On the account of a woman named Sybil, Flora Rheta Schreiber wrote, “She’d abandoned the animal she loved as she herself had been abandoned repeatedly in the past by people who had claimed to love her.” (44) Schreiber is a psychiatry journalist and author who wrote the biography Sybil, a work about a woman who developed sixteen different personalities. The book profoundly depicts the emotional and intense incidents from her social life to hospital and psychiatric visits. It also interprets a psychological perspective in which studies Sybil’s mind and behavior, as well as explains the reasons for her disorder. Sybil includes numerous facts and real-life situations that the young woman experienced. There are numerous pages of detailed visits
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At infancy, Sybil’s mother, Hattie Dorsett, abuses her daughter in unimaginable ways. Though physical, she is abused further with words, cold water enemas, violations using a buttonhook, and more to which became everyday rituals Hattie performs. In part three of Sybil, Dr. Wilbur confronts Willard Dorsett, Sybil’s father. She asks him various questions pertaining to the abuse and raising of his daughter in response to her personalities. As a child, Willard shares he is working most hours of the day, really almost never home to see the torture Hattie placed on Sybil. When Dr. Wilbur can achieve Willard to express his feelings, the author writes:
The many years of aloof nonseeing, of refusing to know, converged in a moment of sudden realization in which, by instinct, by powerful recollection, Willard Dorsett came to believe that Hattie had placed Sybil in the wheat crib; that Hattie had been responsible for his daughter’s fractured larynx, dislocated shoulder, assorted burns, the bead in the nose… “Oh, merciful Father, not Hattie!” …show more content…
Sybil is directly impacted by her mother’s abuse with lack of love and support she wished for. Her personalities became her escape, but a consequence when she could not remember things she did when controlled by her other self. In writing her book, Schreiber includes facts of psychology and anecdotes from Dr. Wilbur, as well as Sybil, to explore the realm of multiple personalities, and why they are developed. The book was saddening, yet influential bringing a new light to psychoanalysis. If emotional impact and a story is something one is into, it is a must read for both psychology and
At infancy, Sybil’s mother, Hattie Dorsett, abuses her daughter in unimaginable ways. Though physical, she is abused further with words, cold water enemas, violations using a buttonhook, and more to which became everyday rituals Hattie performs. In part three of Sybil, Dr. Wilbur confronts Willard Dorsett, Sybil’s father. She asks him various questions pertaining to the abuse and raising of his daughter in response to her personalities. As a child, Willard shares he is working most hours of the day, really almost never home to see the torture Hattie placed on Sybil. When Dr. Wilbur can achieve Willard to express his feelings, the author writes:
The many years of aloof nonseeing, of refusing to know, converged in a moment of sudden realization in which, by instinct, by powerful recollection, Willard Dorsett came to believe that Hattie had placed Sybil in the wheat crib; that Hattie had been responsible for his daughter’s fractured larynx, dislocated shoulder, assorted burns, the bead in the nose… “Oh, merciful Father, not Hattie!” …show more content…
Sybil is directly impacted by her mother’s abuse with lack of love and support she wished for. Her personalities became her escape, but a consequence when she could not remember things she did when controlled by her other self. In writing her book, Schreiber includes facts of psychology and anecdotes from Dr. Wilbur, as well as Sybil, to explore the realm of multiple personalities, and why they are developed. The book was saddening, yet influential bringing a new light to psychoanalysis. If emotional impact and a story is something one is into, it is a must read for both psychology and