Sybil (40 page)

Peggy Lou and Peggy Ann, Vicky and Mary, Marcia and Vanessa, Mike and Sid, Marjorie and Ruthie, Helen and Sybil Ann, Clara and Nancy. These fourteen alternating selves had drifted in and out of Dr.

Wilbur's office, each with her or his own emotions, attitudes, tastes, talents, ambitions, desires, modes of behavior, speech patterns, thought processes, and body images. Twelve of the selves were female; two, male. All were younger than Sybil.

Each was different from the others and from Sybil; each knew of Sybil's existence and of the existence of the other selves. Sybil, however--and this was the great irony of her predicament--had not known about the others, until Dr. Wilbur had told her about them. The irony was compounded by the fact that even after the doctor had alerted Sybil to the truth, Sybil had refused to meet the others on tape, had refused to come closer to them, to accept them. In late 1957 and early 1958, the names Peggy Lou, Peggy Ann, Vicky, Marcia, Vanessa, Mary, Mike, Sid, Marjorie, Ruthie, Helen, Sybil Ann, Clara and Nancy were still, as far as Sybil was concerned, merely the products of Dr. Wilbur's intellectual presentation. Dr. Wilbur had met them, but Sybil had not. Sybil believed the doctor, but empirically the others were still unreal.

What continued to be real to Sybil, as it had been before the label multiple personality had been attached to her condition, was the fact that she lost time. In late 1957 and early 1958 Sybil was still promising herself that she would not lose time, and the promise in adulthood as in childhood still carried the overtone of "I will be good, not evil." When, despite her promise she again lost time, she simply resolved anew that it would not happen again. Only when time passed that was not lost did she feel that she was getting better.

November and December, 1957, had been such a time. Not once during this period had Sybil suffered the anguish of finding herself in a strange situation without knowing how she had gotten there. Both Sybil and Dr. Wilbur had dared to hope that they were entering the promised land of integration.

The promised land disappeared, however, on the morning of January 3, 1958, when Dr.

Wilbur opened the door to her waiting room at the time of the Dorsett appointment. Nobody was there. And it wasn't until five days later that the morning mail brought a clue to Sybil's possible whereabouts.

The letter, addressed to Dr. Wilbur at her former office--607 Medical Arts Building, 17th and Dodge Streets, Omaha, Nebraska--and forwarded from there held a clue. Written in a childish scrawl and dated January 2, 1946, the letter, which was on the stationery of the Broadwood Hotel in Philadelphia, read:

Dear Dr. Wilbur, You said you would help me. You said you liked me. You said I was good. Why don't you help me?

Peggy Ann Dorsett.

It had been fourteen years since Dr. Wilbur had left Omaha, and Peggy Ann's writing there indicated serious confusion. The tone of the letter was petulant, the mood one of disappointment and dissatisfaction with the way the analysis was going. The Philadelphia postmark contributed further to the doctor's disappointment. The hope she had shared with Sybil in November and December was shattered.

Inaction on the doctor's part was no longer possible even though that had been the course she had chosen when neither Sybil nor any of the others had kept the January 3 appointment, the course that the doctor had followed during similar episodes. Action, the doctor always feared, might trigger a chain of events that would make Sybil Dorsett a name in police records and could land Sybil in a mental hospital. Determined to protect her patient against both eventualities, the doctor had again not called the police.

Despite the fact that five days had elapsed since Peggy Ann had written her letter from Philadelphia, the doctor decided to try calling the Broadwood Hotel. She hesitated only because of not knowing for whom to ask. The name in the hotel registry could be Peggy Ann Dorsett or Peggy Ann Baldwin, since Peggy Ann used both names. It could also be Sybil Dorsett, a name that, following Vicky's lead, the other personalities often used. Indeed, Sybil could have registered under any of her fifteen selves' names. Perhaps it was a newcomer. Dr. Wilbur didn't presume to know whether there were other selves yet to come.

"The Broadwood. Good morning." The Broadwood reservation desk was on the line.

"Good morning," said the doctor. "Do you have a Miss Dorsett registered?"

"Room 1113," the reservation clerk replied. "One moment, please."

"Don't bother with 1113," the doctor said with sudden caution. Not knowing which Miss Dorsett she would find, she made a swift decision. "Will you please give me the hotel matron?" It was better, the doctor reasoned, not to speak to Peggy Ann in her confused state.

"I'm a physician," Dr. Wilbur told the matron a moment later. "One of my patients--a Miss Dorsett in room 1113 --is not well. I wonder whether you would be good enough to look in on her and let me know how she is. I'd appreciate your not telling her that I've talked with you." The doctor gave her phone number to the matron, asked the woman to reverse the charges when calling back, and sat down to wait.

Fifteen minutes later the matron's call came. "Dr. Wilbur?"

"Yes."

"This is Mrs. Trout at the Broadwood in Philadelphia."

"Yes. How is she?"

"Fine, Doctor, fine. She looked pale and thin but fine. Looked very pretty in her pajamas with their orange and green stripes. She was sitting at the bedside table, doing a pencil sketch on our letterhead."

"Did Miss Dorsett say anything?" Dr. Wilbur asked.

"Not much. She just said that she was going out soon to walk around and do some sketching. "Don't go out," I begged her. "This is no weather to monkey around with. The weather man predicted a terrible storm." She said she'd see. She was pale, but she didn't seem sick to me, Doctor. Really she didn't."

Dr. Wilbur thanked Mrs. Trout, waited a few minutes, and then decided to telephone the Broadwood to persuade Peggy Lou to come home; for although Peggy Ann had written the letter, Mrs. Trout had evidently spoken to Peggy Lou. It was Peggy Lou who drew in black and white, Peggy Lou who would buy the pajamas Mrs. Trout had described. What seemed probable was that Peggy Lou and Peggy Ann had taken the trip together, as they often did--Peggy Lou as Sybil's defense against anger and Peggy Ann as the defense against fear.

There was nobody in room 1113, however, when the doctor put in her call. Later, when she succeeded in reaching Mrs. Trout, who was then doing desk duty because the night desk clerk had been delayed in the storm, Mrs. Trout said, "Miss Dorsett's out in that storm. I begged her not to go out because a storm was coming. But she said she could take care of herself." At 10:15 P.m. the doctor, again trying to reach room 1113, was told that Miss Dorsett had checked out.

The doctor could only hope that Sybil would "come to" as herself and return safely or that the alternating personality who took over would return, or even that Vicky, as she had done during some of the many other blackouts Sybil had experienced in the course of the analysis, would somehow manage to telephone the doctor. But no call came.

The next morning the doctor, stepping into the waiting room to place some magazines on an end table, found the slender form of Sybil Dorsett waiting. Not knowing which personality it was, the doctor, using no name, simply said, "Come in."

There was an awkward silence.

"I've done it again," the patient said sadly. "It is going to be even harder to tell you than I had thought."

"Sybil?" the doctor asked.

"Sybil. I "came to" in a Philadelphia street in a hideous warehouse district. This was even worse than some of the other blackouts. A real nightmare. And after we thought it would never happen again. Oh, Doctor, I'm so ashamed."

"Relax before you talk about it," the doctor said reassuringly.

"I always promise myself it won't happen again, that I'll start over again. But this time I really hoped. How many times have I started over again?"

"I don't know how many times," the doctor replied. "Will you please quit trying? It won't do any good at all. Why start over? Why not go on from where you are?"

"I don't know what was done in my name," Sybil blurted. "Maybe mayhem. Murder."

"Sybil," the doctor replied firmly, "I've told you again and again that none of the others go against your ethical code."

"You've told me," Sybil replied anxiously. "But do you really know? We can't be sure."

"Sybil," the doctor ventured for what in the course of over three years was easily the hundredth time, "I should like you to hear the other selves on tape."

"No." Sybil shook her head decisively. "The only thing I want to hear about these others, as you call them, is that they no longer exist."

"It will reassure you," the doctor persisted. "When the Peggys tell me their story of Philadelphia, why don't I tape it? Then you can hear for yourself."

"The Peggys?" Sybil asked in consternation. "You know they were the ones? How can you possibly know that?"

"Peggy Ann wrote me from the Broadwood," the doctor replied in a direct, factual manner.

"The Broadwood?" Sybil answered in shocked surprise. "You know I was there?"

"You found yourself in Philadelphia because the Peggys took you there. They are part of you, a part over which you have no control. But we're going to change that when we bring you girls together."

"Philadelphia proves I'm not getting any better," Sybil replied brokenly. "I'll never be well."

"You know that I want to help you," the doctor said gently. "You know that I have known about these problems for more than three years now, and you know that they are part of your illness."

"Yes, yes," Sybil replied anxiously. "You've told me that many times."

"And when you feel otherwise," the doctor said pointedly, "you are needlessly suspicious and frightened."

"Not strange?" Sybil blurted.

"No, not strange," the doctor replied emphatically.

"Likable?"

"Yes, Sybil. Very likable. I like you. I don't know if you realize how much." The doctor had responded to the bid for approval with the genuine emotion of her growing fondness for her patient.

There was a suggestion of tears in Sybil's eyes--the tears that in the first year and a half of the analysis she had not been able to shed. Sybil asked quietly, "You still think I can get well?"

"With all my heart I think it, Sybil. With all my mind. And with all my experience as a psychoanalyst."

Sybil's slender hand moved into Dr. Wilbur's hand, as doctor and patient sat together on the couch. "Then," Sybil asked in a low, stilted voice, "why am I getting worse?"

"In analysis," the doctor replied objectively, "the further you go, the closer you get to the core conflicts. The closer you get to the core conflicts, the more you have to face in terms of resistance and in terms of the conflicts themselves."

"But I'm not facing anything," Sybil pointed out bitterly. "I'm running away."

"It's not you--waking Sybil, representing the conscious mind--but the others, who belong to the unconscious, who are running away," the doctor explained.

"You call them the unconscious and say they are part of me," Sybil replied thoughtfully. "But you also say they can take me where they please. Oh, Doctor, I'm afraid, terribly afraid. It's a predicament to which I've never become accustomed. These others drive me, possess me, destroy me."

"It's not possession, Sybil," the doctor declared emphatically. "Not some invasion from without. It comes from within, and it can be explained not by the supernatural but in very natural terms."

"It doesn't seem very natural to me," Sybil was quick to answer.

"Not natural in the sense of being common to lots of people," the doctor conceded. "But natural because it can be explained in terms of your own environment. All the personalities are younger than you. There is a reason for that. When your mother told you, "You have so much," she was creating a distortion because you didn't have the things that you needed for growing up. Consequently, you couldn't grow up and be all one person. You had to leave bits and parts behind. You didn't know you were doing it. You didn't know about these other selves. You still haven't met them, still refuse to meet them on tape, so you are not directly aware of them. You still don't really accept them except as a sort of intellectual exercise."

Sybil's mouth twitched uneasily.

"I have not yet been able to determine the precise ages of the selves, but some of them are little girls," Dr. Wilbur continued, "walking around in your woman's body. When the Peggys fled to Philadelphia, they were running away from your mother. They deny that your mother was theirs, but it is a surface denial. Deeply etched within them are fear and anger against your mother. Fear and anger make them take flight, break loose from the feeling of entrapment your mother created for them. And because the Peggys and some of the others are little girls, in a sense they keep you a little girl."

"Not only crazy," Sybil replied with bitter irony, "but immature?"

The doctor put her arm around Sybil and spoke with intensity: "Nobody ever said you were crazy, except you yourself, and I want you to banish that word from your vocabulary in relationship to yourself. Your mother interfered with your growing up. You didn't succumb totally to your mother because you had a core of strength that made your life different from hers. And when you found out that your mother was wrong, you began to be able to do the things with yourself that you wanted to do--even though there were bits and pieces from the past, forming other selves, that made you unlike other people and afraid of what you were."