The Sybil movie, if you mean the one with Sally Field, is enormously tarted up for dramatic effect. Most of the stuff shown in it never happened at all. It isn't even that much like the book, which was also tarted up a lot for dramatic effect.
The fact that it comes off as a "horror" film isn't a coincidence. It came out just a few years after The Exorcist, when possession themes were hugely popular. Even the book kind of got segued into that-- "the dramatic story of a woman possessed by 16 separate personalities," etc. So it was played up to look like multiplicity is all spinning your head and spitting pea soup. (Sally Field didn't even look much like the real Shirley Mason-- you can see a picture of her on Astraea's controversies page.)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2006-10-26 04:45 am (UTC)The fact that it comes off as a "horror" film isn't a coincidence. It came out just a few years after The Exorcist, when possession themes were hugely popular. Even the book kind of got segued into that-- "the dramatic story of a woman possessed by 16 separate personalities," etc. So it was played up to look like multiplicity is all spinning your head and spitting pea soup. (Sally Field didn't even look much like the real Shirley Mason-- you can see a picture of her on Astraea's controversies page.)