Othello

It was the horrific child abuse Sybil's psychotic mother inflicted on her, along with the failure of her father to rescue her from it that caused these personalities. Each one embodied feelings and emotions the 'real' Sybil could not cope with. The waking Sybil was deprived of all these emotions, of anger and aggressiveness just to name a few. And was therefore a rather dreary figure. She was unaware of her other personas; while they were in 'control' of the body, Sybil suffered blackouts and did not remember the episodes. It was only the intervention of Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, a psychoanalyst, which alerted Sybil to them. The case of Sybil is the one most often credited with reintroducing the public and the mental health professions to the syndrome of multiple personality. Multiple personality disorder (MPD) is a psychiatric disorder characterized by having at least one "alter" personality that controls behavior. The "alters" are said to occur spontaneously and involuntarily, and function more or less independently of each other. In 1994, the American Psychiatric Association's DSM-IV replaced the designation of MPD with DID: Dissociative Disorders are characterized by a disruption in the normal functioning of consciousness, identity, memory, or the world around her / him. Dissociative Disorders can be acute or chronic. All of the dissociative disorders are thought to stem from trauma experienced by the individual with this disorder. The dissociative aspect is thought to be a coping mechanism -- the person literally dissociates himself from a situation or experience too traumatic to integrate with his conscious self. Symptoms of these disorders, or even one or more of the disorders themselves, are also seen in a number of other mental illnesses, including post-traumatic stress disorder, panic disorder, and obsessive compulsive disorder. Sybil Dorsett was a woman with sixteen separate personalities. At first none of them knew or remembered any of the others. For instance, one personality named Victoria Antoinette Scharleau was a self-assured, sophisticated, attractive blond, and another named Mike Dorsett thought she was male, a builder and carpenter. This kind of multiple personality disorder is often caused by extreme negative events as a child. In Sybil's case, she was tortured and sexually abused as a young girl. This caused her to break up, literally, because she could not bear the extreme abuse she was subjected to.

DSMIV

Dissociative Amnesia.- This disorder is characterized by a blocking out of critical personal information, usually of a traumatic or stressful nature. Dissociative amnesia, unlike other types of amnesia, does not result from other medical trauma

Depersonalization Disorder- is marked by a feeling of detachment or distance from one's own experience, body, or self. These feelings of depersonalization are recurrent. Of the dissociative disorders, depersonalization is the one most easily identified with by the general public; one can easily relate to feeling as they in a dream, or being spaced out. Feeling out of control of one's actions and movements is something that people describe when intoxicated. An individual with depersonalization disorder has this experience so frequently and so severely that it interrupts his or her functioning and experience. A person's experience with depersonalization can be so severe that he or she believes the external world is unreal or distorted.

Dissociative Fugue.- is a rare disorder. An individual with dissociative fugue suddenly and unexpectedly takes physical leave of his or her surroundings and sets off on a journey of some kind. These journeys can last hours, or even several days or months. Individuals experiencing a dissociative fugue have traveled over thousands of miles. An individual in a fugue state is unaware of or confused about his identity, and in some cases will assume a new identity

Dissociative Identity Disorder- which has been known as multiple personality disorder, is the most famous of the dissociative disorders. An individual suffering from DID has more than one distinct identity or personality state that surfaces in the individual on a recurring basis. This disorder is also marked by differences in memory which vary with the individual's alters, or other personalities.

An angry personality appears to be one of the most common in MPD patients. Peggy was created by one of Sybil's earliest dissociations in order to cope with the anger which Sybil felt towards her mother but was never able to express. Later splitting into Peggy Lou (angry)and Peggy Ann (afraid), the importance of Peggy to Sybil can be seen in the fact that she took over for two years of her life when things were too much to cope with (remember that Peggy Lou