“Sybil” by Flora Rheta Schreiber: Was Sybil’s multiple personality iatrogenic, faked, or more elaborate?

In the last phase of Sybil’s curative psychotherapy by Dr. Wilbur, the alternate personalities whose self-image was younger than Sybil’s actual age were “age-progressed” up to Sybil’s actual age to facilitate their merger into one Sybil. This reminded me that Dr. Herbert Spiegel had once age-regressed Sybil in a demonstration of hypnotic phenomena.

Did Dr. Herbert Spiegel believe that Sybil’s multiple personality was not entirely genuine, because, in retrospect, he wondered if his age-regression of her had been partially responsible for it? Of course, if Sybil’s history of memory gaps had preceded Dr. Herbert Spiegel’s age-regression of her, then he did not cause her multiple personality.

Concluding comments: There are two reasons that faking multiple personality is rare, and a reason that the list of Sybil's personalities was probably incomplete. First, patients don’t like this diagnosis, because they feel it portrays them as a crazy freak. Second, it is very hard to remember all the characteristic nuances of each personality, and not be caught in making a mistake. In a movie, if the actor makes a mistake, they simply reshoot the scene. Third, as an added speculation, I would guess that Sybil, with an IQ of 170, had more than sixteen alternate personalities, but some were nameless and reticent.

1. Flora Rheta Schreiber. Sybil. New York, Grand Central Publishing, 1973/2009.