Review of a New Version of the Movie "Sybil"

This movie review appeared in Newsweek of June 9, 2008. It is about a remake of the movie “Sybil” which is based on the book of the same name. In reading the book carefully, I found no evidence that those “other selves” which the heroine created in her early childhood were alter-personalities. They were most likely IIC (Internalized Imaginary Companions), with some of them being “older” than the patient herself. Therefore I feel she used her “emotional imagination” to create entities who could help her cope with her schizophrenic mother. She had no evidence of a dissociated ISH, either. Therefore I disagree with any diagnosis of DID, or MPD, and I have always been unhappy that she has been considered a prototype of a “multiple” all these years. To have a movie apparently this bad produced about her gives a disservice to all those patients who really do have one of the dissociative disorders.

Ralph Allison, MD

The Return Of 'Sybil'

A new life for a TV movie that already had plenty

By Joshua Alston

Hysteria is a woman's prob­lem," says a brutish male col­league of Dr. Cornelia Wilbur ( Jessica Lange), the psycholo­gist treating the main character in the CBS remake of "Sybil." My hysterical laughter during most of the film is proof that it's a man's problem, too. I'm not an insensitive guy. I recognize the horror in the story of Shirley Ardell Mason, the woman whose personality fractured into 15 parts as a result of merciless childhood sexual abuse (assuming the story is true; both the diagnosis and the abuse are still under debate). But it would be difficult to intentionally match the unintended comic value of the scene in which Sybil (Tammy Blanchard) rebuffs her new beau, Ramon, after slipping into one of her alters, a boy named Sid. "Guys don't sleep with other guys!" says Sid. "Of course not," says Ramon, both writing off the comment as a non sequitur and failing to realize that his girlfriend's voice just dropped an octave. "Sybil" has the infectious scrappiness of a community-theater troupe, one that isn't that great but has enough conviction to make up for its lack of self-awareness.

But this new "Sybil" can't possibly have the same impact as the 1976 original, for which Sally Field won an Emmy, because the made-for-TV movie has a reputation that precedes it. The term "made for TV" has become shorthand for hammy acting and frugal production values, which is why the glossy, competent original TV movies of today are labeled "television events." The made-for-TV movie served a distinct purpose back when entertain­ment choices were few. They provided a way for families to have a night at the movies without the hassle and expense of going to a theater. Later they became top­ical, portraying the hot-button issues of the day, like 1983's hugely watched "The Day After," which depicted the eruption of nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now a movie night at home is as easy as opening the mail­box. And Dick Wolf, between his three "Law & Order" franchises, has the "ripped from today's headlines" market cornered. (This season's premiere of "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" featured an appear­ance by Cynthia Nixon as a woman who—get this—fakes having multiple personali­ties.) Still, there's something charming about the made-for-TV movie, something adorable in its earnestness, something hu­morous in its humorlessness. This is why Lifetime and the Hallmark Channel have built brands around them; these movies are the purest form of guilty pleasure. And while I wouldn't watch "Sybil" a second time, it was raucous, nostalgic fun. I could say it's the worst movie I've seen in some time, but I'd prefer to say it's the best at being not good.