The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Separate Personalities

Anyone interested in abnormal pschology will find this book fascinating! That the human brain can, for it's own protection, protect each facet of one's life by separating sub-conciously is amazing! The things we've yet to learn about the human brain!
I found this book inspiring! Particularly in the end where letters Sybil wrote to Dr. Wilbur after her cure are published. I never before thought to be thankful for having control for one whole day! I always thought that 24 hours in a day was too short, but after reading this account of a woman who didn't even have 24 hours a day, I appreciate mine like never before! Sybit writes about what a lot can be accomplished in 24 hours when every hour, minute, and second is all yours, to share with no one else! I appreciate life now like never before and realize how fortunate I've been in my life, always having had all my hours, minutes and seconds to myself, while this woman and many others like her had to wait until her mid-forties to control every hour, minute, and second! And still, she wasn't bitter! She simply appreciated all that she had right then. What a lesson we all can take from that!
I don't want to waste a word or a minute on the irrational people who still claim that this malady doesn't exist, come on, how long can you hide your head in the sand? Shame on the destructive influences and people who deny the pain that many suffer. I hope they never have to go through anything so horrific.

I remember seeing the movie which was based on this book years ago vaguely and it did go into some of the abuse afflicted on her by her mother but not in as much detail as the book did itself. Which is usually the case with book to screen translations but this is beside the point. Multiple personality disorder has fascinated me for several years now and even though It is considered to be " placee" by some people the subject has always fascinated me. Sybil is a classic true story about one persons ordeal and recovery from Mulitple personality dissociative idenity disorder and I had been meaning for quite some time to read it and having recieved it as a Christmas present by someone, Just got finished with it. It is a testament of the fragile yet resilliant human psyche and to why child abuse is so wrong. We now know that the early stages of childhood are so crucial in human developement and that traumas occuring during that time can effect the young mind so immeasurably and some times irreversibily. In addition to dissociative identity disorder there is also detachment disorder that also comes from severe child hood abuse and neglect, where the child fails to develope empathy for other people. Child abuse can also continue the cycle of abuse through the generations. Do we as a society want to create human monsters and /or fragmented people? Or do we want to produce whole persons capable of feeling for others , contributing to society positively and knowing themselves well? This book does give one pause and makes us question our very sense of self, who we really are and where we came from psychologically. I have suffered child abuse too and sometimes wonder after reading an account of MPD if I too have had moments of dissociation but without the fragmented self , loss of time and amneisa. Sometimes I too have seemed to be somewhere else or not in the present moment and there maybe memories my conciousness has chosen to repress to protect itself. Sybil gets you to think and examine yourself.

This book describes the eleven-year psychotherapy process for a woman with sixteen different personalities. The analysis process took place from 1954 through 1965. Sybil, the subject of the book, was a child of the 1920's and 30's, and her multiple-personality disease was a result of her family's genetic history and her fundamentalist, repressed, and abusive upbringing. Much of Sybil's struggles were due to the time period in which she lived--her family had mental illness but felt that ignoring it and focusing on other pursuits was the best course of action. She was so denied the exploration of her feelings that she choked back all symptoms of mental illness and tried to act normal, hindering her recovery for years.

I am still in shock over the patience and dedication that was required to work with the frustratingly different personalities over a period of eleven years! I got frustrated at the slow and relapse-prone re-integration process at the end of the book, and I admire Schreiber for painstakingly recounting the process instead of using Hollywood-style short-cuts. Sybil's recovery and emergence as a complete, functional woman in her forties was a very hard-won victory.

During the revealing of Sybil's personalities, I really liked Vicky. She was the all-seeing personality who know the lineage of all others. I liked her better than I liked the backbone-less Sybil, and I wanted her to exist for this lost woman. During the personality-integration process, I learned that all of the personalities were a part of Sybil, and such exaggerated emotion as Vicky's had to be integrated in to part of the whole Sybil.

Overall, this is an amazing book that well stands the test of time.

The case history of "Sybil" brought the mental malady of multiple personality disorder to the general public. Prior to the accounts of "Eve" (Chris Sizemore, the world's most famous person to have survived with this disorder) many misperceptions about the illness were touted as fact. For example, many experts discounted the existence of multiple personality disorder and often saw it as a form of malingering.

Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, who died in 1994 made psychiatric history with Sybil. In fact they used one another to reach psycho-literary fame in this fictitious account of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). In this novel, together they work to pierce the "Clock Incomprehensible," fugue states where Sybil cannot account for her whereabouts or actions. During their several years of hard work together, doctor and patient uncover a total of 16 separate and distinct personalities. Born in 1923, Sybil's various "selves" were "born" over 20-year time span, from 1926 to 1946. Vanessa is the only personality who is able to play the piano. Mike and Sid are her male personalities. Vicky is her cosmopolitan, cultured personality. Vicky and Vanessa appear to be the most appealing personalities and all 16 were created to cope with Sybil's allegedly psychotic mother.

According to Shreiber and Wilbur, "Hattie," Sybil's mother was described as being angry and dangerously mentally ill. They gave her a history of sexually abusing children. In this book, Sybil remembered seeing the mother naked and bouncing a naked neighbor's baby boy between her legs. The mother would also defecate on neighborhood lawns. She reportedly inserted objects into Sybil's body almost from the time Sybil was an infant; she forced the girl to drink laxatives and refused to let her release solid waste; she suspended her from the ceiling; she choked her; left her in a corn crib to smother; beat her with an array of sundry objects and permanently scarred her body with a button hook. Sybil's father appears to be singularly ineffectual; he dodges the mother and years later claims to have had no knowledge of the woman's extreme cruelty. Again, this is from the telling in this book.

Sybil's acceptance of the personalities takes time as well. Dr. Wilbur uses hypnosis to fuse the personalities and after several hypnotherapy sessions, Sybil agrees to accept all of the personalities and their abilities be merged into one, herself. By 1965 Sybil is an "integrated" unit. That is how this fraudulent account of DID is neatly summed up in this book.

ETA: However, Sybil has since been exposed as a fraud. The real "Sybil" (Shirley A. Mason), Dr. Wilbur and Ms. Schreiber all profited from manufacturing a woman with DID and crafting a childhood replete with maternal abuse. Debbie Nathan's excellent book, Sybil Exposed blows the smoke and mirrors of deception away to reveal a tripartite fraud: Dr. Wilbur, Ms. Schreiber and Sybil herself. This book and the 1976 and 2008 movies have reinforced a fraud that had been in the works since Ms. Mason entered treatment with Dr. Wilbur in the 1950s. Over time and with the involvement of an author, the manufacturing of these resulting "personalities" and the false memories were well underway, with Dr. Wilbur aiming for fame and recognition and book deals.

A gifted artist, Sybil drew and painted. In the book, her manufactured "alters" were credited for being artists. Sybil was living in Kentucky during her later years and when she died, the man who bought and moved into her house found her artwork and discovered and uncovered her identity. As another reviewer on the store's US boards posted is right - read this book as a cautionary tale. This book is just a fraudulent claim. James Frey, anyone? The real Sybil died in 1998 and her profession was listed as "artist." Again, you will want to read Debbie Nathan's book, Sybil Exposed.

In 1954, a thin, nervous young woman walked into the office of New York psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur complaining of unusual "spells". She would inexplicably "lose time", fading out of consciousness and coming to again hours or even days later, often in an unfamiliar city and wearing clothing she never remembered buying. Believing it to be a case of hysteria, Dr. Wilbur embarks on what she thinks will be a routine course of treatment. Until, that is, her patient strode into the office one day with a confident, almost aristocratic air. "Sybil couldn't come," she says, "you can call me Vicky." Dr. Wilbur realized she was dealing with a victim of multiple personality disorder, then almost unheard of. For Dr. Wilbur and the young woman (whom the author gives the pseudonym of Sybil) it was the beginning of an emotionally exhausting eleven-year journey to make a fractured human being whole again.
In the course of her treatment, Sybil proved to have no less than sixteen different personalities (including two male alters, Mike and Sid). The sophisticated Vicky was the "record keeper" of the selves, holding back the memories too painful for Sybil and the others to know. Peggy Lou was the repository of Sybil's anger--defiant, belligerent, contemptuous of Sybil and terrified of breaking glass; Vanessa, a redhead with impressive musical talent. Some, like Ruthie, were barely more than toddlers mentally.
Vicky had good reason to keep the memories in check. Sybil had endured a childhood so horrible the word "nightmarish" doesn't do it justice. The child of a schizophrenic mother, (called "Hattie") and a passive, distant Fundamentalist father, Sybil never knew what awful or outlandish thing her mother was liable to do. An abused child before the term existed, Sybil was forced to endure physical and sexual torture that seems chilling even in our tabloid tell-all age. Rape and inexplicable, unnecessary forced enemas were a daily ritual until the age of six or seven--the angry, frightened Peggy Lou had to emerge to endure the unending agony.
Schreiber paints a vivid portrait of Sybil's family and the conservative town in which she grew up, and while we discover a clear history of schizophrenia on the maternal side of Sybil's family, Schreiber places most of the blame at the feet of Sybil's father Willard. He had known of his wife Hattie's schizophrenia from the time Sybil was six, when Hattie submerged into a mysterious catatonic state for an entire winter. Yet he made no attempt to hospitalize her, weakly protesting that he couldn't separate a mother and her child. The child's one escape from this hellish woman came in the form of her grandmother--when she died, Sybil's self disappeared. When she re-emerges, she finds herself in a fifth-grade classroom--almost two years later.
After years of harrowing, almost fatal crises, Sybil's selves are eventually reunited in 1965--when she is forty-two. For forty of those years, she was a living mosaic, a collection of parts. Hers was touted as a classic case of MPD and childhood abuse. Yet, not long after the death of the real Sybil in the early nineties, controversy arose over the accuracy of the account. Some professionals alleged that Sybil had not been a multiple personality at all, and may in fact have never been abused. Dr. Wilbur knew this, they maintain, as did the author--the "personalities" had supposedly been planted in Sybil's mind under hypnosis. The truth may never be known, but it is an undeniable fact such cases do occur, and as such, "Sybil" is a primer for anyone wanting to know the nature and origins of multiple personality.

the winning sides of this book are obvious: well-detailed, interesting/fascinating, good writing, insightful, clear, ground-breaking, etc. a great story about a girl with a horribly abusive childhood who spends a fair chunk of her adult life trying to recover from it with the help of a dedicated, intelligent, talented, serious therapist. it also shows how amazingly creative sybil as a child had to be on an unconscious level to not become absolutely crazy.
so all these positives aside, here are my criticisms: mainly they're with dr. wilbur. she sets herself up (or the author - dr. wilbur's buddy - sets her up) as PERFECT. well, i just don't buy it. many times she did things throughout sybil's analysis that i consider very suspect, and i notice that each time she does them she and/or the author make a quick decisive point of defending them as "necessary". such as: when the doctor decides she needs to "speed up" sybil's analysis early on by telling the sybil personality about the existence of the other personalities. it freaks sybil out (not entirely unexpectedly) and later the doctor "has to" go over to sybil's house and talk her down - after giving her a tranquilizer! so much for the doctor being against medication! and the doctor takes NO responsibility for having in large part caused the breakdown. i had a funny feeling the doctor betrayed sybil's other personalities' confidences to meet the doctor's own needs. perhaps she felt incompetent that the analysis was going "too slow." or perhaps she was just impatient and wanted to zap the treatment forward. or perhaps, HEAVEN FORBID, she had a twinge of sadistic motives: maybe she was pissed off at sybil for being so STUCK and wanted to break her down a little bit, attack her defenses head on. this i would not doubt! after all, dr. wilbur is human, and if i felt this 450 page book dragged at points, how the hell did dr. wilbur feel, sitting through over 2000 session hours and who knows how many extra hours!
other things the doctor did that were funky: becoming friends with sybil? what's up with that? talk about bad boundaries. of course, the doctor could easily defend her bad boundaries by just hiding behind being a wonderful, loving, caring, compassionate therapist - BUT I DON'T BUY IT ENTIRELY. i think dr. wilbur was trying to prove in some unconscious way to sybil (or to herself) that she, the doctor, was the real opposite of sybil's mom. perhaps the doctor was trying to defend against some of her own feelings of being LIKE sybil's mom. and by the way, sybil's exceedingly manipulative behavior at times might drive even the best of us to feel pissed off at her and want to get even at some level. but not dr. wilbur - oh no! - did you notice that the one feeling she never has toward sybil is ANGER - let alone HATRED?! i think the doctor couldn't handle those NASTY feelings within herself and simply defended herself against them by ACTING THEM OUT and then calling them therapeutically necessary.
other examples of this: getting sybil hooked on sodium pentathol to "help" her treatment. and what about that little line of getting sybil "shock therapy." yeah, right!
and by the way, i read on the internet after finishing the book about the outcome of sybil's life: she followed dr. wilbur down to lexington kentucky where the two lived nearby...happily ever after...as the best of friends. what's up with that? to me that's the sign of a therapist who could NOT LET GO OF HER PATIENT. talk about bad boundaries!

Written in a third person point of view, Flora Reta Schreiber writes about the life of an anonymous patient dealing with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). She uses the pseudoname Sybil for the patient. Writing from the very beginning the episodes started arising, Schreiber talks about the long journey Sybil had to go through in order to determine what was wrong with her. Although it is an informative read, the author keeps the reader wanting to keep going. Before reading this book, I knew little about MPD. This book helped clarify everything from the symptoms to how psychologists help their patients in therapy. The fact that Schreiber used a real person’s first-hand experience as her way of writing about MPD, makes it enjoyable to read and hard to put down.

This is an unbelievable story of a troubled life of a woman. So vivid and real, I could not put this book down. A life told by many personalities of a woman who went thru literal hell with her mentally ill mother. This book is not only for people in the field of psychology. Although the first few pages are a little hard to get into, once you get past them you will get sucked into a life that one can only have nightmares about. I read this book 3 times!!!!

If you are interested in psychology Sybil is a must read. It is about a girl with sixteen personalities. It is based on a true story about her life. It is very well written and although it may get a little confusing, you eventually learn to recognize each individual personality within Sybil.
This book is a tantalizing journey through Sybil's life and journey to become whole again. It involves some graphic descriptions of horrible events that made Sybil split into multiple personalities and therefore may not be appropriate for children under 13 years of age.
I have learned a lot from this book and it has opened my eyes to the interesting field of psychology. I would have to call it one of the most interesting books I have ever read and I look forward to reading it again.
Therefore I hope everyone can take time out of his or her busy schedule to read this book.

I am so thankful to "Sybil" and Cornelia Wilbur for being brave enough to publish this story, as this was how my psychologist and psychiatrist learned about MPD, and subsequently, how to successfully treat me. If anyone doubts the validity and legitimacy of MPD/DID, it absolutely is a true occurrence. It is caused by severe physical, emotional, and sexual abuse in early childhood.
Unless you have been there, you can't understand the immense strength and courage it took for her to agree to publish her story - even though using a different name, it still had to be terrifying. "Sybil's" courage helped me be brave enough to publish my own book on MPD.
I am very saddened by both "Sybil's" and Cornelia Wilbur's deaths. However, the legacy of "Sybil" will continue to help uncountable numbers of people.

Although Schreiber switches from Sybil's childhood to adulthood frequently in the novel, she still manages to capture the reader's attention and also, she lets the reader to further understand her situation.
Schreiber incredibly develops the plot. Since the differences between the personalaties are very discernable, you do not get lost between those 16 characters.
The strongest part of the book is that it is a true story and it makes the book even more enjoyable, it is also a very informative read on MPD and psychoanalysis.
If you are somewhat interested in psychology, and looking for something different than usual, this is the book for you .

"Sybil" provided an extremely fascinating and captivating look into the life of a woman challenged with multiple personalities. The real essence of the novel is that it is an actual, non-fictional account of Sybil Isabel Dorsett's life. The struggles with her parents and the way that she overcomes this obstacle makes reading the novel worthwhile. I loved the way Schreiber wrote, in a manner that was not too simple yet not too complicated, so that an "average joe" like myself could understand the parts of the novel that involved Sybil's psychiatrist. This is an amazing story and is amazingly written. Everyone should read this novel. It is fabulous.

Read the story of Sybil, a young woman with multiple personalities. This is an amazing psychological thriller that wants me want to run out and grab a few text books on the psychology of multiple personalities. The reader is drawn in to this story, if at times still wanting to turn away from what Sybil has gone through. Well done story.

Whoever states that repressed memories don't exist must be very unfamiliar with victims of trauma. Adults often don't remember a car crash or a hostage situation. Why would a child choose to remember horrific abuse? Therapy trends come and go, but the basics of the mind, psychology and psychiatry stay the same. Sybil is the story of a woman with multiple selves, each one developed to handle different life stresses and situations. Look up "dissociative disorder" at google.com to find out more about the causes and manifestations of such disorders.

With the recent ferver surrounding Sybil - Sybil Exposed (Nathan), and Sybil in Her Own Words (Suraci), I decided to re-read the original book. I found this story to be completely credible and told in a manner in which Multiple Personality could be understood by the lay person. Although Sybil felt defective because of her tendency to lose time, it was proven in her treatment by Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, that Sybil was actually quite brilliant. Her brain was able to compartmentalize the horrible child abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, and passively by her father. Starting at about the age of three, Sybil created alternate personalities, of which she was unaware, to deal with the physical, mental and sexual abuse perpetrated on her by a domineering mother. It's unfortunate that the cover says she was "possessed" by sixteen separate personalities, because it has been my experience as an integrated survivor, that I was not possessed by anything. I simply co-existed with my multiple personalities. When Sybil met with the competent and compassionate Dr. Wilbur, her healing journey began in earnest. Using tools like psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, hypnosis and a short period of pentothal, Dr. Wilbur was able to gain the trust of Sybil and her 16 personalities, and eventually integrate them into one healthy person. It was Sybil's dream to finally be able to have a life that was close to normal (although the sexual abuse by her mother caused her to be unable to have children). Coming out of denial, learning through her alters about the abuse she suffered as a child, Sybil was finally able to accept the truth about hating her parents and fearing her religion. Once she was able to express that hatred and fear, Sybil's real healing took place. Over the course of 13 years, Dr. Wilbur and Sybil developed not only a doctor/patient relationship, but also a friendship, that ultimately lasted the rest of their lives.

I recommend that anyone who may be confused by Nathan's book regarding multiple personality, should read this book for a better understanding of the background, not only historically in the field of psychology, but also in relation to the truth about Sybil. It is well written and straight forward.

This book grasps your attention from the first chapter, it keeps you curious as to what this woman could've possibly endured as a child, and how she is going to possibly ever get better. Though this is a rather graphic story, it is also true and that's what I tried keeping in mind the whole time. This is a true story, and this is possibly what a lot of mental patients also go through themselves. Truly opens your eyes...

I'm really conflicted about my feelings for this novel. The premise of Sybil is so riveting. A young woman, after a childhood of abuse, cruelty, and torture develops sixteen other distinct personalities. However, I found myself unable to get past the overly clinical language and all of the psycho-analysis. I don't have a psychology background at all and was only able to understand part of the diagnoses.

The descriptions of the experiences had as a child and what her mother did to her were incredibly shocking. I found myself both repulsed and horrified. To imagine any child having to endure that makes me sick, and it completely explains why Sybil's subconscious fractured.

I found myself really frustrated with the circular and vague responses Sybil's other selves gave when Dr. Wilbur attempted to make them understand they were a part of Sybil. (A big reason why I could never be a psychiatrist is that I have very little patience). I know the understanding is supposed to be gradual, but it was just hard for me to swallow. I suppose that's why throughout the book I found myself questioning the truthfulness and validity of the personalities.

The whole book takes place over a decade. It was sometimes frustrating to realize that Sybil wasn't making much progress toward integration and there were a lot of reiterated points. The truth is that her psycho-analysis was overly complicated and repetitive and I became disinterested in it.

Overall, I don't think I recommend this book. It was just too analytical for my tastes. If anyone is really interested in the details about Sybil Dorsett, just Wikipedia the case instead of wasting your time with this book.

One of the most famous multiple-personality cases of all time, Sybil's story is captivating and gripping. Definitely recommended for anyone interested in abnormal psychology. Also read "When Rabbit Howls" by Truddi Chase.

I'm from Dodge Center, Minnesota, Sybil's real hometown. Her real name was Shirley Ann Mason, and she did exist. I know people who knew her, and the description of the town fits perfectly. Shirley died in 1998 and the BBC, along with another production company, is currently working on a documentary about her. If you're not already interested in MPD, you definitely will be after reading this book. It's fascinating and horrifying at the same time. Unbelievable what the human mind is capable of. READ THIS BOOK! (The first chapter is kind of confusing and boring, but the rest is so enthralling.)

What an amazing journey I encountered with "Sybil". I chose the text for a study trilogy and wow, what a knockout it was. It is almost impossible to believe it were real, but that is the beauty of it, you know that Sybil lived this horrific tale and still came out of it scarred but happy. An inspiration, I hated finishing the book, I wanted to endure Sybil's life for a lot longer. Schreiber has done a wonderful job to bring this text to life, in a sensitive and moving fashion. Cheers, Sybil you give me inspiration and hope!

This book is definitely not for the faint of heart. I read it due to having a loved one that has Dissociative Identity Disorder. Some parts can be tough to get through but overall I give it 3 out of 5 stars. This book is a must read for anyone in the Psychological or Psychiatric field.

Sybil was phenomenal. Schreiber's writing caused me to reassess the cliché "mind over matter." The psychological coping mechanisms that Sybil implores while trying to thrive in society are both disturbing and intriguing. The books allows for emotional insight into the mind of a mentally disturbed young woman from a literary vantage point as opposed to a mere medical analysis of her illness. A definite must read.

I read this book in order to better understand my own experience with Dissociative Identity Disorder, and came away with many new and healing insights. Sybil can sometimes read like a medical text, but I found it so informative and carefully researched that I was willing to slog through the boring parts to better understand the whole story.

This book is impossible to put down; I started reading it and just couldn't seem to stop. It is wonderfully written narrative, which leads to insights of the human mind and abnormal psychology. "Sybil" causes great philosophical questions of mind and body to arise. The horrific account of sexual and mental abuse will shock you. This book is a must read, it is an account that I shall never forget.

Sybil is this young woman who have, 16 personalitis the person in the world is discovered with most personalitis in our life time. It is educting to read her story. It will make one understanding how dificult it is to live with skizofrenia, and in some cases it can be treated. So buy this book and getting caught by this story.

Whether you are fascinated with Multiple Personality Disorder, like I am, or you have little knowledge of the subject, you will love this book. It is a true account of a woman tortured by 16 different personalities. Schreiber really helps you understand how this woman feels and why the disorder showed itself in the first place. Amazing book.

Sigmund Freud is most know by his revolutionary ideas that formed the psychoanalytic theory, which emphases that psychological difficulties and abnormal behavior result from unconscious conflicts and motivations, and that psychoanalysis is the preferred form of psychotherapy since it is able to bring insight to these hidden conflicts. In the real story of Sybil, Dr. Wilbur does a deep research in the Freud�s techniques to discover the unconscious of Sybil, so She could be able to determine what lead Sybil with so many personalities and what could be a possible treatment for her dissociate identity disorder. While the treatment of mental disorders in the psychoanalytic approach centers on therapist�s helping the patients to identify and resolve his or her unconscious conflicts, the biological, cognitive and behavioral approaches are classified more scientifically because its methods involves more scientific confirmed theories and better observations than the psychosexual stages proposed by Freud in the psychoanalytic method.
Freud�s theory was the first to describe the divisions of the mind, popular known as �Id, Ego, and Superego� and to emphasizes the importance of early childhood experiences, repressed thoughts, conflicts between conscious and unconscious that influence our thoughts and behaviors. Since Freud�s theory emphasizes in the psychosexual stages, the psychoanalytic method explain behavior as a observable action that were influenced in the childhood experiences, where the first five years have a profound effect on later personality development. In Sybil case, as she was a child of a schizophrenic mother,( called Hattie) , Sybil was abused physical and sexual that let were her to have a mental splitting or dissociated of identities as one way to defend against or cope with terrible trauma. Therefore, Her doctor called Dr. Wilbur uses the techniques of Freud to discover the unconscious such as Free association and dream Interpretation that could lead what Sybil had experienced in her childhood and how she could cope with those traumas in order to treat her dissociate identity disorder.
IN the same case of Sybil, as her abnormal behavior were lead by the traumas of childhood, The five psychosexual stages (oral anal, phallic, latency, and genital stages) proposed by Freud, are marked by potential conflict between parent and child. The conflicts arise as a child seeks pleasure from different body areas that area associated with sexual feelings. So, the abnormal behaviors usually are due to unconscious conflicts or problems with unresolved conflicts at one or more Freud�s psychosexual stages, which applies perfect in the case of Sybil. Also, the dissociative identity disorder, according to the psychoanalytic method, was a method that Sybil created that operates at unconscious levels to help the ego reduce anxiety through self-deception. The sophisticated Vicky was the �record Keeper� of the selves, holding back the memories too painful for Sybil and other to know. Peggy Lou (or Marshall) was the repository of Sibyl�s anger�defiant, belligerent, contemptuous of Sybil and terrified for Sybil and terrified of breaking glass; Vanessa, an impressive musical talent. Indeed, Vicky had good reason to keep the memories in check. Sybil had endured a childhood so horrible the word �nightmarish� doesn�t do it justice.
As Dr. Wilbur stared to discover the many personalities that Sybil possessed, The goals of psychoanalysis were well applied by her, which Freud developed in the late 1800s, emphases that unacceptable or threatening thoughts were repressed and unavailable to conscious recall. Repressed thoughts could produce unconscious conflicts that, in turn, could result in feeling anxious and a variety of psychological and emotional problems. So, Dr. Wilbur needed to use the techniques for uncovering and revealing unconscious thoughts: free association and dream interpretation, to discover ways to treat Sybil. Dr. Wilber had found many clues such as the purple crayon, where Sybil remembered when her mother hid her and she almost died of starvation. When Dr. Wilbur used free association with Sybil, the thoughts usually expressed by Sybil lead to an unconscious confused by her traumas in the childhood. But by psychology clues leading to unconscious conflicts, Dr. Wilbur cannot prove them, nor can she ever knows if her interpretation point to the true cause and effect. And this raises the most serious problem for psychoanalysis: most of its concepts are based on case studies and are difficult or impossible to verify with experimental methods. Thus, It is hard consider the psychoanalytic method classified as scientifically valid according to the scientific method since there�s a lack of experimental methods with confirmed theories.
Freud�s classical psychoanalysis has fallen on hard times, but many of his ideas have been incorporated into other and more types of therapy, such as the short-term psychodynamic and eclectic approach. Indeed, Freud�s theory had an enormous impact on society, such as the terms ego and rationalization, in the fields of personality, development, and abnormal psychology. Dr. Wilbur made a big process in the case of Sybil by the help of Freud, so possible his theories are going to be used in many generation, so that�s the why is considered as a scientific method, where the unconscious forces plays the major rule in our conscious thoughts and behaviors.

Dr. Wilbur writes this book as a doctor trying to be a writer which made me constantly aware of who was writing rather than what was being written. The most interesting parts of the book were details about Sybil's past (which were, at times, compelling) whereas the details about methods and therapy were just boring. Maybe it's just hard to try to write a interesting work and remain professional at the same time, but I think someone else could have written this much better.

This book was amazing. It is a horrifically true account of a real woman's struggle with multiple personality disorder. I think it is a must read for anyone who either suffers from mpd or anyone who knows someone who does. It is a non stop read...I coulnt put it down!!!!!

Sybil is Flora Rheta Schreiber's fictional account about a young woman afflicted with sixteen different personalities. If you are looking for a truthful, thought-provoking work this is not for you. It has been revealed since the book's first publication that the story presented within these pages is a fraud cooked up by the three main characters. For the real story Sybil Exposed is a much better read.

But even if we disregard this as a work of nonfiction and accept it as what it is - a nearly 500 page novel - it still is not very exciting or interesting. Schreiber displays a neat, detailed prose but none of the characters are written in a way that I felt excited to begin reading anew each day. This book was a chore to finish - it felt too long and too full of unnecessary details. It's too bad this book is still marketed as "the classic true story" rather than the fictional account it really is.

This book has been thoroughly discredited and should be read only as a cautionary tale of how psychiatry and journalism can manufacture a story from whole cloth, taking advantage of a woman who very well may have been mentally ill, while profiting mightly from the results. This "author" made a fortune from this lie. Shame, shame! Read "Sybil Exposed" instead.

This book was exposed... several years ago, after a researcher tracked down the real "Sybil". The author made up the sensational facts to fit her own odd theories, and sold a lot of books in the process. The real girl's "symptoms" were invented by her therapist, and she nver actually had most of the experiences detailed in the book. See Newsweek (January 25, 1999, where Peter M. Swales discusses the people and issues behind the book

Although most of the reviews here praise this book, it has been largely discredited as essentially a piece of fiction. Our cultural preoccupation with "multiple personality disorders," "recovered memories of childhood abuse," and "Satanic cult abuse of children" is analogous to the Salem witch trails. A reader who wishes to see a clear and compelling refutation of this nonsense should read Dr. Paul McHugh's study "Try to Remember: Psychiatry's Clash Over Meaning, Memory, and Mind." McHugh is a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins. The reason this is important: many lives have been wrecked as a result of false claims of childhood abuse.

I remember watching the movie when I was young, boy did that creep me out, went ahead and read the book, and I was horrified.

Now, go figure, this book is a FRAUD. [...]

I wish I could have all those creeped out years back.

My daughter needed the book for a psych class. The public library had several holds on the book. It took weeks to get the book, and amazingly the library came through with the book faster.

I realize you have to wait longer with standard shipping, but I never had to wait so long for something that wasn't on back order.

This trash is some of the worst reading matterial produced in the Western Hemsiphere in this entire century. How anyone can be duped into believing such a ridiculous pack of lies is beyond me. The tragdedy of this story is not that it's real, it's that so many people actually believe it really happened. This woman was either cooerced into saying these things by way of hypnosis or she was delusional and hallucinated these stories. If schizophrenia really did run in this woman's family isn't it plausible that she suffered from the delusions and hallucinations that are common with schizophrenia? Further more, MPD has never actually been accepted as a genuine diagnosis and there are some who question its validity. I did some reasearch on it and discovered that a psychiatrist who was taking over for her dr. while she was out of town felt that this woman was lying as well. It's up each person to make up their mind on this. But for me, this story is a made up pack of lies.

In a few words, mental instability wreaks havoc on a young mind. if there is any shred of truth to this story at all, it is a horrific experience that this young woman had to endure from the time she was only MONTHS old. it gives raw insight into the mind of a mentally ill person who, through behaviors manifested by that illness, turns her daughter into a survivor of unspeakable acts. after reading this book I couldn't help but think that with no offer for help by any outsiders during her childhood that this was the ONLY way that Sybil could have ever survived.