Saturday 8 March 2014

Sybil - The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities, by Flora Rheta Schreiber

This book tells the story of Sybil, a woman that, as the title says, was possessed by sixteen different personalities. Unbelievably this was a real story. Sybil (which is a fake name) suffered from dissociative identity disorder caused by severe traumas that she experienced during her childhood, and she really had initially 16 personalities from different ages, that some were not even aware of the others (as Sybil wasn't aware of any), and interestingly two of them were even men. Each personality had its own taste for things, opinions, believes, that were strongly conflicted at times, even physically they were different, the way they dressed and talked, and that made Sybil's life a huge mess. The book basically tells the story of the psychoanalytical treatment she received during 11 years until she got completely healed. The good thing I liked about the book is that it goes step by step along the treatment showing in details all the difficulties faced by both therapist and patient and how they overcame them. It tells a lot about how the human psyche works sometimes. And the best thing is that, since it is a story and not a textbook on psychoanalysis,  it is very easy to follow everything even if you don't know much about psychology. It was really intense for me to follow all the steps of Sybil treatment because it did make me get in touch with a lot of working mechanisms of my own psyche. And not need to mention that the meditations I do on a daily basis, got again very deep and liberating during the period I was reading this book. It is something I can't explain exactly why an how it works but the true is that, in my case at least, the difference on depth of my meditations during normal periods and periods when I am reading such books is astonishing. It really is. Well, just to summarize, I did love the book. I always like books that make me get involved with them to such an extend that after reading I can say I am not the same person who started reading it. That's mainly it. Enjoy if you want.