is a serious illness.

Why I chose this film

 * I chose this film mostly because I was curious about Multiple Personality Disorder. I thought it would be interesting to see how a stressful childhood would lead to devastating results. Another reason for choosing this film includes that it was not very violent