Multiple Personalities in Sybil Essay

“People’s personalities, like buildings, have various facades, some pleasant to view, some not.”-Francois de La Rochefoucauld. This quote, having been stated in the 1600’s, shows that there was a recognition of different aspects of one person’s personality, even before multiple personalities were studied in the medical world. In 1886, a groundbreaking novel, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, explored the idea of multiple personalities.

False fronts and pretending to be something you are not is a timeless issue. All humans lie and put up false fronts for personal gain, although not everyone realizes they are doing it. In 2013 Psychology Today published an article titled “Be Yourself vs. Being Somebody Else” and Dr. Fredric Neuman explains that, “persons with a secure sense of themselves can pretend—in certain situations, in certain ways—to be someone a little different without feeling untrue to themselves.” Neuman also mentions that doing this is like “putting on a costume and playing a role”.

For my ethnography project I chose to interview a childhood friend of mine who later in life was diagnosed with as multiple personalities. Today, the metal illness is known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Living with multiple personalities is difficult for the individual, but also the family around them. Life can be strange or difficult at times, but like with any other mental disorder, learning how to cope and understand the disorder can help the individual and the people around them.

If you have ever had an interest in multiple personality disorder, now known as dissociative identity disorder, you have probably seen the movie Sybil. Sybil is a movie about a girl named Sybil who was traumatically abused as a child and begins to have dissociative episodes that carry into her adulthood. After Sybil has a dissociative episode so bad that she cuts her wrist and doesn’t remember what happened, she decides to seek help. It is when Sybil seeks help that she meets Dr. Wilber. Dr. Wilber begins Psychoanalysis on Sybil after diagnosing her with Multiple personality disorder. Through therapy, Dr. Wilber begins to discover all of the traumatic abuse that Sybil endured. Dr. Wilber also meets the

Edgar Allen Poe had once said, "I was never really insane except upon occasions when my heart was touched”. Some might say the same, including the infamous Medea. Medea was a married woman and a mother of two who was left alone, heartbroken, and seeking revenge after her husband left her for a woman of higher status. Acting impulsively and irrationally, she executes a murderous plan, leaving her old lover with the funeral plans of both his new princess and their children. At first glance, one might say that she is heartless, evil, and spiteful; however, once analyzed using the psychoanalytic theory, one can quickly change their perspective to understand her better. Sigmund Freud developed the concept that one’s personality is classified

A well-known girl with multiple personalities is one of many victims of this diagnosis. Many psychiatrist studied her behaviors, and learned from the documented history of her behaviors.

I found both women stories remarkable so I decided to write about both. Did you know that a person could have ninty-two personalities? Well the first woman I am introducing is a remarkable story of someone who did. Her name is Truddi Chase. Truddi Chase was born on February 22,1935 near Rochester, NY. During the time of her childhood, she was physically and sexually abused. It makes me wonder if the abuse was the cause of her Multiple Personality Disorders. Sometimes tragic events lead people to lose themselves. In spite of everything, she seemed to have made it out alright. Truddi began an author. One of her books in particular was When Rabbit Howls. It was about her experiences with having multiple personalities. She also appeared on Oprah where she told her life's story. I find that inspring because not a lot of people can say that. Many people drown in their despair but she chose the latter.

     Beth plus has many personalities. Beth is married with children. Some of Beth’s personalities include: “Beth Ann” who is an eight year old girl. “Margaret”, remembers bad side of abuser. “Megan” remembers the good side of abuser. “Frenchy”, twenty-three year old female nymphomaniac who came out to deal with the sexual abuse. “Billy” is an eighteen year old male who is the “protector” personality. “Cheyanne” is a six year old girl and was the first multiple to appear to the therapist. “Janet” comes out to drive. “Carol” comes out to grocery shop. “Mary” is the financial keeper. “Skeptic” claims that Beth is a liar and is acting everything. “Yardwoman” takes care of the yard. Beth once caused her family to be $6,000 in debt because all her personalities had a combined seventeen credit cards and ran them up. Beth was abused and raped from age ten until the age fourteen.

I do not know of anyone experiencing this disorder nor have I experienced it myself. I have always liked the concept of “multiple personalities” and find movies and books pertaining to this subject matter to be highly interesting. Two that come to mind would be the movie “Frankie” with Halle Berry and a short-story entitled “The Yellow Wallpaper” by Charlotte P.

I also feel like the “other” when others directly/indirectly point it out. This could include anything from prolonged stares or the following dreaded

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder that Encarta (2001) describes as an illness that results in delusional thought patterns, hallucinations, and inappropriate effect. It literally means “split-mind’, but is not a multiple personality disorder. According to DSM-IV (1996) schizophrenia is categorized under the diagnostic code, ICD-9-CM or International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision, Clinical Modification of 295.xx. Symptoms of schizophrenia can be positive, which occur during the active phase, and negative, which are present before the onset of the disorder. Positive symptoms of the disease include delusions of grandeur (a belief that one is a famous admired individual), delusion of control (when they believe something wants to

In 1957, C.H. Thigpen and H.M. Checkley wrote The Three Faces of Eve, loosely based on one of their patients, and popularized the term "Split Personality." This condition, more formally known as Dissociative Identity Disorder, continues to capture the imagination of many people through movies such as "Me, Myself, and Irene," but it was much earlier that the idea of multiple personalities in one body entered popular culture. Robert Louis Stevenson wrote The Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in the nineteenth century, and in a couple of decades earlier Dostoevsky was writing Crime and Punishment which, while it does not portray a classic case of Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder), does

Each person in life is unique in their own way. Nobody else can fill your role. Unfortunately sometimes people hide who they really are in order to fit-in. In the movie “Mean Girls” and Disney’s “Ratatouille”, both protagonists find themselves pretending to be someone they're not. In the end they’re changes don’t bring them the happiness they desired. It is important to be yourself because focusing on others will keep you from fulfilling your future goals.

The case of Carol justifies skeptic’s argument about Multiple Personality Disorder. A single mother who worked two jobs and at the same time studying at the university. Carol became stressed out as time went by and decided to see a Psychologist. The Psychologist referred Carol, the patient, to a Psychiatrist. The Psychiatrist diagnosed Carol with MPD and started therapy to treat anomalous behavior. The Psychiatrist came up with notions that Carol never knew existed. For instance, the psychiatrist was emphatic that the parents abused Carol as a child. Furthermore, the psychiatrist suggested that the parents were into occultic association and that was part of the cause of the MPD. The one that infuriated the skeptics the more was when the psychiatrist

Dissociative Identity Disorder/Multiple personality is a mental disorder, comorbidity of psychosis, childhood trauma and dissociation (1). It’s a complex chronic disorder characterized by the identification of multiple severe psychological syndromes of unexplainable and recurrent amnesia, the ongoing coexistence or the alternating of two or more subjectively independent identities, and depersonalization. (1,5) Dissociative Identify Disorder in majority of the occasion transpire as a mechanism for the patient to cope with post traumatic stress of childhood abuses but not apparent until adulthood. (4) Therefore, those two are inevitably linked through interviews and experiment on patients diagnosed with DID (2,4).