Sybil (57 page)

A dash of Vicky was in evidence when company came and Sybil would converse about early American furniture or would declare, "I don't see how anybody can be bored."

The blonde, who had so belatedly presented herself and had been so swiftly integrated, seemed omnipresent in the buoyancy of Sybil's new enthusiasm.

The new Sybil repaired a broken ceramic vase as Mike or Sid might have done, prepared a lamb stew that Mary used to make, and, what was most startling, played Chopin's Nocturne in B Minor. In the past only Vanessa could play the piano.

Shades of Nancy Lou Ann seemed to be present when Sybil confided in Flora, "I'm ashamed of having been narrow and bigoted. I don't fear Catholics now." And when Sybil added, "My fundamental religious beliefs are the same, but there is a modification that has removed the torment and puts the beliefs in a new perspective," it was as though she were saying, "Mary has come out of the igloo."

The selves as autonomous, independently entities were gone. But they had been successfully integrated and were now contributing their uniqueness as the various aspects of a rounded personality.

Naturally, although wholeness brought a sense of joyousness in being alive, a sense of wonder at having a whole day ahead, new confidence in negotiating with the world, and a balance stemming from a new maturity and a youthfulness withheld in chronological youth, Sybil's newly healed psyche was still somewhat fragile--not quite ready to trust itself. There were moments of panic, sharp but swiftly repressed eruptions of fears of the future. "I don't want to get sick again," she murmured from time to time. "I'm afraid of what might happen as the day moves toward night." Flora contemplated the poignancy of Sybil's fears and concluded how wonderfully normal it was for Sybil to be afraid, like everybody else, of old age.

Most painful of all to talk about was Ramon. Not until the night before Sybil left for her new job did she finally say, "I would have asked him to wait." In anguish she added, "If only I had known that I would soon be well." And Sybil, who once had been unable to cry, let the tears flow.

During the two weeks of Sybil's visit with Flora, Dr. Wilbur stayed close. There were daily phone calls to Sybil; on several occasions the doctor came to the apartment for dinner. Sybil and the doctor talked about their new plans. Sybil had secured a position as an occupational therapist in a Pennsylvania hospital for emotionally disturbed children. For Sybil it was to be an interim position until she could get into teaching.

On the evening of departure--October 15, 1965--doctor and former patient left Flora's apartment. Two women who had taken an eleven-year journey together began their separate journeys into the dawn of the new Sybil's new time. That there was a seventeenth self to supplant the depleted waking self was testament that truth is internal, the surface a lie. For buried in the depleted self, whom the world saw, had been this new woman, this whole woman, so long denied.

Epilogue:

The New Sybil's New Time I, the Flora in the story and the author of the book, have stayed close to Sybil in the more than seven years since she left my apartment. In sharing excerpts from some of her letters to me, you will have a glimpse of the new Sybil in her new time.

November 4, 1965: "I wish you could see my house. Connie [Dr. Wilbur] said it was cheaper to buy than rent, and she lent me the money for the down payment--my guest room is fairly large. It is for you, Doctor Connie, and Laura in turn. See? I'm so thrilled to have my own place. Capri is here with me. Her favorite spot is the front window ledge. I sometimes wonder if she notices that I'm only me ..."

January, 20, 1966: "Have had time to read some books this past winter. Friendship and Fratricide, The Search for Amelia Earhart, Papa Hemingway, The Jury Returns (nizer), Other People's Money, The King in the Castle, The Chinese Looking Glass, Bruce Catton's three volumes on the Civil War. Most of these books, like most of the magazine articles I've read, are about events and people that were in the news during the time that there were too many of me to be able to keep track of anything. These were things I heard about then only by remote control. There is so much to catch up with. Alger Hiss and Whittaker Chambers, for example, were just names to me."

September 25, 1966: "Just think, I've been here almost a year now. It is the first continuous year of my life. It's amazing how days fit neatly into weeks and weeks into months that I can look back on and remember. Only missed one day of work so far (earache last winter). It's the greatest experience I've ever had, barring none. People just take it so much for granted, I think they miss the point.

"All has gone well. Not all easy, but no trouble. I even got a raise in salary after seven months. I was so surprised because I had not expected any since I had signed a contract for a set amount. I'm still looking forward to getting back into teaching, however. There's a good possibility.

"You asked if the private art classes I'd mentioned were for me or by me. Guess I thought I had told you about them before. You see, I visit with you in my mind often and then forget I have not told you things really. The classes are in oil painting and for adults. I teach them in the studio of my home. Get that. My home, not my house. At last Mary and the rest of them have a home, but there isn't any Mary or any of the others anymore. Just me."

January, 8, 1967: "It is still a marvel to me how much a well person can accomplish; I'm so lucky."

January 14, 1967: "You will never guess what I finally got finished. The painting for over your davenport. It isn't the one I started for the two of you. I just did not have the heart to finish that after your mother died. I could not face the feelings of loss, as I am certain you understand.

So I began an entirely different kind of painting. It is a casein (similar to and as permanent as oil) and is framed and ready to bring to you when we come to New York. Which, if Connie has not mentioned to you as yet, is to be something like two weeks for only a couple of days. She has appointments there, and I'm coming along to bring the picture (which, by the way, is one of mood and impression, not realism) and to see you and Laura and do a little shopping. See you soon ..."

February 8, 1967: "Thank you for sending me the books. Stupid of me to forget them after all your trouble in getting them for me. Of course, Connie would say it was my unconscious not wanting to leave your place. Well, it was a short visit, but we can always hope for a next time. Really thought I'd left the books in a taxi when I got around to missing them much later. But I had no other thoughts about someone else's deliberately hiding them."

August 11, 1967: "Just have to write you a quickie this A.m., as you and Connie must be the first ones to know my big news--big to me, anyhow. Found out for certain yesterday that, as of September 1, I will be an Assistant Professor. Am so excited.

They interviewed eighteen others, and I was sure I'd never have a chance, but the dean told me it was unanimous and no question after they interviewed me. Which helps my ego. Am I not lucky? More details and news soon ..."

August 24, 1967: "Spent the weekend with Connie. She gave me a permanent, and I sewed a white nylon print summer dress, which she then "hung" for me to hem. We washed and trimmed our three poodles. They don't like it very much. Mine whimpers, and her two try to bite us. More fun. Her color TV and stereo are marvelous, but we still find time to play Scrabble (our favorite). She won two out of three games as per usual. I'm busy in my own little swirl but love it. Wish you could see my mock orange bush in bloom. All kinds of flowers in my yard ..."

November 20, 1968: "It's wonderful how well things are going. After a little over three years, there are times when I still can't believe how lucky I am. I can remember everything and can account for every minute of each day. You can well understand how reassuring it is for me to be just Sybil because you knew me when it was otherwise."

On June 6, 1969, Sybil wrote to say that she was coming to New York to represent her college at a convention. In the city that for eleven years had been her fragmented home she visited with me, but she also walked through the city alone. On July 2, 1969, from the vantage point of her present home, she recapitulated that visit: "When I walked along the streets of New York, many semi-forgotten memories came back, but all without exaggerated emotions. I just recalled old times, remembering what the feelings had been like but without reliving them. As I revisited familiar places, however, I became aware of memories that were not recollections of what had happened to me but rather to one of my former selves. There was the dress shop where Peggy Lou had shopped, the hotel where Marcia and Vanessa had spent a night, and a confrontation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with Marian Ludlow, who had been Vicky's friend. Marian recognized me at once. Remembering her through Vicky, who was now part of me, I chatted with Marian, accepting her as my friend."

Each of the letters that followed continued to express a joyousness in being a normal person in a world through which she moved without incident in a time in which clocks no longer seemed capricious. The fears of the past had been put to rest.

At times, of course, there was a sort of wild regret, expressed in a letter of May 28, 1970: "I would have accomplished much more than I have if things had been different during all those years. Yet I think I have an insight into and an understanding of my students that I wouldn't have had any other way. I will never forget that I was a multiple personality. But although I still recognize feelings associated with these former selves of mine, those feelings are like anybody else's--just different aspects of a person.

"And time? Time is so wonderful because it is always there. Something happened in class the other day that will amuse you. One of my students, who is a teacher, had been ill and had missed many classes. Struggling with an absence sheet, she couldn't figure out just how much time she had lost. "Miss Dorsett," she asked, "were you ever unable to account for your time?"' I did a double take. "Yes. Why, yes," I replied as nonchalantly as I could."

Her statement made me recall my direct encounters with the thieves of Sybil's time: Peggy Lou, who had emerged spontaneously one day when I was having lunch with Sybil in the old brownstone; the blonde; and the time when Dr. Wilbur had hypnotized Sybil to present me to all the selves, asking them whether they would cooperate with me if I were to write this book. I had never met Vicky, but she said very politely, "I've known Flora for a long time." Ruthie had complained, "Sybil doesn't give us enough to eat," and Peggy Lou had remarked, "I can't understand why you want to write a book about Sybil of all people."

While Sybil was recalling having been a multiple personality from a distance, Dr. Wilbur was still living with multiple personality at close hand. In seven years the doctor had in fact diagnosed and treated six cases of multiple personality--five females and one male. None was psychoanalyzed, but all were treated with psychoanalytic psychotherapy and hypnosis. All were integrated, although one suffered a relapse and had to be integrated a second time.

These six ranged in age, at the time Dr. Wilbur first saw them, from twelve to thirty-three. Two had two selves each; three, four selves apiece; one, seven selves. All of the females except one, who was only twelve, were college-educated. None, however, was as bright or talented a person or as complicated a case as Sybil Dorsett, who continued to make medical history.

All had symptoms that followed as predictable a course as measles. Each had a central, or waking, self corresponding to waking Sybil and alternating selves of which the waking self had no knowledge and for whose memories and experiences she (he) was amnesic. In each of the six cases there was a "Vicky" character, who knew everything about all the selves and who served as a memory trace.

The causes of multiple personality, however, continue to remain elusive, although the evidence in these cases as well as in Sybil's points to at least one factor of common causation: an initial milieu (the nuclear family) that is restrictive, naive, and hysterical. For instance, a schoolteacher with four selves whom Dr. Wilbur treated at the hospital of the University of Kentucky Medical School was the daughter of a fire-and-brimstone spouting mountain minister. This bigoted father, so reminiscent of Sybil's grandfather Dorsett, didn't allow his children out of the house after dark because he firmly believed that when the sun went down, the Devil began to stalk the hills.

It can be postulated that the hysterical environment spawns a hysteric; the hysteric then becomes a multiple personality in order to assume identities that make it possible to escape from the restrictive standards of an oppressive milieu. What remains elusive, however, is why one person in that environment should seek this particular way out while another in the same environment does not.

What is clearly substantiated is that the escape, which is undertaken without the awareness of the waking self, far from being conscious, is a strategy of the unconscious mind. Clear, too, is that the selves, who are part of the strategy and who exist outside of the waking self's awareness, function as autonomous entities.

The autonomy, observed in the case of the selves of Sybil and reaffirmed through the direct observation of these other six cases by Dr. Wilbur and her colleagues, also held up under the scrutiny of objective measurements. The startling finding was that the waking self and each of the secondary selves of a given multiple personality react like different people.