jrsousa I was trying hard to remember about when I used to watch this movie with my siblings, but couldn't tell if this movie is the same miniseries that I watched in Brazil in the 80s, it probably is, because there is no other. I had the impression the miniseries was longer than 2 episodes, maybe they aired shorter episodes to fit into a week of show. It's an amazing movie, and even though as a kid I couldn't follow or understand much of the movie, some scenes got deeply marked in my memories, such as the image of Sybil showing her fists. Having come across a few podcasts among my mp3 of voices of Sybil, it reminded me of the movie and I decided to see it again.

Robert J. Maxwell It's an interest, more-or-less straightforward story of a woman with multiple personality disorder, named Sybil here, and played by Sally Field. Sybil was a real woman who lived in Kentucky. She was treated by a psychiatrist for many years, charged on a sliding scale that evidently had a zero point, because nobody in Sybil's position is going to afford twelve years of private psychiatric treatment. The complimentary treatment is provided by Joanne Woodward as Dr. Wilbur.Most of the popular stories about people with MPD have a convenient three personalities, one of which -- the most fully integrated one -- "wins" in the end, leading to a happy ending. Sybil, like so many real patients, had so many alter egos that it was hard to keep track of them. The film only introduces about half a dozen, all with different names and ages, and skips the remaining fifteen or so. Thank God for small favors. I have enough trouble keeping up with my own roles.This story has a happy ending too, a kind of dream sequence in which the original Sybil gets to meet and embrace her other personalities and they are absorbed into her. She evidently did manage to pull herself together because she went on to a successful career as a professor of art, a position she wouldn't have held long if she'd showed up on campus one day as an eight year old child.The story has been modified, necessarily, in other ways too. As a representative of Sybil's spare contacts with others, we have Brad Davis in the role of a street musician and concocted clown. It's a sympathetic role and he does well by it, but he disappears from the narrative rather abruptly.The splashiest role by far is Sally Fields'. She gets to mope, to mumble, to shriek, to put her fist through windows, to pull her face into gargoyle masks, to be sophisticated, to be petulant, to be mean, and to scuttle along the floor and hide under the piano. She's given it her all, because she's completely put aside that usual fey quality she carries with her -- girlish, provocative, and abundantly sexual. She has pretty toes too. If you go for that sort of thing.But I admired most the performance of Joanne Woodward as the psychiatrist. She's delightfully mature after we've spent some time with Sybil. She can be nurturing, tolerant, firm, and directive. She's attractive and wears a becoming hair do or hair style or whatever it's called. A good shrink, in other words. My shrinks were never like that. After calling me names like "paranoid" right to my face, they all sneaked around telling dirty stories about me behind my back and writing letters of recommendation so condemnatory that I wouldn't have sent them to someone who wanted to hire a dog. Years after this treachery and they're still dunning me for unpaid bills.Clearly, a lot of effort on everyone's part went into this production. The only real problem I had with it is what one might call the psychoanalytic ploy. In these tales, the patient must always have symptoms caused by some repressed memory of childhood trauma. All you have to do is bring the trauma to conscious awareness (and the emotions associated with it) and BINGO -- no more disorder! B. F. Skinner would have a lot to say about that, but it DOES make for a smoother ending, emotionally more satisfying if not very realistic.

korbond_darners My psychology class watched this earlier in the year (in my last year of high school) and I have to say it disturbed the sh*t out of me. I can't believe a little girl actually went through all of that, no wonder she developed DID(Dissociative Identity Disorder), I could barely cope with watching the movie let alone go through it in real life! Makes me want to cry just thinking about it..I think child abuse is the saddest thing in the world, people putting their kids in tumble driers or whatever, I hate knowing that sh*it like that goes down all the time.. I mean there has got to be something seriously wrong with you when you treat a child that way. Hats off to the actress that played the mother, I don't think many people have the balls to play a part like that.

lass_of_the_moors I am not sure if anyone has commented on the ending, but I loved it! I am a huge movie buff, and this movie touched me a great deal. The ending contains her hugging herself under hypnosis, but she is really hugging one part of herself named Peggy. It was beautiful, and it makes me glad that I am an actress. Sally Field makes me truly believe that telling someone's story to the best of our ability is the most precious thing that we can do as actors and actresses. We add our own needs and wants and wishes to the character. We attempt to humanize them and show who they really are. Their triumphs, sufferings, loves, and hurts. We even show the most of what they loathe. This movie is an inspiration to everyone. Joanne Woodward was also wonderful in The Long Hot Summer and The Effects of Gamma Rays on Man On the Moon Marrigolds. Hopefully I spelled that right....Anyway, the film was wonderful, and I am thrilled that I had the honor of seeing it.