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The Issues With Dissociate Identity Disorder

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The purpose of this paper is to discuss the issues with Dissociate Identity Disorder (DID), previously known as Multiple Personality disorder in comparison to the movie Sybil. This movie is based on a true story of a girl name Sybil and the horrors she faces as a child while developing into a young woman with multiple personalities. DID is a very controversial diagnosis and often not believed by many professionals in the mental health/psychiatry field. According to Vedat Sar 's (2014) article “The Many Face’s of Dissociation”, “Dissociation is the ultimate form of human response to chronic developmental stress, because patients with dissociative disorders report the highest frequency of childhood abuse and/ or neglect among all psychiatric disorders” (pg 171). In the movie, Sybil was repeatedly abused by her mother, neglected by her father, and witnessed many tragic events. Sybil, whose real name is Shirley Ardell Mason, received psychiatric treatment from Dr. Connie Wilbur. During the treatment sessions, Dr. Wilbur had become more and more engaged with Sybil and believed that Sybil suffered from multiple personalities. Meanwhile, Dr. Wilbur discussed the case of Sybil with her colleagues and was ridiculed for the idea. “One was Herbert Spiegel, a New York psychiatrist who said that he had treated Ms. Mason when Dr. Wilbur was on vacation. Dr. Spiegel described his patient not as a sufferer of multiple personality disorder but, rather, as a readily suggestible hysteric”

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