Sybil: The Classic True Story of a Woman Possessed by Sixteen Personalities by Schreiber Flora Rheta

Author:Schreiber, Flora Rheta [Schreiber, Flora Rheta]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Psychology, Biography, Classics, Science, Adult
ISBN: 9780446359405
Amazon: 0446359408
Goodreads: 67920
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Published: 1973-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

VOLUME III

Part II

Becoming

16

Hattie's Fury Has a Beginning (continued)

Aileen, the mother, whom Hattie talked of as a "marvelous woman, a wonderful woman," revealed no particular emotional problem except perhaps passivity in allowing her husband to tyrannize over the family. Yet problem there must have been to have spawned emotional problems in all of the sons, who in turn bequeathed emotional problems to their sons. (one of the grandsons of Winston and Aileen Anderson committed suicide.)

Four of the Anderson daughters, including Hattie and her oldest sister, Edith, who tyrannized over all the girls in the family, were similarly volatile and aggressive. Four of the others were too docile, too quiet, too unconcerned, and all four married tyrants. Fay, the youngest of the sisters, displayed the family neurosis by weighing two hundred pounds.

Hattie and Edith were very much alike in build, looks, and attitude. In later years they displayed the same symptoms: severe headaches, very high blood pressure, arthritis, and what was vaguely termed nervousness. In Hattie nervousness became virulent after the crushing experience of being yanked out of school. It is not known whether Edith became schizophrenic or at what point Hattie did. That Hattie was schizophrenic at the age of forty, the time of Sybil's birth, is clear.

Edith's sons had a variety of psychosomatic illnesses, including ulcers and asthma. Her daughter was sickly with undefined complaints until she became a religious fanatic, joined a group of faith healers, and proudly announced a return to health. The daughter of the religious fanatic, however, suffered from a rare blood disorder and was a semi-invalid all her life. The daughter of one of Edith's sons had almost all of Hattie's physical illnesses and emotional attitudes, although to a milder degree.

Even more important in terms of the germination of Sybil's illness was that two members of the family--Henry Anderson, Hattie's youngest brother, and Lillian Green, the granddaughter of Edith--gave evidence of possibly being multiple, or at least dual, personalities.

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