Sybil (1976)

Shirley Mason (the real 'Sybil') had apparently admitted that her multiple personalities were fake, and that she was lying all along. Regardless of whether this is true, I feel that for the most part, the film managed to accurately portray the mental illness that was experienced by the title character.

As with typical cases of dissociative identity disorder (DID) (as presented in abnormal psychology textbooks), it was the extreme childhood abuse that Sybil suffered at the hands of her mentally-ill mother that caused her mind to dissociate in order to cope with the trauma. Her father neglected to see the truth behind his wife's treatment of Sybil, and even their family doctor turned a blind eye towards the injuries he found on her, leaving Sybil all alone to experience the horror that was her childhood. Dr. Wilbur mentions several times that Sybil's "friends" exist to protect her and help Sybil express what she cannot; the film is accurate in the portrayal of DID as a psychological coping mechanism. 

According to the DSM-5, an individual has to have at least two separate personalities that exist independently of one another and that emerge at different times in order for a diagnosis of DID to be given (Kring, Johnson, Davidson, & Neale, 2013). Sybil certainly met this criterion, as she was depicted having at least 13 different personalities in the film; all of them had different temperaments - for example, Vicky, the confident and sophisticated French girl; Peggy, the traumatised little girl who kept breaking windows; and Vanessa, the talented pianist who also liked to sing and dance. 

At the beginning of the film, we see that there are missing pieces in Sybil's memory. One example was during the field trip, where she ended up standing in the pond without any recollection of how she had gotten there. There were also gaps in her memory when she was at home; she would take a rest and wake up after several hours only to find her apartment in a mess, without remembering what had happened in those few hours. In Dr. Wilbur's office, Sybil suddenly started speaking in a child-like manner, and when she came back to being Sybil, she had difficulty recalling the conversation between Dr. Wilbur and herself. This disruption of identity and discontinuity in sense of self is characteristic of individuals suffering from DID (Kring et al., 2013).

The manner in which Dr. Wilbur tried to treat Sybil's disorder in the film is also accurately depicted. Hypnosis is sometimes used by practitioners who have a psychodynamic orientation as a means of helping DID patients gain access to repressed childhood memories (Kring et al., 2013), which is what Dr. Wilbur did in her later treatments with Sybil. Dr. Wilbur's goal was for Sybil to realise that the threat (her mother) she experienced during her childhood was no longer present and she did not have to live her adult life being afraid of the ghosts of the past (Kring et al., 2013). 

All in all, I think the film did a good job in illustrating the reality of DID - from the symptoms that manifest, to the challenges experienced by the individual as well as those around them, and also the treatment in helping the individual reconcile the various personalities.  

References

Kring, A. M., Johnson, S. L., Davidson, G. C., & Neale, J. M. (2013). Abnormal Psychology (12th ed,). Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons.