Sybil Movie

[mysticeden.livejournal.com]

I finally saw Sybil this weekend with my room mate who is also a multiple. I had read the book but never seen the film. I thought her acting was amazing! Me and my room mate both looked at each other in shock. If we hadn't known it was an actress I might have believed her. I was surprised since she's a singlet (as far as I know).

Besides from that the movie was good, although I don't understand why they made all the alters into children. That was very weird especially since a lot of them were either the same age as Sybil or older. In all reality I cant judge the movie alone because all the holes in the story I knew about since I read the book.

One question though, who was the guy? does anyone know? I knew of a few different guys in the book, but the love interest in the movie seemed like a combination of them and her best friend (who did not appear in the movie anyway).


Well this is just me ranting but I'd like to hear your opinions on this movie or the book.

Comments

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

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.)

[mysticeden.livejournal.com]

I've never seen the real person and I actually never thought about the word phrasing about possesion 0_o. Weird.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/controversy.html

The love interest was completely fake as was most of the film, and the book.

Sally Field played Sybil as a dowdy, unkempt, almost bag lady type. The bizarre behavior, the child alters, etc., were all contrived to fulfill audience expectations of a "mental patient". Little to nothing is known of the real Shirley Mason. We have received letters from people who knew her who confirm that her mother was very controlling and allowed her no freedom, but the more extreme incidents in book and film apparently did not happen. There is no evidence backing up the assertion that Shirley was too scarred inside to have children. What we did hear from one source was that Shirley, like Dr. Wilbur, was gay.

Another source told us that Shirley remained multiple all her life despite Wilbur's attempts to integrate her; in fact she said she was lonely and depressed without the others, whom she came to regard as a family.

Psychological historian Peter Swales is doing research on what really happened with Shirley Mason. The last we heard of him, he had actually put that on hold because he was also working on a project about Marilyn Monroe and some new information was uncovered about her recently.

[rhymer-713.livejournal.com]

Hopefully her mom didn't take a crap on the neighbor's yard either. That just made us sick...aAnd for some reason it made us jumpy for about three days.. And the info on the book jacket's enough to make us hurl. If we ever see copies of that book in the library or bookstore, we've taken to sticking little bits of paper in them with links to Astraeasweb and Pavilion and also to Amorpha.

[temps-vivant.livejournal.com]

If we ever see copies of that book in the library or bookstore, we've taken to sticking little bits of paper in them with links to Astraeasweb and Pavilion and also to Amorpha.

Oh, so you do that too?

[rhymer-713.livejournal.com]

Grins. Yep. Well, we kinda have to have assistance cuz the body's blind but her mom helps us, in bogth the writing and the telling us where said book is.. But yes. We did wonder if any one else did that. Hee! Glad to see you all do tooo.

[mysticeden.livejournal.com]

Blind? If you dont mind me asking how do you write on lj? Just wondering.

[rhymer-713.livejournal.com]

Oh no. We don't mind at all. We have a screen reader, sorta like Narrator if you have Win2000 or higher, only much, much more powerful. It reads the screen and what we type and allows us to enter things into the LJ formfields. If we're not mistaken you can find info about it at

[mysticeden.livejournal.com]

Oh awesome. I figured it was something like that. And where is there more info? It came up blank =S

[rhymer-713.livejournal.com]

Oops! Sorry about that. You can google JAWS and it'd give you the link.. Also, they have pieces of hardware that will convert the input into Braille as well. Good luck, Cuz apparently they changed site addresses. But the link came up blank in the post. Hang on...





http://www.freedomscientific.com




Now, if we're lucky...Grin. But if this link doesn't work at all, do the Google thing and it'll come up as a sponsored link.

[rhymer-713.livejournal.com]

Hmmm. That's cool. Bout time some one got the facts. There is one part in the book that stands out though. That little bit where Sybil and Dr. Wilbur go on that picnic and all the others are talking inside Sybil's head. Sounded suspiciously like communication to us.

[mysticeden.livejournal.com]

I read that and well... even if that were true there are plenty of multiple with lives such as the ones in the movie and book. So if only for that reason alone I like them.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Yes, but the question we must ask ourselves is, are they living that way because of the movie and the book. That is, knowing or suspecting there were several persons sharing a body, did they then decide they had to follow the model set by Sybil not only in order to be believed by others, but to self-validate?

Judging from the voluminous correspondence we've received over the last eleven years, I seriously suspect that the latter is frequently the case. Sybil, by virtue of the fact that there was almost no other literature on multiple personalities at the time, set the standard for both mental health professionals and their clients on what constituted proper behavior for a multiple. Even Truddi Chase& fit the profile, in their own way. It has become a meme, in the true sense of the word.

One reason we wrote the articles that formed the basis for our website was to conceive of and hopefully provide alternative examples.

[mysticeden.livejournal.com]

lol I dont think so. Me and many others I know are like that. I knew what I was before reading any book. Sybil was actually one of the last books I ever read. I didn't know anything about other multiples, thier worlds or what psychiatrist thought when I knew what I was.

Maybe, for some yes, but not for everyone. I don't think she should be the standard because everyone is different and any standard there is too static; it wont work. I also think this is more aimed at people who are multiples because of abuse not those who are born that way.

Yes its fine to provide alternative examples but these shouldn't be the standard or norm either. I dont think its a good idea to go with only one way of thinking.

[tessagratton.livejournal.com]

I find I'm frequently popping up on this community for weird historical facts about multiplicity. Please bear with me.

Prior to 1900, possession was the most frequent "diagnosis" for cases that might very well have been cases of multiplicity. Psychologically, we've only thought about personality and identity in those terms very recently (last 100 years or so) and before that everything was given supernatural reasons for occurring. If you read up on some stories of possession, particularly case studies of some witch burnings in the 16th and 17th centuries, you'll realize that all of the "symptoms" sounds a hell of a lot like multiplicity.

Some of us even have demons or inhuman soul-bonds and the like. Technically, that kind of multiplicity fits the very definition of possession.

Luc, et al

[mysticeden.livejournal.com]

That would also make walk-ins and other kin a type of possesion wouldnt it?