I remember watching Sybil in the 70s but I didn’t get around to reading the book until 1985. After I finished that book, I tried to find similar books but our library only had one book, about a man, who also had multiple personalities.
The thing is I can’t remember the name of the book. It’s been so long since I read it I am not sure of the exact storyline. I believe the book was written by his mother, or at least told from her story point, but I can’t be sure.
Because I read the book in 1985, it must’ve been published before then but I don’t know how long before.
Any ideas what the name of this book may be?
I remember the book telling about the boys experiences in summer camp as a youth and that he settled for awhile in Salt Lake City (not totally sure about this). And of course he had his fair share of run ins with the law.
How about The Minds of Billy Milligan? I couldn’t find anything that said he’d been in SLC, but he was born and raised in Ohio, and the entire premise brought to light because of his having committed several felonies including armed robbery, plus an eventual arrest for three rapes. In total, he had 23 personalities and the resulting book came out in 1977.
Here’s the story–In the middle of the Sybil bruhaha, Billy Milligan was arrested for being a serial rapist. He had already done time for tape and gay bashing.
He suddenly declared himself to be a multiple personality and was found not guilty by reason of mental insanity. And then he went to a psychiatric facialty and guess what? He was instantly cured.
I have always thought the whole thing was Milligan’s effort to obtain a “Get Out Of Jail Free” card. Milligan was a serial criminal, but I doubt the whole multiple personality defense to this day.
Sorry for the slight derail, but since some people are phrasing things here as if multiple personalities were actually real (not that they necessarily think so, but just in case) I thought I should point out that there’s no such thing.
As Cecil writes, the whole multiple personality and recovered memory syndrome hit a peak in the 1980’s. A lot of innocent people were targeted as “satanists” and “child molesters” by people who claimed to be the victims of ritualized abuse. It made the Salem witch hunts look like a Halloween prank in comparison.
A good rational case study on the subject is “Ghost Girl” by Torey Hayden. The author herself, a specialist in working with abused children, never reached a firm conclusion on what had happened to “Jadie.” She herself stated “I wish I could put a definite ending to this book. It would make it much more believable. It would also make it fiction.”
Hasn’t stopped people from making claims, most recently Herschel Walker (which is an odd one because IME when you read about these claims, they are usually from otherwise messed-up, rationalizing people grasping for an explanation of their misdeeds/failures, whereas Walker AFAICT is a fairly with-it guy who seemed to have led a successful, drama free life):Herschel Walker: 'Tell the World My Truth' - ABC News
Err… It is close to 100% against, and the part that wasn’t was being generous. I’ve almost certainly done more reading on the topic than Cecil has, and I’ll go the rest of the way to 100% for you.
There is definite controversy within the world of mainstream, professional mental health providers over the existence or not of DID. This means that at least some of these folks seem to believe it’s real. At the very least, it is a disorder of extreme dissociation and PTSD disguised as another, worse disorder. In that form at least, it does exist…
At least from a viewpoint of having talked with many people suffering from severe PTSD from child abuse. What I’ve observed seems indistinguishable from “multiple personalities”, or a person’s ego states switching quickly and dramatically.
My girlfriend is a psychologist who, among her tasks, assesses folks like that to decide if they are competent to stand trial.
One aspect of that assessment is to suss out the malingerers. As a legal strategy it may be better to be seen as mentally ill, but it is not an easy thing to pull off.
I can’t speak for Ohio law in the 70s, and I migfht be wrong about California law now, but my understanding is that these are the options:
if gf or colleague persuades court Billy is competent to stand trial, then he stands trial like anyone else.
if he is deemed not competent to stand trial, then he stays in state custody receiving treatment until he is (subject to lots of due process of course, but that is how it works). He may never become competent, too bad for him. He gets a chance once a year to have his treatment plan reviewed by the court.
if he is tried and convicted, the judge has the option to send him to a prison where he can get treatment. If he gets better, he doesn’t walk, he serves the rest of his sentence in the general population.
So you can see that there is no real benefit to being a malingerer just long enough to get out of the system. All that happens is when you are found out, you go into the part of the system you would have been in all along.
Yeah, and some people did/do believe that demonic possession is real. People believing something doesn’t make it so, and that’s even more so when the topic is something intangible like the inner works of the human mind.
Not according to many experts. Frankly, a lot of the dissociative disorders are on equally shaky grounds.
Well, if you’ve already concluded that they are mentally ill enough to have multiple personalities, certainly delusional isn’t a stretch. It’s what you get when you have fantasy prone therapists working with fantasy prone patients – well, that and recovered memories of satanic abuse as a child, abduction by aliens, remembering past lives and so forth.
Not sure why we should believe in a more complex answer when the more obvious and simple answer is right there, especially when it’s backed up with plenty of cases of former patients suing therapists for implanting the idea of multiple personalities into their heads. Occam’s Razor should apply to psychology just like anything else.
My book recommendation on this subject is Set This House in Order by Matt Ruff, which has two Multiple Personalities as protagonists.
(It recognizes in an appendix that the psychological background is controversial, but it definitely makes for a brilliantly written, suspenseful story.)
