Sybil Isabel Dorsett

Sybil Isabel Dorsett

I have been studying this case that involves a young woman, name Sybil Isabel Dorsett. She is a very smart, yet a very mentally ill person. Through therapy, I have been found that Sybil suffers from what is known as Multiple Personality Disorder. MPD or Multiple Personality Disorder is where a person's personality splits into different ones due to traumatic occurrences (sexual or physical abuse), in childhood. A rare form indeed, where she transfers back and forth in confusion between personalities. Hypnosis and other psychological techniques were used to pull more details from Sybil about her shattered psyche. She seems to have experienced 16 separate personalities, two of whom were male. There was horrific child abuse that Sybil's mother inflicted upon her, along with the failure of her father to rescue her from it. Due to these tragedies Sybil split into alternate personalities that embodied feelings and emotions the actual Sybil couldn't handle. So tragic were her buried memories that she couldn't remember most of her childhood and was unaware of her impending personalities. She often suffered blackouts.

As stated earlier, the underlying cause of Sybil's condition is due to the horrible abuse of her mother. Her mother beat her to the point where she broke bones, fractured her clavicle, and ribs. She even sexually molested Sybil in various ways.

Sybil suffered from unexplainable things or occurrences, where something would trigger her to change to another personality. For instance, the smell of disinfectant made her literally go crazy. Apparently, her mother used disinfectant on her when she performed a homemade hysterectomy. The color white also "set her off". She would react to the color white as if terribly frightened and afraid, going into a whimpering madness. She reacted this way due to the fact that her mother had snow white hair. Also, she didn't like dishtowels. They frightened her as well. Of course she didn't know why, but through hypnotic therapy we found that her mother had used dishtowels to tie Sybil's arms and legs together.

Sybil would never become a mother. Her own mother performed countless acts of sexual deviance to her. She often stuck random objects into her vaginal area as some sort of punishment. It took some time for Sybil to become comfortable remembering the more tragic memories, but she ultimately came through.