Corey’s Reviews > Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities > Status Update

Also I keep having to remind myself that this was from the 70s because the psychology itself is so extremely insanely incorrect and outdated

Like I cannot emphasize enough how much the abuse depicted that isn't clearly sensationalized at best and wholly fictionalised at worst is enough by itself to induce DID

Yeah see the idea that this level of abuse would result in no one saying anything continues to annoy me.

You cannot say a child remembered the rage at being switched to being bottle fed at 11 months old

That's not how memories work

What's frustrating is that I don't believe that the subject of this "true story" wasn't abuse

I don't even necessarily believe anyone (including the author) intended to lie

But there is a clearly sensationalized and fictionalised aspect to the book that makes me uncomfortable

Okay I was working on the assumption that the physically impossible abuse was being done at like at least age 7

At age 2 (which has just been given) it's even more physically impossible

"Sketch of numbers she hoarded"

This illustration contains no visible numbers lads

I think a thing that's particularly frustrating is that the level of emotional and physical abuse depicted before this point is sufficient to induce a complex dissociative disorder so this bizarre sensationalised segment feels like it serves no purpose but to convince the reader of The Horrors (also probably bc the lesser abuse was considered acceptable childrearing at the book's publication)

Physically impossible to survive abuse
Physically impossible to survive without visible marks abuse

And I'm meant to believe the supposedly somewhat attentive father and entire small town just didn't notice

:/

Like a significant reason I do not believe this particular section of abuse depictions is that a lot of what's being described is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE

And that which isn't would NOT have gone unnoticed because it's borderline physically impossible btw