The therapist assumed that something terrible must have happened to her when she was a child to create this kind of splitting in her consciousness. So she spent many years working with her. And ultimately Sybil remembered terrible, hideous sexual abuse and torture by her mother, and once she came to remember that, she reintegrated and was able to have a happy life after that. Sybil's case generated widespread fascination both in the general public and the medical community, and a group of psychiatrists and psychologists successfully lobbied to have multiple personality disorder included in the DSM ( Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). Sybil the movie 1976 free online windows#.She moves in real close to evil and stays there. And as the mother who tortured the young Sybil, JoBeth Williams turns in a remarkable performance. She is mesmerizing as she moves in and out of her multiple characters, making each one of them a three-dimensional being for the screen.Īs the doctor who helps Sybil, Jessica Lange is more than convincing, if a bit stiff at times. She has enough depth of being to carry it off completely. That said, Tammy Blanchard - who won an Emmy for her performance as Judy Garland in “My Life as Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows” - takes Sybil and makes the woman completely her own. Later on, learning to trust even one doctor must have been another torture altogether for Sybil.įield’s performance more than 30 years ago stands alone. Having been emotionally and physically abused by her mother when she was a child, Sybil found the most creative of ways to survive: She simply found other people to be, all of them residing in her battered psyche.

“Sybil” is engrossing enough for anyone - as a tale of emotional and physical torture and as the story of possible hope.

Sybil 1976 full movie online