A Critique to Sybil (1976)

Sybil Dorsett (Sally Field), A Multiple Personality Disorder Patient

         Hello everybody, welcome to another week where I review an exciting movie. This is the second last movie of the semester and I really hope that you have enjoyed reading my blogs so far. Today, we have another great film filled with enlightening and heart warming film, Sybil (1976), (just kidding). This film really makes you a little traumatized about watching it. 

         I am not going to lie, but when Dr. Goh said that this movie was three hour long and was featured over 30 years ago, I was skeptical to say the least when I saw this film. However, the duration of the film was actually justified by the fact that it gave sufficient character development to Sybil and the multiple personalities such as Vanessa, Vicky, and Peggy. Subsequently, the movie also build up the severity of the trauma from tripping her and slapping her to something at the end that traumatized the audience instead. The movie introduces a slow but meaningful build-up of the different parts of Sybil's personality and her triggers and keeps the audience uncertain. For example, Sybil will mention green room and buttonhook throughout the film and it was only shown at the end what it really is.

        The film gave introduction to the symptoms of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) to the audience. The first symptom was suddenly blanking out and the next moment coming back with no recollection of what happened during your absence. That was indeed scary to the audience as we thought that she was hysteric. The second symptom is that Sybil have dissociate parts of her identity to her many personalities. She is a wonderful painter, singer, pianist and interesting person to talk to. But these traits assume their personalities as Peggy, Vanessa and Vicky throughout the film. According to WedMD, DID patients have suicidal thoughts as well, and it idealize in the form of Marcia. However, interestingly enough, Vicky almost seem to be Sybil's guardian angel in rescuing her numerous times. DID personalities also could be anything as it was even alter from girls, boys to even her grandma. When enough rapport was built, Sybil allowed Dr. Wilbur to explore all her personalities under hypnosis.

         In the end of the film, there was a reveal that Sybil is actually a real patient and now lives a happy and fulfilled life. However, let us take a look into the Psychotherapist that made that happen, Dr. Wilbur. Now, she played a monumental part in leading Sybil to recovery. Sybil by nature is very repressive of her past and Dr. Wilbur needed to be really active in her treatment and really push for Peggy to get better. Dr. Wilbur uses a combination various types of therapy, also known as Eclectic Psychotherapy. For example, she uses Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy and rationalizes the thoughts that Sybil has during therapy. She was also very supportive and used some client-centered humanistic therapy approach when she reassures Sybil during her hypnosis adventures. However, she even broke common ethics with her clients when she did her very own self-disclosure during her therapy session and assume the role as Sybil's mother. This made us, as Psychologists, wonder that what Dr. Wilbur did was actually right. In my opinion, it did help Sybil to reach a new level of comfort with Dr. Wilbur and allowed her to dig into her deepest repressed memories. The ends justified the means, right? There is the chance that Dr. Wilbur would need to terminate therapeutic relationship with Sybil and that might create mistrust with other therapists. However, in the end Dr. Wilbur did complete her job and retract from her position as Sybil's mother and Psychotherapist. Now that, I salute.

        This movie made us aware that every problem, there is a greater cause and even greater lengths of a therapist to solve that problem. That is it movie watchers, I hope you all enjoy another great movie. Leave a comment down below if you want to see more movie reviews from me.