This 12-minute video introduces students to the story behind “Sybil,” a sensational but scientifically fraught case study in multiple personality disorder that became the subject of a best-selling book and popular movie. Chronicling the questionable research and treatment procedures that led to a crisis of misdiagnosis and maltreatment of patients, the video explains how the now-debunked concept of multiple personality disorder came to be replaced by the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder. Useful for setting up a class discussion on the fallibility of diagnostic labels and their evolution over time, the video fits in well with any unit on clinical psychology, and provides students with a deeply contextualized introduction to the basic elements of dissociative identity disorder.
Is Multiple Personality Disorder Real? One Woman’s Story
In the 1970s, the TV movie “Sybil” introduced much of the nation to multiple personality disorder and launched a controversy that continues to resonate.
In 1976, millions of viewers tuned in to watch “Sybil,” a television movie based on the best-selling book of the same name, and were introduced to the agonies of a young woman said to have 16 different personalities.
The TV movie elevated a rarely diagnosed mental illness – multiple personality disorder – into a cultural phenomenon and a talk show staple. By 1980, The American Psychiatric Association officially recognized the disorder. And soon thousands of patients were being diagnosed with it.
But as the case numbers rose in the 1990s, so too did questions about the disorder, and the woman who had become the face of it.
Today, the controversy over Multiple Personality Disorder – now called Dissociative Identity Disorder – continues to shape mental health issues.
Related: Debate Persists Over Diagnosing Mental Health Disorders, Long After ‘Sybil’ by Clyde Haberman New TV Series Explores the Debate Over a Multiple Personality Diagnosis by Sarah Weiser
Additional Information: Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case by Debbie Nathan
- Lesson plan 1: Psychology: Dissociative Disorder
- Read transcript
- Producer: Barbara Dury
- Editor: Bret Sigler
- Reporter: Sarah Weiser