Sybil Case Study Essay

Better known as Sybil Dorsett, Shirley Ardell Mason is famous for being the ‘standards’ for Dissociative Identity Disorder, DID, during the 1970’s, when DID had not been popular and many people didn’t know it existed. Although the controversies that follow this story make it harder to believe, Sybil was believed to have 16 different personalities, some were even male. With that, Dorsett had fractured into these varying personas because of the physical and sexual abuse that she had received from her mother when she was only a child. Because of this, Dorsett had issues with her different personalities such as Marcia, who was suicidal and wished to kill herself, and in turn, Dorsett. In fact, it caused her to become anxious with a collection of nightmares, and led to her becoming unstable at any unexpected time. However, there are a few ways to cure it within the world of psychology, such as psychoanalytic or humanistic perspective. Similar to how Dr. Wilbur combined all of the personalities into one, it would be best to use psychoanalytic for Sybil’s case. …show more content…
This can be done using free association to share and attempt to understand Dorsett’s personal experiences, which is used for both perspectives. However, for psychoanalytic, dream analysis can be used to understand the patient’s unconscious behavior and inner desires or fears. Meanwhile, humanism focuses on how the patient truly feels using quantitative research which allows them to understand how the patient feels about certain circumstances, in depth. In fact, each method was used on Dorsett; Wilbur had the personalities draw their dreams and later examined it, there was use of free association with the protector personality, Vicky. Overall, both perspectives can work fairly well in their own ways during the stabilization