Sybil

Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber is the amazing true story of a girl, named Sybil, who has Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD). Throughout the book, Sybil suffers extreme childhood abuse, which causes her to separate into SIXTEEN different personalities. She often forgets days or weeks at a time, but after her grandma died, she couldn't remember anything from third grade all the way to fifth grade. The reason she couldn't remember anything was because Peggy Lou (one of her personalities) took over for Sybil because Sybil was mad she couldn't attend the funeral, and Peggy Lou is the personality that deals with anger. There is another Peggy, but she's Peggy Ann and she deals with fear. Then there are also Mike and Sid, who are boys and help Sybil deal with the things that men would normally do, there's Vicky, who "lives" the exact opposite life that Sybil did. These are only a few of Sybil's other selves, but you're gonna have to read the book if you want to find out the others. :)

Throughout the book, you hear some of the therapy sessions that Dr. Wilbur had with Sybil. As their sessions continue, you discover many horrible things about Sybil's childhood. First of all, her mom was schizophrenic, which should have been bad enough by itself, but Sybil's dad left it up to the mom to take care of Sybil. Sybil's mother consistently physically, sexually, and physically abused Sybil. Chaining her to a piano at times and just flat out hitting her at other times. One time she even went far enough to show Sybil what it felt like to be dead. To do this, she shoved Sybil in a trunk and suffocated her with cotton and towels until Sybil passed out. Her dad never noticed, and if he did, he never did anything to stop these awful events. Many of these events caused Sybil to separate herself in order to deal with the pain of the almost daily abuse from her mother.

Sybil did not love her mom, in fact she hated her, but there was one person she did love, and that was her grandmother. Sybil's grandmother was always nice to Sybil, and even took care of her at times. Then her grandmother died. And her parents wouldn't even let her go to the funeral. Sybil attended the burial, but at the end, she became someone else because she was mad. Peggy Lou to be exact. Peggy L. had control of Sybil for almost two whole years. Until Sybil was healed, she had no memories of those two years. She couldn't even do simple multiplication.

While Peggy L. took over for two years, I believe that Sybil had three main identities. These are Vicky, Peggy Lou, and Peggy Ann. Vicky takes over when Sybil feels that her life is too much to handle. Vicky is not an only child, unlike Sybil, and she has caring parents, so it makes sense that Vicky would take over when Sybil needed a break from her hard life. Peggy Lou takes over when Sybil feels extreme anger. Peggy Ann deals with Sybil's fears. When Sybil gets very frightened, Peggy Ann takes over, cries (which Sybil doesn't do because the other personalities do it for her), and then gets angry and deals with the problem.

I'm still trying to decide if this book is one of my favorites or not. It uses a lot of big, psychiatry words, but other than that, it is pretty easy to understand. The only reason it wouldn't be one of my favorites is because of all the abuse I read about in that book. I never knew a mother was capable of such awful acts of child abuse. Other than that though this is a seriously great and interesting book.

I would NOT NOT NOT NOT suggest this book to anyone who has a weak stomach, or anyone that really doesn't care for hearing the detailed description of Sybil's sexual abuse. Grade:A+