Sybil and Dissociative Identity Disorder - Essay Example

Sybil and Dissociative Identity Disorder Sybil is a story of a girl who struggles during her childhood and most of her life due to an illness called DID or Dissociative Identity Disorder, which others call multiple personality disorder. Mental disorders are seen as abnormal or unstable behavior, thoughts or feelings and people are categorized as having such disorder because they behave, think or feel differently from most others. Psychiatrists have developed systems for classifying mental disorders that describe the kinds of symptoms and behavior which are commonly seen among those who are considered mentally disordered. These fall into two main groups: personality disorders and psychoses. Another common group of disorder is usually termed anxiety disorders. Personality disorder is not really a mental illness that tends to develop quite suddenly and usually in response to particular stresses. In fact, it develops slowly, as the person grows up and is thought to be mainly due to environment and upbringing. For example, in Sybil's case, she grew up in a family with no love, constant beatings and a mother who suffers from schizophrenia, naturally she will develop anti-social behavior or a paranoid personality; but it seems it's more than that because she developed 16 different personalities, worst is she has a male counterpart of herself. A growing body of evidence also suggests that early sexual abuse also distorts the development of a healthy personality. Sybil's case is more of psychoanalytic in nature because she in conflict with herself wherein her mind is an expression of conflicting forces - some conscious, the majority unconscious. Her condition involves the unconscious where unpleasant experiences are repressed, the conflict arising from the unconscious mind when her set of beliefs impacts adversely on another area of beliefs, causing emotional suffering felt as disappointment, anger or frustration. It also involves her drives and instincts as well as her personality in the genetic viewpoint. Years before, this illness was simply called hysteria. Sybil's traumatic childhood and the abuses that she had experienced resulted to the development of sixteen (16) personalities. Symptoms of the illness include amnesia, depersonalization, derealization, depression and anxiety or mental illness. Amnesia in this type of disorder is the experience at certain periods of time when Sybil forgets both events and people. This type of memory loss is more extensive than the forgetfulness that we normally experience. Dissociative amenesia, as it is called is the trademark of this illness as it can't be explained by physical or neurological condition. Dissociative Identity Disorder is an illness which makes the affected person 'switch' to another personality whenever he or she is experiencing stress and or severe anxiety. Experiences may include several different people taking inside your head, having their own name, own story and characteristics. They also have their own qualities as manifested in the voice, manner, gender and even physical qualities. Sybil indeed have all of these present, as she has sixteen different personalities, having different physical characteristics, attitudes and even gender, as she also had two male personalities of herself. Sybil's 'alternate self' is a mirror of what she feels inside. Her desires of being confident, self-assured and all that is positive that she wanted to experience as all these were "robbed" from her in her childhood days. Due to her traumatic experience in her mother's hands and her father's indifference to her situation made her grow up having so much pain, hatred and confusion in herself that instead of molding her into a stronger person, she tended into the "unfortunate" side - DID. In her growing up years, Sybil in some way also showed Reaction-Formation, a process by which we can disguise our true motives or desires when such would cause us guilt or shame if we really face up to them. The defense consists in strongly expressing the very opposite of what we are in truth experiencing. For instance, Sybil becomes anxious when her mother is around but she displays the opposite. Her anxiety increases as she moves around the house with her mother present knowing that she will be hit by her anytime she makes a move that would displeasing in her mother's eyes. Knowing that her mother is also sick with schizophrenia, there is no certainty that Sybil will be treated well or taken cared of. Reaction-formation expresses itself in an over-concerned and an excessive solicitude for the welfare of the person. It is not really about putting sense or order in the person's external world, although it might seems like it to the person concerned, but it is actually doing something in the person's inner world of her own personality. Sybil, in her sixteen personalities, illustrates the way she wanted to 'reorganize her world'. Putting some meaning in what she does, an unconscious projection of her inner desires, new reflection of her self that she wants others to see. However because of the severity of her illness and the seriousness of her traumatic experience in her childhood days, complications arose which brought about the sixteen types of personalities. Her family life can be summed up as a disorder in itself as there was no one in her family who was strong enough to have taken cared of her and her mother. I can say that it is a dysfunctional family in the sense that it is struggling to keep the relationship healthy due to the illnesses that the family is plagued of. Human beings are attracted toward states which are pleasant and are drawn away from stimulations which are unpleasant. Naturally, man looks for relationships that are warm and affectionate. During infancy and childhood, this need is very often satisfied by loving parents who provide the warm emotional security that will determine to a large extent, later personal adjustments in life. Assured of the affection from the people close to her, a child is fortified with the assurance that she is acceptable to some persons and that she can depend on them for the satisfaction of her needs. Clearly this wasn't so in Sybil's case. The atmosphere of the home is a big development factor for the emotional stability of the child. A home which fosters love and affection is giving the child a solid foundation that will make her a worthy member of the society, and from the love of her parents, this love will later on radiate to encompass more and more people so that later on, the self is integrated with the satisfaction of other people. Sybil's family and childhood history apparently fueled her disorder. To have sixteen types of personality running amok inside of you, taking on your life at certain periods, only shows how severe her experiences were. Although sexual and child abuse may not sound as horrific today as it is almost always a part of our daily newspapers, the intensity and severity of the experience is dependent on each person. Unfortunately for Sybil, she obviously had not been ale to overcome from her experiences that she now needs help from professionals. Many human desires are directed and complicated by unconscious motives which we are not directly aware of because they lie in the substrata of our consciousness but which are nevertheless powerful drives that may dominate our lives. Sybil, due to an unhappy and traumatic childhood developed numerous desires which are repressed in her subconscious and they formed the reason for many of her inner conflicts in life while she was growing up till her adulthood. Having DID is a great struggle, especially if you have sixteen 'other' selves. It is very difficult to have a normal life since you will be tagged by the society as someone with DID. Sometimes you will be mocked and ridiculed and if your illness strikes and you are experiencing something different, people mostly gets scared turning their backs on you. Only a few knew that more than anything else, their understanding is what you need. It is difficult to make friends, you will become anti-social because you have difficulty to exists socially or interact with people, one has to hold down a job and may cause considerable distress to others and to the affected person as well. People suffering from DID have periods of intense emotional reactions and defective power of observation. Their mental condition makes them interact with others in a bizarre way, and such is something that definitely turns others away. The exact causes or DID and other personality disorders are not known except that it usually manifests after a traumatic and/or severely stressful experience. It may be learned or it may be genetically inherited. Sybil's family and childhood history is enough to support the cause of her illness. In normal circumstances, even if her mother is suffering from schizophrenia, if she was just loved by her father, see her mother being treated by a professional, most likely she could have adjusted and coped up with the situation fairly well. DID is an abnormal personality development probably resulting from the distortion of the iteration between the growing child and its environment. For example, a child has problems of learning, problem solving, or emotional control, this not only affects the way that she behaves but may also result in other people responding negatively. Sybil indeed was an art teacher and it seems that she has been doing well, but amidst her work and her relationship with her students, she was struggling deep inside. The dilemma of having 16 'other' Sybil's with different names, personalities, characteristics and even gender is something that has to be taken seriously and this was what her therapist Dr. Wilbur did. Psychotherapy was the treatment used by Dr. Cornelia B. Wilbur to cure Sybil to be able to get answers to her frequent black outs and emotional breakdowns. Wilbur aims at interacting not only with Sybil's true self but also with her other selves with the aim of dispelling distress arising through disorders of emotion, thinking and behavior. A part of her treatment was hypnosis wherein she was put into a trance-like state, similar to that of sleeping. Wilbur also used sodium amytal in her interviews with Sybil in order for her 'other' selves to communicate with the therapist (wikipedia encyclopedia). Sodium amytal is a drug with sedative-hypnotic and analgesics properties. It was said that this drug contains properties which induces a person to tell the truth. Psychological treatment can try to correct this distortion by helping the person to understand their problems and why they react as they do. The treatment involves the patient not only reaching this understanding, but also re-learning how to relate to others. Both psychotherapy and cognitive behavioral treatments can be helpful. Psychotherapy attempts to look at the way in which the person's earliest experiences have contributed to their problems. Cognitive behavioral treatment is more concerned with the here and now, and tries to encourage the patient to learn new ways of thinking and behaving which are more effective. Bibliography "Sybil (1976 film)." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 30 October 2007, 04:02 UTC. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 29 December 2007. "Dissociative Identity Disorder." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. 28 October 2007, 04:41 UTC.Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 29 December 2007. "Dissociative Identity Disorder." Psychology Today.1991-2007.Last Reviewed: 24 Oct 2005.Last Reviewed By: Laura Stephens.Retrieved:December 29, 2007. Ross CA. "Multiple Personality Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features and Treatment. New York: John Wiley and Sons, 1989" Reny J. Muller. "A Patient with Dissociative Identity Disorder 'Switches' in the Emergency Room." November 1998, Volume XV, Issue 11. CMP Healthcare Media LLC. Read More