SYBIL

       by Flora Rheta Schreiber

Published by: Warner Books, Inc., a Time  Warner Company, New York, NY. 

           Copyright 1973 by
        Flora Rheta Schreiber
 
       BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

  "Spellbinding!"
      --Time

  More amazing than any work of fiction, yet  true in every word, it swept to the top of the  bestseller lists and riveted the consciousness of the  world. As an Emmy Award-winning film starring  Sally Field, it captured the home screens of  an entire nation and has endured as the most  electrifying TV movie ever made. It's the  story of a survivor of terrifying childhood  abuse, victim of sudden and mystifying  blackouts, and the first case of multiple  personality ever to be psychoanalyzed. You're  about to meet Sybil--and the sixteen selves to whom  she played host, both women and men, each with a  different personality, speech pattern, and even  personal appearance. You'll experience the  strangeness and fascination of one woman's rare  affliction--and travel with her on her long,  ultimately triumphant journey back  to wholeness.
                                   p3  "A moving human narrative."
      --New York Review of Books

  "Astonishing ... It forces you to look at yourself  and the people around you in a new way."
    --Doris Lessing 
  SYBIL SWEEPS THE CRITICS!

  "Fascinating ... highly readable and  illuminating. ... High marks all around and most  especially to Sybil herself for her endurance and  courage and insistence on survival in the face of  what must have seemed like overwhelming odds."
    --Chicago Tribune

  "The best of this genre since The Three  Faces of Eve."--Newsweek

  "More phantasmagorical than anything by Poe  or Kafka ... like a splash of ice water across  the reader's face ... a psychological  odyssey that should be remembered for a long time."
    --Women's Wear Daily

  "A psychological masterpiece ... I  don't know when I have been so moved by a book.  I couldn't put it down. ... It breaks ground  in the science of the human mind and at the same time  provides the fascinating suspense of a top  mystery thriller ... enthralling from the first scene
 
to the last."
    --Lucy Freeman

  "Masterly ... a book like no other we shall  find this year, an amazing story."--Stephen  Longstreet

  "Destined to stand as a significant landmark  both in psychiatry and in literature."
    --Dominic A. Barbara, M.d.,  F.a.p.a., American Journal of
    Psychiatry

  To my parents, Esther and William  Schreiber

Whose memory is a
Dwelling place for
All sweet thoughts and  Harmonies.
 
               CONTENTS

Chapter Page

              VOLUME I

The Family Tree: The Hierarchy of the Sixteen Selves ................. 9 Cast of Characters and Dates of "Birth" ... 11 Preface: Sybil ................. 13 Acknowledgments ...................... 18

Part I: Being
1 The Incomprehensible Clock ....... 23 2 Wartime Within .................... a36 3 The Couch and the Serpent ............ a43 4 The Other Girl ................. 59 5 Peggy Lou Baldwin ............. 71 6 Victoria Antoinette Scharleau 7 Why ......................... a108

                                   p9 Chapter Page
            VOLUME II

Part I: Being
7 Why (continued) ................ a119

Part II: Becoming
8 Willow Corners ............... 127 9 Yesterday Was Never .............. 137 10 Thieves of Time .............. b151 11 The Search for the Center .......... a168 12 Silent Witnesses ............. 182 13 The Terror of Laughter ......... 189 14 Hattie ..................... 199 15 Battered Child .................. 207 16 Hattie's Fury Has a
  Beginning ....................... f241

            VOLUME III

Part II: Becoming
16 Hattie's Fury Has a
  Beginning (continued) ............... 245 17 Willard ..................... 250
 
Chapter Page

Part III: Unbecoming
18 Confrontation and Verification ....... 267 19 The Boys .................... 281 20 The Voice of Orthodoxy ...... a291 21 The Wine of Wrath ............. 301 22 The Clock Comprehensible ........ 315 23 The Retreating White Coat .... a334 24 Suicide .................... 344

Part IV: Reentry
25 Beginning to Remember ............ 355

            VOLUME IV

Part IV: Reentry
25 Beginning to Remember (continued) .. a358 26 Independent Futures .......... 364 27 Prisoners in Their Body ....... 376 28 Journey to One ................ 383 29 They Are Me, Too ........... 392 30 Hate Heals ................ a400 31 Ramon ..................... a416
                                  p11 Chapter Page
32 One ........................ a429

Epilogue: The New Sybil's
  New Time ..................... 442 Psychological Index ........... 451

  This braille edition contains the entire text of the print edition.
  Both print and braille page numbering have been used. Print edition page numbers have been identified for index reference.
 
               SYBIL

     The Family Tree: The Hierarchy of the Sixteen Selves

SYBIL ISABEL DORSETT Vicky
      Marcia
      Vanessa
      Mary
      Helen
      Clara
      Sybil Ann
      The Blonde

SYBIL ISABEL DORSETT Peggy Ann
    Peggy Lou
      Mike
      Sid
      Nancy Lou Ann

SYBIL ISABEL DORSETT Marjorie
    Ruthie
            Cast of Characters and Dates of "Birth"

Sybil Isabel Dorsett (1923): a depleted person; the waking self. Victoria Antoinette Scharleau
  (1926): nicknamed Vicky; a self-assured, sophisticated, attractive
  blonde; the memory trace of Sybil's selves.
Peggy Lou Baldwin (1926): an assertive, enthusiastic, and often angry
  pixie with a pug nose, a Dutch haircut, and a mischievous smile. Peggy Ann Baldwin (1926): a
  counterpart of Peggy Lou with similar physical characteristics; she is more often fearful than
  angry.
Mary Lucinda Saunders Dorsett (1933): a thoughtful, contemplative,
  maternal, homeloving person; she is plump and has long dark-brown hair parted on the
  side.
Marcia Lynn Dorsett (1927): last name sometimes Baldwin; a writer and painter;
 
  extremely emotional; she has a
  shield-shaped face, gray eyes, and brown hair parted on the side. Vanessa Gail Dorsett (1935):
  intensely dramatic and extremely attractive; a tall redhead with a willowy
  figure, light brown eyes, and an expressive oval face.
Mike Dorsett (1928): one of Sybil's two male selves; a builder
  and a carpenter; he has olive skin, dark hair, and brown eyes.
Sid Dorsett (1928): one of Sybil's two male selves; a carpenter and a general
  handyman; he has fair skin, dark hair, and blue eyes.
Nancy Lou Ann Baldwin (date undetermined): interested in politics as
  fulfillment of biblical prophecy and intensely afraid of Roman Catholics;
  fey; her

  physical characteristics resemble those of the Peggys.
Sybil Ann Dorsett (1928): listless to the point of neurasthenia;
  pale and timid with ash-blonde hair, an oval face, and a straight nose. Ruthie Dorsett (date undetermined): a
  baby; one of the lesser developed selves. Clara Dorsett (date undetermined):
  intensely religious; highly critical of the waking Sybil.
Helen Dorsett (1929): intensely afraid but determined to achieve fulfillment;
  she has light brown hair, hazel eyes, a straight nose, and thin lips. Marjorie Dorsett (1928): serene,
  vivacious, and quick to laugh; a tease; a small, willowy brunette with fair skin and a
  pug nose.
The Blonde (1946): nameless; a perpetual teenager; has blonde curly hair and a
  lilting voice.
The New Sybil (1965): the seventeenth self; an amalgam of the other sixteen
  selves.
 
              Preface:
                Sybil

  This book goes to press over ten years after I first met the woman to whom I have given the pseudonym Sybil Isabel Dorsett.
Sybil wants to maintain anonymity, and when you read her true story, you will understand why. But Sybil Isabel Dorsett is a real person.
  Our first meeting took place on an autumn evening in 1962 at a restaurant on New York City's Madison Avenue. Dr. Cornelia B. Wilbur, Sybil's psychoanalyst, had arranged the meeting so that I could become acquainted with Sybil.
  Sybil seemed constrained and remote. I knew that this was because of her illness. Dr. Wilbur and she had embarked on one of the most complex and most bizarre cases in the history of psychiatry--the first psychoanalysis of a multiple personality.
  I had known about the case for some years. Dr. Wilbur's and my paths had often crossed through my work as psychiatry editor of Science Digest and as the author of articles about psychiatric subjects. A few of these articles, in fact, had been about her cases.
  The meeting was arranged for a specific purpose: Dr. Wilbur wondered whether I would be interested in writing about Sybil. It was not sufficient, the doctor believed, to present this history-making case in a medical journal, because in addition to great medical significance, the case had broad psychological and philosophical implications for the general public.
  I wanted to wait for the outcome of the case prior to

committing myself irrevocably to the book. In the meantime, Sybil and I became friends. We shared many intellectual interests, had an unmistakable affinity. Sybil became a frequent visitor in my apartment. She often confided in me about what had taken place in the analytic sessions, and what took place when she was in my home often found its way into the sessions.
  Gradually, the idea of the book became more intriguing to me. I have written widely, and not
 
without recognition, about psychiatry, and have a strong psychology and psychiatry background. By 1962 I had worked with many psychiatrists on their cases. Even my political profiles, many of which were written for national magazines, are strongly psychological in orientation. In addition, I am a college professor (currently at the City University of New York's John Jay College of Criminal Justice). My academic fields are English and speech; the literary bequest of the one and the closeness of speech scholarship to psychological scholarship prepared me to approach the subject of Sybil. Moreover, I had been in the theater, in radio and television, had written short stories and plays, and had taught writing at the New School for Social Research. All factors seemed to coalesce to make me want to transmute the clinical details of Sybil's story into a book in which I could capture that story's inherent drama.
  I also wanted to write the book because of my friendship with Sybil and Dr. Wilbur, whose courage in pursuing the uncharted course of a very special analysis I greatly admired. I had great regard for Dr. Wilbur, an analyst with impressive credentials. She had a large Park Avenue practice and was prominent in a variety of psychiatric organizations, notably the Society of Medical Psychoanalysts and the Academy of Psychiatry. President of the National Association of Private Psychiatric Hospitals, she also served on the research committee of the Society of Medical Psychoanalysts that produced an important volume entitled Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic View. Today, no longer in private practice, Dr. Wilbur is a full professor

of psychiatry at the Medical School of the University of Kentucky.
  Thus it was, after knowing Sybil and her other selves for three years, that I made my commitment and began to do formal research for this book. The confidences I shared with Sybil and Dr. Wilbur and my direct contacts with the other selves had to be supplemented by a systematized
 
approach to the case as a whole and to Sybil's total life. I read widely in the medical literature about multiple personality, and I discussed the general aspects of the case with various psychiatrists in addition to Dr. Wilbur. I retraced the outer odyssey of Sybil's life by talking with persons who had known her in her midwestern home town, which I call Willow Corners, in Omaha, and in New York. I also literally retraced the steps Sybil had taken during some of her strange travels as another personality. In Philadelphia, for instance, I counted the number of steps to the front door of the Broadwood Hotel.
  To unfold this extraordinary saga of a chilling, dizzying kaleidoscope of fascinating events, I had first to disentangle them. Clues evolved through a minute exploration of every single document connected with Sybil's eleven-year analysis. These included Dr. Wilbur's daily notes, jotted in pencil on prescription pads, in the course of 2,354 office sessions; Sybil's essays, written as part of the treatment procedure; and recordings of those analytic sessions that were taped. I also studied Sybil's diaries, kept from adolescence through the first year of the analysis; letters; family and hospital records; and the newspapers and records of the town of Willow Corners during the year in which the Dorsett family lived there.
  Through these ten years--during seven of which I was actively working on the book--I was intimately associated with Dr. Wilbur and Sybil, both of whom, sometimes separately, sometimes together, stood ready to "sit" for the portrait. Our roles were quite distinct, however. I was recreating what Sybil had already lived and the doctor had already analyzed. But never, per-

haps, did an author have more "giving" subjects. In fact, in response to any questioning, they, too, reassessed many aspects of the analysis. For me there was also the satisfaction of being able always to check the medical facts of this case with a doctor who was never farther away than the nearest telephone.
  Upon reading the finished book, Sybil remarked, "Every emotion is true"; Dr.
 
Wilbur commented, "Every psychiatric fact is accurately represented."
  Sybil's true story provides a rare glimpse into the unconscious mind and opens doorways to new understanding. A reflection of abnormal psychology and of an extraordinary developmental pattern, the case of Sybil Dorsett supplies new insight into the normal. It affords not only a new observation of the uncanny power of the unconscious mind in motivating human behavior but also a new look into the dynamics of destructive family relationships, the crippling effects of a narrow, bigoted religious background, a woman's identification with the males in her family, and the denial of self-realization. In terms of what not to do, Sybil's story is a cogent lesson in child care. Implicit in this account, too, are issues relevant to such questions as: What is maturity? What is a whole person?
  Sybil's life story also illuminates the role of the unconscious mind in creativity; the subtle interrelationships of remembering and forgetting, of the coexistence of the past with the present; and the significance of the primal scene in spawning psychoneurosis. There are also certain philosophical questions implicit here, namely, the subtle relationship between reality and unreality and the meaning of "I."
  Medically this account throws light on the genesis of mental illness in terms of heredity and environment and the difference between schizophrenia, which some doctors and the public alike tend to use as a catch-all for a multitude of diverse symptoms, and Grande Hyst@erie, the little-understood illness with which Sybil was afflicted.

  Most important of all, perhaps, is the expansion of consciousness that the reader experiences as he or she falls under the spell of Sybil's internal adventures.
                Flora Rheta Schreiber
                New York City
                January, 1973
 
             Acknowledgments

  Thanks are in order to James Palmer for his useful comments on certain portions of the manuscript; to anthropologist Dr. Valentine Winsey for her invaluable suggestions; to Dr. Donald H. Riddle, President of John Jay College of Criminal
Justice, for his sustained encouragement; to Melvin Herman, Executive Secretary of the National Association of Private Psychiatric Hospitals, who introduced me to Dr. Wilbur; to the Reverend Eric Hayden, of St. Andrews Church, Newark, for doing some crucial sleuthing; to Professor Leo C. Loughrey, for legal advice on Chapter 5; to John Schreiber for his unflagging enthusiasm for the project; to that loyal group of performers at the typewriter who gave seemingly endless hours not only to typing the manuscript but also to empathizing with the author--Natalie Parnass, Margaret Schoppe, Janet Ludorf K@uby, Susi Resnick, Shirley Sulat, Anne Henri, and Haydee Davis; to Haydee, too, who, along with her husband, George Thomas, bailed the author, laden with documents, out of Lexington, Kentucky; to Patricia Myrer of McIntosh and Otis for weathering the storm since 1962; and above all to Dr. Cornelia B. Wilbur and Sybil I.
Dorsett, who made it all possible.
  I have also discussed Sybil's case with such notable members of the psychiatric fraternity as Dr. Karl Menninger, Dr. Murray Bowen,
Dr. Harvey Kay, Dr. Lawrence
Friedman, and the late Dr. Nathan Ackerman. Dr. Herbert Spiegel, who did age regressions on Sybil and described her as "a brilliant hysteric," gave several hours to a valuable discussion of this case, which he knew first-hand. Dr. Menninger, who had never treated anyone with Sybil's condition, had, how-

ever, dealt with cases of automatic writing, which he regards as a subdivision of the condition, attesting to its reality. Dr. Bowen, whose specialty is family therapy, was particularly concerned with the family constellation in the genesis of the illness.
 
                Part I 21-23
                 Being

       The Incomprehensible Clock

  The crash of glass made her head throb. The room swirled. Her nostrils were suffused with the acrid smell of chemicals, more than an inhalation of what was actually there. The smell seemed to emerge from some far-off memory of an experience long forgotten. That smell, so distant yet so familiar, was reminiscent of the old drugstore at home.
  The broken glass in the old drugstore. The broken glass in the big dining room. Both times there had been the accusing voice: "You broke it."
  Sybil Isabel Dorsett hastily flung her chemistry notes into her brown zipper folder and rushed to the door, with all eyes upon her, the chemistry professor's, the other students', uncomprehendingly engraving themselves into her spine.
  The door closed behind her. She was in the long, dusky hall on the third floor of Columbia University's Havemeyer Hall. Then she was waiting at the elevator, the a21-23 only person there.
  "Too long, too long." Her thoughts spun round. She had waited too long before leaving the lab. She might have prevented what had happened by leaving the very moment that she heard the crash.
  Too long. The elevator, too, was taking too long.

  Sybil clutched for her zipper folder. It wasn't there. The elevator wasn't there, either, or the long, dusky hall. She was standing on a long, narrow street covered

with snow. The elevator hadn't come for her, but instead of waiting, she was walking.
  A sharp, pungent wind whipped her. Snow, white, crackling, and swirling, was underfoot. She had no overshoes, no gloves, no hat; her ears ached with numbness. The light gray convertible tweed coat, which had seemed warm enough when she walked to the lab from her apartment on Morningside Drive, now offered painfully little protection against the unrelenting cold.
  Sybil looked for a street sign. There
 
wasn't any. She looked for a house, in which she might find refuge. There was none. A gas station? She didn't see any. A drugstore? None.
  Drugstore. Chemistry lab. The long, dusky hall. Elevator. None here. There was only this street, this poorly lighted, deserted, nameless street in a place she didn't recognize.
  Old, ugly, massive wooden structures
--some painted battleship gray, others covered with sheet metal--lined both sides of the street. There were overhead entrances, huge doors below, and windows with tiny panes.
  It couldn't be New York. Maybe it was some part of her native Wisconsin, where as a child she had been through many winter storms like this and had known what it was like to have chilblains. Ridiculous. How could she have gotten to Wisconsin in the split second between standing at the Columbia University elevator and now? But then she couldn't have gotten anywhere in that time. Maybe she hadn't; maybe she wasn't anywhere. Maybe this was a nightmare.
  Yet as she walked faster, reality confronted her in the form of the ugly buildings and the constantly falling snow, which she wiped from her face with her gloveless hand and tried to shake from her body by gyrating from side to side. She knew that she couldn't have invented those barricaded structures; she had never seen anything like them before. The doors were huge not because she was imagining them that way but because they were used for storage and shipping. The realistic part of her imagination took hold again, and she knew that she was in a warehouse district.

  A black silhouette against the white snow, the figure of a man, suddenly appeared on the other side of the street. He seemed as unapproachable as a passing shadow, as inanimate as the buildings that dwarfed her. Even though he could undoubtedly tell her where she was, she could not reach out to him. Besides, she feared that if she did, he would misunderstand her motives. She just let him pass into what seemed to be night, hurrying to a world beyond the warehouses and beyond her entreaty.
  For Sybil there seemed no exit, just as there had been no entrance. The barricade of buildings, although outside herself, blended with her innermost fears. She felt closed in, shut
 
off, imprisoned, trapped--without and within.
  Was there no rescue? No taxi? Bus? Nothing to take her somewhere, anywhere so long as it was away from this non-place? Although just before getting off a crosstown bus in New York, her present home, she had always been prone to an odd, balky feeling, now she was even willing to risk a bus. The matter, however, was purely academic, since there was none. There was nothing.
  A phone booth became pivotal in her thinking. If she could find one, she not only would know where she was but could also call Teddy Eleanor Reeves, her roommate, who must certainly be worried about her. Then Sybil remembered that Teddy had left for a vacation with her family in Oklahoma soon after she herself had left for the lab.
  Ironically, Teddy had urged Sybil to wear a warmer coat when she had left their apartment. She had not listened because it had been one of the days when she couldn't listen. All that day, especially after it had begun to turn cold, she had felt overwhelmed by feelings of uneasiness and by strange stirrings within her, which had made it impossible for her to stay in the apartment even the extra minutes required for changing her coat
  Sybil also wanted to call Dr. Cornelia
B. Wilbur. If enough time had gone by, the doctor, too, would surely be worried about her. Maybe Sybil had missed her hour

with the doctor. Could she have missed many hours by now?
  The word "now" was tantalizing, elusive since there was no knowing how much time had passed since she had been waiting at the elevator. If only she could remember, piece together what had brought her here, maybe she could understand. There could be no peace for her until she did.
  A telephone seemed the most likely link to reality, though looking for one was like searching for a mirage. Somehow she had to find one, to keep moving long enough to do so. She felt she couldn't go on, but she also knew that she didn't dare stop. Her legs seemed frozen; yet if she did not go on, she knew from her experience with midwestern winters that she might freeze to death.
  Forcing herself to keep moving, she listened for
 
sounds, for life. There was only the wind. Block after block along glassy streets failed to reveal a single street sign. The hope of a telephone became even more vain.
  As if to steady herself, at least momentarily, Sybil stopped at a street lamp. Aided by its dim light she opened her purse and rummaged through it. Her Social Security card, Blue Cross card, driver's license, Columbia University library card--each brought the reassurance of recognition.
  Her billfold, which had contained $50 and some change when she had left her apartment, contained only $37.42 now. She had walked to the lab, bought nothing after she got there. Had she paid the missing cash to travel to this place? She had waited at the elevator; then she was here. That was all she could remember.
  The key to her apartment was lying neatly in its compartment. Dangling from a large, reddish-brown tag, however, was a key she had never seen before. Turning it over and over in her almost frozen hand, she looked at it again and again, reading and rereading its gilt letters: room 1113.
  What was this key doing in her purse? Where had it come from? Obviously it was a hotel key, but unlike

most hotel keys, it bore no name or address, no clue as to what city this was.
  Maybe this was a nightmare after all? No, the key was tangible, the tag was solid, the lamppost was real. So were the ugly structures that seemed to leer at and mock her. Real, too, was the snow that clung to her coat and legs. And there was motion in the legs; despite her fears, her legs were not frozen. As she hurried on, knowing that she had no destination, she appreciated the grim humor of rushing to no place. Yet onward she went-- running from no place to nowhere--racing to outstrip her mounting panic.
  The key to room 1113 was the engine that drove her, the motor on which her panic turned. Then suddenly the key brought not panic but a measure of comfort. That key opened some hotel room door, a retreat from the cold, a haven. There she could at least be warm, get some food, rest.
  Walking rapidly, looking at each street intersection for an approaching vehicle, Sybil grew angry with herself for not having made a more
 
determined effort to find a taxi or bus. Although she had allowed herself to be trapped, now, whether or not it was the one to which the anonymous key led, she would find a hotel. Certainly there was a world beyond the warehouses.
  Then a new terror overtook her. What if she had picked up the key on the street? She didn't remember doing so, but she didn't remember much. What if at some time in the past she had been in that room for days, weeks, even months or years and had been forced to leave for not paying her bill? In both cases the room would now be someone else's. Should she throw the key away? Free herself from possible guilt?
  No. There was no key, no room, no shelter, no refuge, no world, only more of this no-woman's land, where unreal silhouettes of men could flit by in the snow, reawakening the black and white images that had always terrified her.
  There was no end to these long, narrow streets. No house would ever show a light. These barred windows--how she feared them--echoed old fears, fears that had followed her wherever she had lived and had now followed her to this non-place.
  Suddenly there was a light. A gas station. A telephone at last and a directory to give this place a name.
  According to the directory, she was in Philadelphia, a city she had visited many times, but not once in all those visits had she been in this area.
  The phone booth beckoned to her, seemed to invite her presence. But when, accepting its invitation, she stood within the cagelike confines of its hospitality, hospitality turned to rebuff. Intending to call Dr. Wilbur's home number, she inserted a dime in the slot to ask for long distance but heard only a metallic nothingness. The telephone was dead.
  She approached the gas station attendant and asked whether she could use his private phone. "Sorry, lady," he replied. "Sorry."
All she saw, as he walked from her and closed the door in her face, was the back of his retreating white coat.
  Her fear, she knew, had made him afraid. But contact with another person permitted her
 
to decide to call from the Broadwood Hotel, where she always stayed when she visited Philadelphia.
  The thought of the Broadwood and the knowledge that she was in a city she knew well lifted some of the terror. She took time to visit the washroom, where she let hot water run over her hands. Returning to the street, she noticed for the first time the Delaware River and on its other shore, Camden. Both had been there all the time.
  The Delaware was familiar. She had once done an impressionistic water color of it while Capri sat at her side. The cat, who had watched every stroke of the brush, had occasionally taken a swipe at the brush handle as if to remind Sybil of her presence.
  Street signs began to become visible. Front Street. Callowhill Street.
Spring Gardens. On Front Street, between Callowhill and Spring Gardens, there were overhead elevated tracks. As Sybil approached a corner, she noticed a light, a city bus.
  "Wait, wait," Sybil called frantically.
  The florid-faced driver waited.
  And then, acutely aware of an aching in her arms and legs, Sybil collapsed in a window seat in the rear of the bus. She was ready to go wherever the bus would take her, anywhere, everywhere, world beyond, world without end--anywhere.
  Why were these other passengers--three men and a woman wearing a beaver hat--out on a night like this? But was it night? The maddeningly anonymous in-between gray of the overcast sky withheld the clue as to whether it was night or morning. She didn't know the date, either. If she were to ask the other passengers, what a fool they'd think her!
  The enigmatic key in her purse, which also withheld all clues, once again possessed her. A Broadwood key? She didn't know. Nor did she know whether she was on her way to the Broadwood Hotel. She could easily get there, however, from wherever the bus took her. Eager to find out, she walked to the front of the bus and asked the driver: "Do you go anywhere near Broad and Wood?"
  "Three blocks from it," he replied. "Shall I call you?"
  Through the bus window, despite its frosty face, she recognized Benjamin Franklin
 
Parkway, Logan Free Library, the Franklin Institute, and Fairmont Park. She remembered with excitement the two granite memorials in the park. On one, which was of soldiers in bas relief, was the inscription: "One country; one constitution. In giving freedom to slaves we assure freedom to the free." She had painted that war memorial. She must keep her mind on anything, everything, except the key. Except my life, except my life --wasn't that what Hamlet had said?
  "Your corner," the driver called to her. She was on terra firma again. Infirm with the skidding conditions of the roads and the slippery sidewalks, it was firm with the solidity of familiar landmarks: the Academy of Fine Arts, on Broad and Cherry Streets, the Hahnemann Hospital, and then, a present reality at last, the gold dome atop the Broadwood Hotel.
  Finally, the red brick sixteen-story Broadwood Hotel stood before her. It had a diamond pattern up to the third floor and a white cornice.
Across the street from the hotel were the Roman Catholic High School for boys and an old building that used to be the home of the Philadelphia Morning Record. In front of the Broadwood there was a subway station. The subway had been there since 1927, someone had told her. And the Broadwood itself had been built in 1923 by the Elks. That was the year she was born. Funny.
  Becoming annoyed with herself for lingering outside the hotel when she could already have been inside, she finally took the fateful plunge of entering. It seemed to Sybil that it was as difficult to ascend the three steps to the Broadwood's heavy glass front door as to climb Mt. Everest. Her ascent was into the unknown.
  In the main lobby she stared at the torchlike lamps suspended from the ceiling, scrutinized the familiar marble, the yellow, black, and white tile floor. Although she knew this lobby well from previous visits, she noted each detail as if she were looking at it for the first time.
  Should she register? She hesitated. Should she head for room 1113 on the supposition that it was
 
free and that she had a Broadwood
Hotel key? She ran up the fifteen steps to the rotunda. That was a safe detour from both desk and elevator--the Scylla and Charybdis of her terror.
  The rotunda was dominated by a stained glass terrazzo tile marble window forty feet high. It was a beautiful window, overlooking a mezzanine. Inscribed on the rotunda's gold leaf ceiling was the motto: "Fidelity, Justice, Vanity, Brotherly Love--their virtues upon the tablets of love and memory. The faults of our brothers we write upon the sand."
  For a few fleeting minutes, as Sybil stared at the ceiling, she felt relaxed by its beauty, but the sensation passed as she slowly retraced her steps from the rotunda to the main lobby. Again taking refuge in extraneous things, she noted how the place had changed since she had last been here. The bellhops were not the same. Nor had she ever seen the owlish, bosomy woman at the registration desk. And then, lingering at

the interior store window of Persky's Portraits, Sybil tried to force herself to decide whether to register or to go to room 1113, to which the inexplicable key could conceivably lead. Unable to decide, she rushed out to Broad Street.
  At the newsstand in front of the Broadwood she bought a copy of the Philadelphia Bulletin. It was dated January 7,
1958. As if disbelieving the date, she bought the Philadelphia Inquirer. It too was dated January 7.
  January 7. She had left the chemistry lab on January 2. Five days lost.
The fear of not knowing had been replaced by an even greater fear--knowing.
  "Do you have the time?" she managed with assumed nonchalance to ask the newsdealer.
  "Nine o'clock," he replied.
  Nine P.m. It had been 8:45 P.m. when she had waited at the Columbia elevator. Almost five days to the hour had intervened.
  Slowly, fearfully, Sybil once again pushed open the heavy glass door of the hotel. Panic and a sense of remorse and self-recrimination awakened by the knowledge that she had lost five days
 
compelled her to hurry. Someone, she dimly perceived, was calling to her. It was the owlish, bosomy woman at the registration desk. "Hello, there," the woman was saying, her large head bobbing over the desk in recognition, her eyebrows so prominent that they seemed like the stiff-feathered disks of an owl, by which Sybil had first characterized her.
  "Do you have a minute?" the woman called. "I want to talk to you."
  As if mesmerized, Sybil came to a halt. "Now, when you get to your room," the woman said solemnly, "take a hot bath and get some hot tea. I was so worried about you out in that storm. "Don't go out," I begged you. You wouldn't listen. This is no weather to monkey around with."
  "Thank you. I'm all right," Sybil replied somewhat stiffly.
  The woman smiled at her as she headed toward the bank of elevators.

  Sybil could swear--in a court of law she would have sworn on oath--that it had been a year since she had been at the Broadwood. In that same court, however, the woman at the desk, who had not worked at the hotel the previous year, would have sworn, also on oath, that Sybil had been in the hotel earlier that January 7.
  One of the two elevator doors swung open. Sybil, anxious and deeply apprehensive, entered the car. She was the only passenger.
  "Eleven, please," she said.
  "Out in that storm?" the elevator boy asked. She whispered, "Yes."
  "Eleven," he called.
  The elevator door closed behind Sybil, its metallic clang registering in her spine as had the uncomprehending eyes in the chemistry lab. Between the two elevators time had not existed. Remorse quickened at the thought.
  Was there really a room 1113? The numbers on the doors, 1105, 1107, 1109,
1111, heralded a probable 1113. Then flashing, receding, and flashing, as if it were in neon lights, was 1113!
  Sybil opened her purse, removed the key, turned it over in her unsteady hand, caught her breath, started to place the key in the lock, turned it over again, and wondered whether it was really
 
the key to this door.
  Go in? Go back?
  She inserted the key in the lock. It fitted. The door swung open. Sybil faced room 1113.
  Nobody spoke. Nobody stirred or moved. Did that mean that nobody was there?
  She pressed her body against the doorjamb and, without entering the room, moved her hand over the nearest wall in search of a light switch. When the light went on, the thrust of her hand unleashed a floodlight on her fears of what she might find. Stepping into the room and closing the door behind her, she stood transfixed, unmoving.
  As far as she knew, she had never before been in the room. But if this weren't her room, where had she slept from January 2 to January 7, how did she come by the

key? She could not have been in the street all that time.
  Was she registered? The woman at the desk downstairs had acted as if she were.
  Sybil removed her wet coat and placed it on a chair, kicked off her wet shoes, and slumped into the green chair near the window.
  She didn't know that the room was hers, but somehow, from the way the woman had talked, she didn't think it was anybody else's, either.
  For a time she just stared vacantly through the window at the Roman Catholic High School for boys and at the building that used to house the Philadelphia Morning Record. Then, unable to find solace in just sitting, she reached for the newspapers that she had brought with her.

     THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
         FINAL CITY EDITION INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER FOR
            ALL THE PEOPLE

  My eyes are heavy with exhaustion.

 TUESDAY MORNING, JANUARY 7, 1958

  January 7. January 7 is a plain fact that spells out that I have lost five days.
 
         MAN ROCKETED 186
            MILES UP,
             REDS SAY
       Gavin Says Missile Stand Cost Promotion
             85th Congress Starts Second
              Session Today

  So much has happened while I was out of the world.

             Flier Chutes Safely After
             Epic Ascent

  My ascent was epic too. The streets. The steps. So

many streets. More of a descent since I have lost time after thinking I would not again.

  Autos Slither
  Stop
  Glassy Roads THE EVENING BULLETIN
            PHILADELPHIA TUESDAY, JANUARY 7, 1958

  Pay bill. Check out. Check out when I haven't checked in? How did I get in without luggage?

     SNOWSTORM EXPECTED TO LAST ALL NIGHT

  All night?

  She had better stay. She tossed the newspapers into the flowered metal wastebasket and went to the desk to call room service. She ordered split pea soup and a glass of hot milk. While waiting for the food to come, she started to call Dr. Wilbur. Too long. Too long. She had waited too long to get through to the doctor.
  Sybil lifted the phone off its cradle and started to give Dr. Wilbur's number to the hotel operator. At that moment, however, something
 
on the dresser riveted Sybil's attention. Staring at the object in disbelief, she dropped the telephone receiver abruptly. It was her zipper folder.
  Also on the dresser were her mittens, which would have come in handy in the storm, and the red scarf she had been wearing at the Columbia University elevator.
  Tremulously she walked to the dresser and clutched at the zipper folder. Unzipping it, she discovered that the chemistry notes were exactly as they had been five days before when she had scooped them up in the lab.
  Then, in a corner of the dresser, was something that she hadn't noticed before: a receipt for a pair of pajamas purchased at a Philadelphia department store. She knew the place; she had been there several times. It was

a long walk from the Broadwood, but by subway one could make it door to door. The pajamas cost $6.98. Had this $6.98, she wondered, helped to deplete her billfold?
  Pajamas! Where were they? She searched the drawers and the closets, but she didn't find them.
  She searched the bathroom. At first she saw nothing; then she saw the pajamas on a hook behind the door, hanging like an accusation.
  The pajamas were rumpled, slept in. Had she slept in them? They were loud and gay, with bright orange and green stripes. Not her style. She always chose solid colors, usually in varying shades of blue. The pajamas she found were the sort a child might select.
  Sybil went back into the room. Her knees sagged. The self-recrimination she had felt upon discovering that she had lost time was suddenly intensified by finding the objects on the dresser. The zipper folder glared at her, the red scarf threatened her, and the mittens seemed to be pointing at her as though they had locomotion of their own.
  Then, on a small bedside table an object that she had not seen before beckoned to her: a black and white drawing of an isolated female figure perched on a cliff against a towering mountain that threatened to engulf it, dwarfed it. The drawing had been penciled on Broadwood stationery. Drawn in this room, it had obviously been left behind by the person who drew it. Who?
 
  There was a knock at the door, and the room service waiter placed on the desk Sybil's tray with the soup and milk she had ordered. "You're not very hungry tonight," the lean, lanky waiter said. It seemed as if he were comparing her order to what she had ordered on other occasions. His tone was gentle, his manner protective, as if he knew her well. Yet Sybil knew that she had not seen him before. The waiter left.
  Staring at the food on the tray, Sybil felt a different kind of panic from what she had felt among the massive, ugly buildings of the warehouse district. The waiter. The woman at the desk with a bosom like a hill.

The pajamas. The black and white drawing of the female figure on the cliff. It all made sense--terrible sense. The panic she had experienced in the warehouse district because of not knowing what had happened had been superseded at the newsstand by the even greater panic of partial knowledge. And now the torment of partly knowing had yielded to the infinitely greater terror of knowing precisely. The pajamas and the black and white drawing left no doubt.
  Sybil gulped the milk, pushed the soup aside, hastily put on her shoes, her still-wet coat, her scarf, mittens. She stuffed the pajamas and sales slip into her zipper folder. She had planned to spend the night, but suddenly, even though she could see that the snow hadn't stopped and she knew that the trains might be delayed, she had to get back to New York to avoid the risk of what might happen if she stayed.
  Sybil Isabel Dorsett knew that she had to get back to New York while she was still herself.

              Wartime Within

  Trains. These dragons in the night fascinated Sybil, thrilled her and held her entranced. In the past they had usually meant escape. This train, however, was taking her not away from but toward. And she knew that she had to get back to New York not because of the chemistry lab and her other classes but because of Dr. Wilbur.
  Sybil tried to envision what had taken place in her absence: the regular daily session with the
 
doctor

missed, the doctor's possible attempts to search for her, and above all the doctor's disappointment upon surmising what had probably happened.
  Then Sybil dismissed these disturbing thoughts. The mood of calm that had come over her since boarding the train was too pleasant to lose in idle speculation, remorse, self-recrimination.
  Sybil Isabel Dorsett thought instead of the very first time she had seen Dr. Wilbur and of the events that surrounded that meeting. Unleashed was a flood of recollections so powerful that not until the train pulled into New York's Pennsylvania Station did it cease.

  Sybil was twenty-two years old. Adrift in her feelings, she was living in despair with her parents--Willard and Henrietta "Hattie" Dorsett--that summer of 1945. Wartime without, it was for Sybil also wartime within. Hers was not a war of nerves in the customary sense but a war of nervousness in a special sense, for the nervous symptoms that had plagued her since childhood had become so bad at the midwestern teachers' college where she had been majoring in art that the college authorities had sent her home the previous June, saying that not until a psychiatrist deemed her fit could she return. Gwen Updyke, the college nurse, afraid to let her travel alone, had made the trip with her. But homecoming, which took Sybil from an unmanageable academic career to an even more unmanageable relationship with her parents, who were at once overprotective and unsympathetic, had served only to aggravate her symptoms. in August, 1945, Sybil was earnestly seeking a solution to a problem that had been a lifetime dilemma but that neither she nor anybody else understood.
  In this state of mind Sybil had made her first trip to see Dr. Lynn Thompson Hall, her mother's doctor. That time it had been her mother who had been the sick one, with a swollen belly, and Sybil had come to the office as the daughter of the patient. But while talking to Dr. Hall about her mother, Sybil had experienced a fleeting wish that he would ask about her. She liked the
 
tall, soft-spoken Dr. Hall, and she realized that what she liked most about him was that he treated her like an intelligent adult. The very realization, however, was disquieting. Being twenty-two entitled her to adult status. Having an IQ of 170, according to a standard intelligence test, should have earned her the right to be treated as if she were intelligent. Yet she never felt like an intelligent adult around her mother or even around her father. Her parents were forty when she was born; she had never known her mother without gray hair. She supposed that it was this Isaac-Jacob setting, with a generation gap spanning not one but two generations, coupled with her being an only child, that accounted for the fact that in the presence of her mother and father she remained a child. Somehow she had never been able to grow up in her parents' eyes.
  Sybil wanted to reach out to Dr. Hall. During the first visit she wished he would ask her, "What is the matter with you? What can I do to help?" On the second visit, which took place three days later, the wish was even stronger and more insistent. But as her mother and she sat in the crowded waiting room hour after hour--because of the war doctors were scarce--she felt discouraged. It was unreasonable, she knew, for her to think that Dr. Hall would ask about her.
  Her mother's turn finally came. Then the examination, during which, at her mother's insistence, Sybil was always present, was over. As her mother, Sybil, and the doctor were leaving the examining room, Dr. Hall took Sybil aside and said, "I'd like to see you in my office for a moment, Miss Dorsett." Her mother went to the dressing room as Sybil followed Dr. Hall into his office.
  To Sybil's surprise, the doctor did not talk about her mother. Looking firmly at Sybil from his swivel chair, Dr. Hall said forthrightly: "Miss Dorsett, you look pale, thin.
What's troubling you?" He waited an instant and added, "What can I do to help?"
  Exactly what she had hoped would happen had happened, but she was anxious. Although she had wished for this opportunity, it was puzzling when it actually came. How could Dr. Hall have divined her plea? It
 
was unreal that he should instinctively have tuned in to her unexpressed wish. That people regarded him as an astute physician, probably the best internist in Omaha, was not a sufficient explanation.
  Suddenly realizing that this was no time for reflection since Dr. Hall, who had been straightforward with her, was waiting for her answer, she replied slowly, "Well, I don't have any great physical complaints, Doctor." She desperately wanted his help, but, afraid to tell him too much, she merely added, "I'm just nervous. I was so nervous at college that they sent me home until I could get well."
  Dr. Hall was listening attentively, and Sybil sensed that he did really want to help her. Because of her overdeveloped capacity for self-effacement, however, and because of her longtime conviction that she wasn't important, she couldn't understand why.
  "You're not at college now?" the doctor was asking. "Then what are you doing?"
  "Teaching in a junior high school," she replied. Although she wasn't a college graduate, she was able to teach because of the wartime teacher shortage.
  "I see," Dr. Hall said. "And this nervousness you speak about--what form does it take?"
  The question terrified her. What form indeed? That was something about which she didn't want to talk. No matter how much Dr. Hall wanted to help her, no matter how much she wanted his help, she could not tell him this. She had never been able to share the information he was requesting with another human being. She could not share it, moreover, even if she wanted to. It was a sinister force that shrouded her life and made her different from other people, but it remained nameless even to her.
  All Sybil said was, "I know I have to see a psychiatrist." That, she supposed, was a fair appraisal of the situation, but she studied Dr. Hall's face uneasily to see how he had reacted. He showed no surprise, and he seemed to make no judgment.
  "I'll make an appointment for you," he said matter-

of-factly, "and tell you the time when you come with your mother on Thursday."
 
  "All right. Thank you, Doctor,"
Sybil replied.
  The brief, stiff phrase of gratitude, with its conventional words, rang hollow. Those words, she knew, could not convey the impact of the powerful feelings that were overwhelming her. It was important for her to see a psychiatrist not only to secure relief from her nervousness, if indeed her condition was treatable, but also because her going back to college depended upon psychiatric help. She wanted desperately to return to school and knew that this was the only way she ever would.
  Sybil said nothing of this to her parents, but on Thursday, in her mother's presence, Dr. Hall remarked, "Your appointment is with Dr. Wilbur for August 10 at 2:00 P.m.
She's especially good with young people." Sybil could feel her heart skipping, then throbbing. The excitement about seeing a psychiatrist was overshadowed, however, by the pronoun she. A woman? Had she heard correctly?
All the doctors she had ever known were men. "Yes," Dr. Hall was saying, "Dr.
Wilbur has had a great deal of success with the patients I've sent her."
  Sybil only half heard him because the initial terror of seeing in her mind a woman psychiatrist almost eradicated his words. But then suddenly the fear lifted. She had had a warm relationship with Miss Updyke, the college nurse, and she had had a devastating experience with a male neurologist in the Mayo Clinic. The neurologist had dismissed her case after a single visit, handing out an easy nostrum by telling her father that if she continued to write poetry, she would be all right.
  Dr. Hall leaned forward to put his hand on her mother's arm as he said firmly, "And, Mother, you're not to go with her."
  Sybil was startled--even shocked--by the tone that the doctor had taken with her mother and by her mother's apparent acquiescence. It had been a fact of Sybil's existence that her mother went with her every-

where, and she went with her mother. Never, even though she had tried, had Sybil been able to alter that fact. Her mother's omnipresence in her life had been almost a force of nature, as inevitable as the rise and setting of the sun. In a single sentence Dr. Hall had reversed the reality of a
 
lifetime.
  There was something else about that sentence that defied understanding, too. Nobody--not family, not friends, not even Sybil's father, and certainly not Sybil --had ever told her mother what to do. Her mother--the self-proclaimed "great Hattie Dorsett" --was a towering, unrelenting, and invincible figure. She didn't take orders; she gave them.
  Leaving the office with her mother, Sybil fervently wished--irrationally perhaps but nonetheless powerfully--that the woman psychiatrist, whom she was soon to see, would not have white hair.

  Precisely at 2:00 P.m. on August
10 Sybil entered the office of Dr. Cornelia B. Wilbur on the sixth floor of Omaha's Medical Arts Building, and the doctor's hair wasn't white. It was red, and the doctor was young, perhaps no more than ten years older than Sybil. Her eyes seemed kind-- unmistakably, undeniably kind.
  Still, churning within Sybil was the same set of opposing feelings that she had experienced in Dr. Hall's office, the sense of relief that at last she was doing something about her nervousness but the terror that nothing could be done because hers was a unique, untreatable condition.
  Dr. Wilbur was patient as Sybil, trying to mask these contradictory feelings, rattled on about being terribly nervous and so shaky at college that she often had to leave the classroom.
  "It was pretty bad at college," Sybil recalled. "Miss Updyke, the school nurse, was worried about me. The school doctor sent me to a Mayo Clinic neurologist. I saw the neurologist only once, but he assured me that I would be all right. But I kept getting worse. They sent me home and said that I should not come back until I was well enough."

  Sybil found comfort in the doctor's smile. "Well," Sybil continued, "I'm home now. It's dreadful, simply dreadful. I'm with my parents every minute. They don't let me out of their sight. They look at me with long faces. I know that they're ashamed that I was sent home from college. They were counting on my education and centered their hopes on it. But I'm going back when I'm well enough."
 
  The doctor still hadn't said anything, so Sybil just went on talking. "I'm an only child," she said, "and my parents are very good to me."
  Dr. Wilbur nodded as she lit a cigarette.
  "They worry about me," Sybil continued. "Everyone worries about me--my friends, our pastor, everybody. I'm illustrating the pastor's lyceums on Daniel and Revelation. As he talks, I paint the beast about which he's talking. It's really very impressive. I'm suspended on a scaffold ten feet above the stage. I usually chalk on heavy drawing paper my interpretations of what the pastor says. He's keeping me busy. He ..."
  "How do you feel? Dr. Wilbur interrupted. "You've been telling me what everybody else thinks about you. But how do you feel?"
  A compendium of physical complaints followed as Sybil talked of her poor appetite, of weighing only 79 pounds even though she was five-feet-five. The recital also included her chronic sinusitis and her poor eyesight, so poor that, as she put it, "I sometimes feel as if I'm looking through a tunnel." After a pause she added, "I'm not at all well, but I've been told I'm really healthy. Ever since I was a little girl, I've been sick but not sick."
  Did she remember her dreams? the doctor wanted to know. No, she didn't remember them. As a little girl she had nightmares, which she didn't remember, either.
  Sybil froze when the doctor tried to get her to talk about her feelings, but the doctor persisted. Finally Sybil had said enough for the doctor to be able to tell her: "You should come back. You have difficulties that can be worked on." Of that Dr. Wilbur was sure, but she also knew that it would not be easy to reach Sybil.

She was so naive, so unworldly, so immature. Too, she worked against herself, using a lot of words without saying much.
  Sybil herself wished earnestly that she could come back, but standing in the outer office, paying the receptionist, she knew that she couldn't make another appointment without first talking it over with her parents. Still, she felt that, if she continued to work
 
with the doctor, she would get well.
  Had she told the doctor too much? Sybil wondered as the elevator went swiftly down the six floors of the Medical Arts Building. Quickly she reassured herself that what she didn't dare tell had not been told. Then, walking out of the building into the glare of the August sun, she realized that she would never be able to tell Dr. Wilbur all that she should and could about herself. All that she, Sybil Isabel Dorsett, knew-- even then.

          The Couch and the Serpent

  Sybil made her second visit to Dr. Wilbur without incident. When the patient stepped out of the Medical Arts Building, however, she remembered that her mother was waiting in Brandeis department store on the adjacent block. Frustrated at being unable to accompany her daughter to the doctor's office, Hattie Dorsett had taken her as far as the elevators of the building in which the office was located.
  "I'll wait for you in Brandeis," Hattie had said at the elevator door, making a promise of the statement, the old refrain of an enforced interdependency from which

neither had been able, even if both had been willing --and certainly Hattie was not--to extricate herself. Now, as always, it was a strange case of "Wherever thou goest, I shall go."
  Slowly, dutifully, Sybil walked into Brandeis department store, where, visible almost at once, were her mother's lean figure, proud carriage, white hair. At once, too, came her mother's "What did the doctor say about me?" Although it was a question, it had the ring of a demand.
  "She didn't say anything," Sybil replied.
  "Well, let's go," her mother said testily. "I'd like to stop at the library," Sybil remarked.
  "Oh, all right," her mother agreed. "I want a book myself."
  At the library on Harney Street Sybil and her mother went to different shelves and then met at the checkout desk. Sybil was holding Sidney
 
Howard's The Silver Cord.
  "What's that?" her mother asked. "It's a play," Sybil replied. "Dr. Wilbur suggested that I read it."
  That evening, while Sybil prepared dinner and, later, did the dishes, her mother sat reading The Silver Cord. Her comment, when she finished, was: "I don't see why Dr. Wilbur asked you to read this. What has it got to do with you?"
  Willard Dorsett, silent while his wife and daughter talked, was mulling a few questions of his own. He had reluctantly agreed to have Sybil enter treatment because ever since Sybil had been sent home from college, Willard had known that something had to be done. And although he was by no means certain that psychiatry was the answer, he was willing to give it a chance. But now, he wondered, was the decision correct?
  The treatment, beginning on August 10, continued once a week throughout the summer and early fall of 1945. For all three Dorsetts it was a time of apprehension and watching.
  Each time Sybil came home after seeing Dr. Wilbur her parents were waiting like vultures. "What did she

say about us?" they asked separately and together. "And what else did she say?" Never did they ask, "How are you getting on?" or, "How did things go?" Nor was it ever what Sybil would have liked most of all: to have them say nothing. The treatment was painful enough in itself without this constant inquisition at home.
  "You knock yourself down," the doctor told Sybil. "You don't think much of yourself. That's an uncomfortable feeling. So you project it on others and say, "They don't like me.""
  Another theme was, "You're a genius and serious. Too serious. You need more social life."
  Still another motif was: "When are you going to blow up?"
  Dr. Wilbur advised: "Get away from home. Go to New York or Chicago, where you can meet people like yourself--people who are interested in art. Get away."
  Sybil wished she could. The uneasiness she felt at home was being greatly intensified by the treatment.
 
  The doctor's remark about Sybil's needing more social life, for instance, had really exasperated her mother.
  "Well," her mother declared haughtily when Sybil told her about it, "what have I been saying all these years? What's wrong with my diagnosis? Why don't you spend all that money on letting me tell you what's wrong?"
  Sybil's parents, dissecting what the doctor said, also criticized the doctor herself. She smoked, and no good woman did that--no good man, for that matter. She didn't go to any church, let alone a church of their fundamentalist faith. In short, they didn't trust the doctor, and they said that they didn't. The trouble was that having always had the upper hand with their daughter, they expected also to have it now. Her mother, who saw everything in terms of black and white, simply dismissed Dr. Wilbur as being wrong. Nobody, doctor or not, who did the things of which Hattie Dorsett disapproved, according to Hattie's precepts, could be right in anything.
  Her mother's attitude toward Dr. Wilbur didn't surprise Sybil but her father's did. Sybil had thought him objective enough to be able to listen to reason, to be able to concede that Dr. Wilbur could be a good doctor even if he disapproved of her personally. Yet Sybil rapidly came to realize that her father could not overcome his resistance to everything Dr. Wilbur said or advised because her lifestyle was different from his. The doctor belonged to another world, and for Willard Dorsett, as for his wife, Dr. Wilbur would remain an outsider.
  "Dr. Wilbur doesn't really care about you," Sybil's mother repeatedly warned. "She tells you one thing now. But when she gets you where she wants you, she'll tell you altogether different things. And remember, young lady, she'll turn on you if you tell her you don't love your own mother."
  Sybil would assure her mother that she would never tell the doctor that because it wasn't true. "I do love you, Mother, I do," Sybil affirmed again and again.
  The whole situation was awful all the time. Sybil desperately wanted to get well, and the scenes at home did not help at all. Yet there was no way out. If her talking led to a
 
scene, so too did her silence. When
Sybil did not talk, her parents would accuse her of being moody, and although they had upbraided her with this characteristic many times in the past, they now claimed that Dr. Wilbur was responsible for the moodiness. "She'll make you crazy," her mother warned, "and then they'll put you in an institution because that's the way doctors make their money."
  In contrast, outsiders, people who knew she was seeing the doctor and people who didn't, talked of a marked improvement in Sybil. But when people said these things, her mother scoffed, and her father only partly listened. Sybil felt that he might have understood if his wife hadn't brainwashed him with her "She's better because she's growing up, and everybody gets more sense when they grow older and understand things better." Sybil was twenty-two, but her mother talked of that period of her life as a time not of maturity but of first growing up.
  At least, the brainwashing had no effect upon Sybil

herself. As the weekly one-hour sessions with the doctor in Omaha continued through September, Sybil became more and more convinced that Dr. Wilbur would help her to get well.
But she was still very puzzled by herself. Sybil had not told the doctor about what puzzled her--some terrible, nameless thing having to do with time and memory. There had been times, for instance, during the last summer and early autumn, when Sybil had gone to the doctor's office without, later, having any clear recollection of what had transpired. There were times when she remembered entering the elevator, but not the office; other times when she remembered coming into the office, but not leaving it. Those were the times when Sybil could not tell her parents what the doctor had said about them or about anything else. Sybil had not known whether she had even seen the doctor.
  One time in particular stood out in memory. A paradox, a joke: remembering what you didn't remember.
  Sybil heard herself saying, "It wasn't as bad as usual."
  "How do you know?" the doctor asked.
  "I would have been out in the hall or something by now," Sybil replied.
  "Well," said the doctor, "you almost jumped out of the window. You jumped out of the chair and rushed to the
 
window. I couldn't stop you."
  Sybil didn't remember doing anything of the sort, but she hadn't argued the point. All her life people had said that she had done things she hadn't done. She let it go in Dr. Wilbur's office, as she always had.
  "I wasn't really disturbed," the doctor explained. "You can't get out of these windows. It's because of the kind of glass. Unbreakable, you know."
  Then Dr. Wilbur became more serious. "You had what looked like a little seizure," she said. "It wasn't epilepsy; it was a psychological seizure."
  Psychological? The doctor was saying that Sybil was nervous. That was old--not new. What was new, however, was that the doctor didn't seem to blame her. In the past, when these things had happened, she had

always blamed herself. Nobody else knew about them, but she had been certain that anybody who had known would have found her guilty of inexcusable behavior.
  Nor did Dr. Wilbur seem to think that her condition was hopeless, as she herself had often feared. The doctor presented her with three choices for the immediate future: to teach at the junior high school for another year; to go back to college; or to undergo intensified treatment at the Bishop Clarkson Memorial Hospital, where the doctor and a colleague ran a psychiatric division.
  Sybil chose the hospital. But when she told her parents, they were distressed, even terrified. To them hospitalization meant only one thing: their daughter was insane.
  "This has nothing to do with insanity," Sybil tried to explain. "Dr. Wilbur told me it didn't."
  "Then it has to do with the devil," her father replied ominously.
  "Clarkson, Parkson," her mother rhymed. "Park son, park daughter."
  Even though the hospital seemed the road to damnation, Willard Dorsett agreed to talk it over with Dr. Wilbur, choosing to meet her not at her office at the Medical Arts Building but at Clarkson.
  Outside the hospital Hattie and Sybil
 
sat in the car--the mother biting her fingernails, the daughter grinding her teeth. Inside, Dr. Wilbur managed to dispel Willard Dorsett's visions of his daughter's being locked in and restrained, of her undergoing a lobotomy, of her getting worse because of contact with other patients more disturbed than she, and of her getting well enough to go home only to relapse and return to the hospital. He had envisioned hospitalization as an endless, unremitting cycle of in and out, out and in.
  Dispelled, too, was the deepest of all her father's fears: that his daughter would be given drugs. "No," Dr. Wilbur assured him, "we wouldn't do that."
  Finally, then, although Willard Dorsett had an uneasy feeling about the psychiatric course on which his

daughter had embarked, he did give his consent for her hospitalization at Clarkson.
  Clarkson, as Dr. Wilbur saw it, was to be only a temporary measure. What
Sybil needed ultimately, the doctor felt, was psychoanalysis. "You are the sort of person who should be psychoanalyzed," she told her patient. "I would like to do the job myself, but I'm not an analyst yet. In fact, I shall be leaving Omaha shortly to begin my analytic training. I suggest that after you leave Clarkson you go to Chicago to be analyzed."
  The prospect thrilled Sybil. Chicago meant not only moving closer to the truth about herself but also getting away from home. Psychoanalysis, however, posed a problem for Willard and Hattie Dorsett. They had agreed to the psychiatric treatment, even to plans for hospitalization, but psychoanalysis was a different matter.
  The couch and the serpent. The parents feared that the strange world of the psychoanalyst's couch might be antithetical to their most deeply held religious convictions, would probably exclude God from the picture. Their religion, to which Sybil's father had been born and which her mother, originally a Methodist, had embraced some years after her marriage, taught that each individual has the privilege of choosing between God and the devil, between God and the Lucifer of the prophecies, between God and the serpent of the
 
Scriptures. The devil, the religion taught, could exert control. Everyone, the Dorsetts believed, has the privilege of choosing between God and the devil; God, assuming full responsibility for the actions of those who chose Him, could carry all who choose rightly to Paradise. Conversely, their religion posited, those who choose the devil will travel a different road.
  Fearing to commit his daughter and, through her, himself, to the devil, Willard Dorsett could not give Sybil an answer when she pleaded with him to permit her to go to Chicago for psychoanalysis.
  "I don't know," he told her. "I'll have to talk it over with Pastor Weber."
  The pastor, decisive in most things, shared Willard

Dorsett's doubts of the benefits of psychoanalysis. The two men were very close, and, impressed with Dorsett's talents as a builder-contractor, the pastor had engaged him to build churches for the denomination. As they talked in the half-built church on which Dorsett was working, the pastor was noncommittal. "I don't know, Brother Dorsett. I just don't know," he repeated several times.
  After a silence Dorsett himself remarked, "I would be more comfortable if the Chicago psychoanalyst were of our own faith. I'm afraid that a doctor outside our faith will use drugs, hypnosis, and other techniques to which I am opposed."
  Pacing the floor of the church, the pastor was thoughtful and perplexed. When he finally spoke, it was only to say, "You'll just have to decide for yourself, Brother Dorsett. I'd like to help you, but frankly I don't know what to advise."
  This time it was Dorsett who paced. He replied apprehensively, "If God isn't part of the therapy, they'll have a hard time leading me into this channel."
  "Yes," the pastor concurred, "it's like leading a mule in Missouri into a new barn. You have to blindfold him first." After a long pause he added, "I believe in freedom of thought, of conscience and conviction. Brother Dorsett, you know I can be very persuasive, even overpowering. But the only form of persuasion I've ever used is just talking to people. I've never used force in my life. And I'm not at all sure that psychoanalysis
 
doesn't involve the use of force. But
I'm not opposing Sybil's going to Chicago. The decision is not mine to make but yours and hers."
  Willard Dorsett reported to Sybil his conversation with the pastor, and, finding that there was no more effective defense against his own fears than to displace them, he did leave the decision to her. "I still want to go to Chicago," was Sybil's fixed and unflinching answer.
  At church the following Sabbath Sybil talked briefly with the pastor. She stared at his black suit and studied his penetrating brown eyes. It was a study in darkness,

the visible symbols of the fears that had been expressed. Feeling her gaze, the pastor said gently, "Your father and I are only looking at this from our own point of view. We have to admit that there is another. If this is what you really want, we shouldn't stand in your way."
  Sybil's decision remained unchanged.
While waiting for a bed at Clarkson and for word from Chicago, she saw the immediate future as a stepped-up assault on the "terrible thing" that had enshrouded her life. There was comfort in having taken the first affirmative action after long years of vacillation and temporizing on the parts both of her parents and of herself. The decisiveness that she had been unable to show when she was younger she felt able to exert at last.
  Suddenly everything changed. The instrument, though not the cause, was the pneumonia that she contracted as a concomitant of a strep throat. Her head ached terribly; her throat was raw; and although she tried to get out of bed to call Dr. Wilbur to cancel her October 6 appointment, dizziness and weakness intervened. Sybil asked her mother to telephone Dr. Wilbur.
  Sybil heard Hattie Dorsett give
Dr. Wilbur's number to the operator, announce herself to the doctor's secretary, and then talk to the doctor herself. "Yes, this is Mrs. Dorsett, Sybil's mother," Hattie spoke into the phone. "Sybil is ill and can't keep her appointment with you on October 6. Yes, everybody seems to have these bad throats, but she also has pneumonia. Anyway she asked me to call you. Thank you."
  With a click her mother hung up.
  "What did the doctor say?" Sybil
 
asked. "What did she say?"
  "She didn't say anything," her mother replied.
  "Nothing about another appointment? Nothing about the hospital?"
  "Nothing."

  The train had reached Trenton and still Sybil's reverie continued. The echo of her mother's voice could not be stilled. What she said in Omaha she seemed also to be saying now. Her words, as distinct as if she were

in the seat next to Sybil, had their old cacophonous ring. The train moved on toward New York as the memories came, unbidden, propelled by what Sybil supposed was their own logic. The doctor had started all this, the doctor to whom she was returning.
  Learning that Dr. Wilbur had said nothing about another appointment, Sybil quickly dismissed the feeling of disappointment with the reassuring thought that probably the doctor had assumed that, when she was well enough, she would call. However, when, fully recovered, she did call, she was told that Dr. Wilbur had left Omaha permanently. A feeling of rejection was natural.
  After all the bitter battles at home, after the agonies involved in persuading her parents to let her go into treatment and then to agree to hospitalization at Clarkson, the road to getting well had been ripped from under her. The bravest of the emotionally vulnerable, she felt, could not sustain this blow.
  She walked away from the telephone and sat limply on the bed. She thought of how her mother would scoff and her father would become silently critical. She thought about Dr. Wilbur and about how puzzling--incomprehensible--it was that she should have left town without a parting caution, without so much as a swift backward glance in her direction. Had she offended the doctor? Had the doctor thought that she had not really been ill and thus had deliberately called a halt to the treatment? Certainly these were possibilities.
  What now? A letter from Chicago, stating that the analyst was booked for two years and wasn't accepting new patients, had ruled out analysis. The loss of Dr. Wilbur had
 
ruled out Clarkson and the continuation of treatment. Then, in the stillness of her room, Sybil faced the fact that somehow she would have to manage to carry on alone. She even persuaded herself that, with Dr. Wilbur's departure and the cancellation of her Chicago plans, she would be freer to do as she wished. And what she wished most of all was to return to college.
  Was she well enough? She wasn't certain, but she

realized that the treatment by Dr. Wilbur might serve as the means of readmission. After all, she had seen a psychiatrist.
  She wrote to Miss Updyke about her desire to return, and Miss Updyke promised to use her influence to make the return possible. In the meantime Sybil continued teaching at the junior high school and painting. Her painting City Streets and a pencil piece were exhibited at an Omaha art gallery. But the nameless thing still pursued her. When a day came that she felt free of it, she recorded that day in her diary with the euphemism: "All went well today." In January, 1947, Sybil returned to the campus.
  During the first week Miss Updyke was curious to know how things really were, and when Sybil told her that she was able to sit through classes without the inner disturbances that in the past had made it necessary for her to leave, Miss Updyke seemed very pleased. "She could see," Sybil wrote in her diary of January 7, 1947, "I'm well more nearly." On
January 8, 1947, Sybil, referring to the nameless thing, recorded in the diary: "Am so proud --most thankful I could talk with Miss Updyke as I did yesterday and stay on a level. No inclinations ever. The one thing I desired for so long. God has heard my pleas surely."
  The nameless thing, the "inclinations" that kept her from staying on a level, however, had not been put to rest. Her diary, virtually infallible as a clue to the presence or absence of the "inclinations" because when Sybil was in command of the situation, she never failed to make an entry, shows clearly that there were unrecorded days even in this period, when she thought herself "well more nearly." In fact, for January 9, the day after the splurge of optimism, there was
 
no entry. Good days were often followed by bad days.
  There were enough good days for Sybil to complete almost three years of college and to move triumphantly into the second semester of her senior year. But then in 1948, shortly before the end of her last semester, Sybil received a telephone call from her father summoning her to Kansas City, where her parents were then living.

Her mother was dying of cancer of the spleen, and she insisted upon having no other nurse than Sybil. "If this is what your mother wants," Willard Dorsett told his daughter, "this is what she will have."
  Sybil did not know what to expect when she arrived in Kansas City. Old fears reasserted themselves. But Hattie Dorsett had never been as calm and as rational as she was in Kansas City. Paradoxically, in this period of crisis mother and daughter got along better than they ever had before.
  The very calm became an ironic background for the events of what started out as an ordinary evening. Hattie Dorsett, relatively free from pain, was sitting in the big red easy chair in the living room of the Dorsett's home. She was reading Ladies Home Journal by the light of a small table lamp. Sybil came in with her supper tray. Then, seemingly apropos of nothing, Hattie Dorsett remarked, "I never made it."
  "Made what?" Sybil asked softly, thinking that her mother was voicing some retrospective regret, some unfinished business that haunted her.
  "I never made that call," Hattie Dorsett said.
  "What call, Mother?"
  "That call to Dr. Wilbur," her mother explained.
  "You did," Sybil insisted. "Don't you remember? I heard your conversation. Every word of it."
  Hattie Dorsett was composed as she replied, "Well, I held my finger on the button. I never made it. I never made that phone call."
  Never had this possibility occurred to Sybil. It was inconceivable that her mother would have so determinedly blocked the route to her good health,
 
inconceivable that her mother would have condemned her to the uncertainty and doubt about the doctor with which she had lived since October, 1945--almost three years ago.
  A little insight here, a slight revelation there, picked up during the all-too-brief treatment, had been enough to maintain the inner balance that made it possible for Sybil to go back to college. That nameless thing that Dr. Wilbur had glimpsed the day her patient headed for the

window had continued in Omaha, at college, and in Kansas City. And it had been her mother, nursing her bizarre secret, who, by preventing the continuation of treatment, had deliberately shaped her daughter's destiny.
  The horror, the pain, the sadness of it! Yet there were no recriminations. Nobody ever criticized Hattie Dorsett. There was no flare-up of anger against her. Anger was evil.
  Hattie ate her supper. Sybil took the tray back to the kitchen. Neither mother nor daughter ever again mentioned to each other that phone call or Dr. Wilbur.
  The revelation about the phone call, however, completely changed Sybil's attitude toward the doctor. It seemed obvious that, not knowing that Sybil had been ill, the doctor had simply thought that she had fled from treatment without even having the grace to say she was not coming back. No wonder the doctor had left Omaha without calling her. It was not Sybil Dorsett but Dr. Cornelia Wilbur who had a right to be deeply disappointed.
  Before hearing about the unmade phone call Sybil had deliberately ejected Dr.
Wilbur from her thoughts. Now, however, the doctor loomed large again, and Sybil felt a sudden surge of hope. Returned to her was the glorious dream of getting wholly well, of picking up where she had left off with Dr. Wilbur. But this time the serpent must not be allowed to intervene. The dream would have to be delayed until Sybil, wholly on her own, could afford to pay for her own treatment.
  Dr. Wilbur, Sybil learned from a directory of psychiatrists, was now a psychoanalyst in New York. And it was to New York that Sybil was determined to go.
  Never, through the six years--from 1948 to 1954 --that intervened between the decision and its execution,
 
did Sybil breathe this dream to anyone.
Her intention was one thing more she had to keep to herself. In July, 1948, Hattie Dorsett died and was buried in a Kansas City cemetery. For the next two months Sybil kept house for her father, and in September she returned to college. She was graduated with a bachelor's

degree in June, 1949, and it took the intercession of one of her professors to convince her father, who was with Pastor Weber in Denver, Colorado, to attend the commencement exercises. At one o'clock on commencement day Sybil left with her father for Denver.
  For the next few years she lived with her father, taught school, and worked as an occupational therapist. Willard Dorsett's building schedule kept him constantly moving, and she went with him. However, by the summer of 1954 she had saved enough money to go to New York to get a master's degree at Columbia University and to resume treatment with Dr. Wilbur. Her father, told only that his daughter was going to New York to study, drove her there.
  Sybil arrived in New York on
Labor Day, 1954, but she waited until October before calling Dr. Wilbur, fearful both that the doctor would reject her and that she would accept her.
  Rejection was plausible because of the seemingly cavalier way in which Sybil had closed the door on treatment, but it was more likely--and this hurt even more--that the doctor wouldn't remember her. The envisioned rejection was compounded by the fact that Sybil, who felt guilty for unjustly blaming Dr. Wilbur for failing to call Sybil before leaving Omaha, neatly converted that feeling of guilt into additional feelings of rejection.
  Acceptance held a different kind of terror. If she were accepted, Sybil knew that she would have to tell the doctor about the end-of-the-rope feeling she had experienced toward the end of her three years in Detroit, her last residence before coming to New York. While she was teaching, she had seemed to be all right, although there were times in the classroom that she couldn't remember. The moment she left the classroom, however--it was too horrible to recall--strange, incomprehensible things had happened to her. These things were not new, had
 
in fact occurred since she was three and a half and had filtered into awareness at fourteen. But in Detroit they had become not only more frequent but also more menacing. She was no

longer able to endure the terrible burden of the secret she didn't dare tell, of the answers she had to improvise to implement the pretense of normality.
  People she had never seen before would insist that they knew her. She would go to a picnic and have a vague sense of having been there before. A dress that she had not bought would be hanging in her closet. She would begin a painting and return to the studio to find that it had been completed by someone else--in a style not hers. Sleep was a nightmare. She just couldn't be sure about sleep. Often it seemed as if she were sleeping by day as well as by night. Often, too, there was no dividing line between the time of going to bed at night and waking up in the morning. Many were the occasions of waking up without going to sleep, of going to sleep to wake up not the next morning, but at some unrecognizable time.
  If Dr. Wilbur accepted her, these things and many others like them would come up. This time, she promised herself, fearful or not, she would tell the doctor about them. Not telling was like informing a doctor that you had a head cold when you really had cancer.
  Yet Sybil, not certain that she could bring herself to tell and knowing that if she didn't, the treatment would be devoid of reality, wondered whether resuming treatment was the right decision. She vacillated for six weeks before taking the plunge.

  On the train the past faded. Suddenly it was the present that became compelling as Sybil faced the reason for her precipitous flight from Philadelphia. Each time one of these incidents occurred, and they had been occurring since she was three and a half, it was as if it were happening for the first time. Ever since she had, at fourteen, become aware of her situation, she had told herself each time that she would begin all over again and that it couldn't happen again. In Detroit the episodes had been overwhelmingly numerous, and yet, even then, she had braced herself to dismiss each one as the last.
  This time, however, the illusion of the first time as-
 
sumed even greater terror than it usually did because of the deep disappointment she felt this January, 1958--three and a half years since her analysis had begun--that an episode like that in Philadelphia should occur.
  The train chugged into New York's Penn Station. Sybil clutched her zipper folder, left the train, hurried into a taxi, and finally felt relieved of the nagging apprehension, of the insistent remorse at what had happened in Philadelphia. By the time the taxi turned into Morningside Drive and approached the brownstone where in September, 1955, she had taken a second-floor apartment with Teddy Reeves, she felt secure and at ease-- tranquilized by her wish not to remember.
  Teddy would still be with her family in Oklahoma. Sybil walked up the two flights of stairs, knowing but not caring that there would be no one to greet her.
  As the apartment door swung open, the tranquility dissolved. Capri, thin and wide-eyed, croaked a pathetic, hoarse greeting. The cat's was the sound of accusation, the same accusation the pajamas had presented in the Broadwood Hotel room.
Sybil had abandoned Capri by leaving her without water or food. Capri was her only real companion, really all she had. Sybil would not consciously neglect any animal, least of all her precious Capri. But she had. She'd abandoned the animal she loved as she herself had been abandoned repeatedly in the past by people who had claimed to love her.

            The Other Girl

  Sybil lay restless and wakeful, knowing that in the morning she would have to tell the doctor what she had done. It was going to be even harder than she had thought. She found herself thinking instead of the first time she had seen the doctor in New York.

  Expectant, eager, anxious, Sybil had been awake that October 18, 1954, in the sunless moments before dawn. Her eyes darted around the small Whittier Hall dormitory room at shapes indistinct in the semidarkness. On the back of her desk chair was her navy blue
 
gabardine suit. On the dresser were her navy blue leather purse, her navy blue silk gloves, and her navy blue hat with a small navy blue veil. Standing at attention under the chair were her navy blue leather pumps with their medium heels. Her gray stockings were tucked into the shoes. The ensemble had been painstakingly assembled the night before.
  As the shapes became visible in the gathering light, the sense of strangeness dissolved. She found herself thinking about what she would say to Dr. Wilbur. This time she would have to tell the doctor everything.
  Sybil stretched for a moment, facing the window and the dawn. She dressed slowly, meticulously. As she hooked her tiny bra, she realized that her hands were trembling, and to steady herself she sat down on the bed. Up again within seconds she stepped gingerly into her suit. Putting on her hat with almost mechanical

precision, she could feel that it looked right without even looking in a mirror. Navy blue was very much in vogue, and the little veil gave an added fillip to the matching costume.
  Sybil went to the window. The trees in the Whittier Hall courtyard were leafless with autumn's pillage. She faced the sun. Blinded momentarily, she walked away from the window. It was only six-thirty, not yet time to go. Her appointment with the doctor wasn't until nine.
  Time. She could never be sure about time. The earlier she left the dorm, the better. She put on her gloves.
  The world seemed not yet quite awake as she descended the front steps of Whittier Hall and headed across Amsterdam Avenue for Hartley's drugstore, on the southeast corner.
  The drugstore was deserted except for a cashier and one counterman. Marking time until mankind would rouse itself, the cashier was treating her nails with an emery board; the counterman, in his white coat, was stacking dishes behind his marble slab.
  Sitting at the counter, Sybil ordered a danish and a large glass of milk, removed her gloves, and played with them nervously. As she dawdled over her food, she realized that she was deliberately killing time. The phrase killing time made her wince.
 
  Leaving Hartley's at 7:30, she waited briefly for an Amsterdam Avenue bus; then she decided against it. Buses confused her, and this morning she wanted her mind to be clear.
  Passing Schermerhorn and the rotund St. Paul's Chapel, she scarcely recognized them. Not until she reached 116th Street did the area look like the Columbia University she had come to know. Through the heavy gates at 116th Street she could see in the distance Low Library, with its mixed architecture, its Ionic columns, and the proud yet somehow pathetic statue of Alma Mater on its front steps. She noted the striking resemblance between Low and the smaller Pantheon in Rome.
  The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine at 113th Street intrigued her. She lingered in front of it for a

full ten minutes, examining its Gothic architecture and reflecting that it seemed to be a perpetual work in progress. Well, she couldn't walk perpetually. She waited for a taxi, but none appeared until 8:15.
  The cab driver, in his Brooklyn accent, offered Sybil the New York Times. She took it gratefully and found comfort in it as her nerves, frayed by the taxi's slow motion in rush hour traffic, warned her that, while her mind was racing too swiftly to her destination, she might be late for her appointment despite her early start. No banner headline this October 18, 1954. No front page mention of President Eisenhower or of Senator Joe McCarthy, who usually made goggle-eyed headlines. Captions, neat and subdued, proclaimed: MACMILLAN HEADS
BRITAIN'S DEFENSE IN CABINET
SHIFT; STRIKES ON DOCKS OF
BRITAIN SPREAD; 40 COLLEGES JOIN
U.s. TECHNICAL AID TO 26
COUNTRIES; DEMOCRATS AHEAD IN
HOUSE BATTLES; TRUCKERS SUE FOR
STRIKE LOSSES PUT AT
$10,000,000. The unwritten caption, running like a refrain through all the others, was: WILL THE DOCTOR REMEMBER ME?
  The taxi came to a sudden halt. "Have a good day," said the driver as Sybil paid him. A good
 
day? She wondered. She walked thoughtfully through the front door of the buff-colored building on Park Avenue and 76th Street, where Dr. Wilbur lived and had her office. At 8:55 she stood in the private foyer leading to Apartment 4D.
  The door stood open so that patients could enter without ringing. Sybil found herself in a small, dimly lighted waiting room with a tiny wall table, a small brass lamp, and photographs in pale wood frames. Should she sit down? Dr. Wilbur came into the room. "Come in, Miss Dorsett," she said.
  They went into a sunny consulting room, each remembering the last time they had met, in Omaha almost ten years before.
  She's changed, Sybil thought. Her hair is brighter than I remembered it. And she seems more feminine.

But her eyes, her smile, and the way she nods her head are the same.
  At the same time Dr. Wilbur was thinking: she's as slender, as fragile, as ever. Looks no older. I'd know that face anywhere: the heart shape, the tilted nose, the small rosebud mouth. It's a face you don't see on the streets of New York. It's an English face, and despite the slight pitting of the skin, it has the fresh, unadorned look of an Englishwoman.
  The doctor didn't ask Sybil to sit down, but her manner indicated it. Where? The green couch, with a small triangular pillow at the end, on which patients evidently rested their troubled heads, wasn't inviting. It seemed even less so because of the upholstered chair that looked down on the triangular pillow and was the visible symbol of the psychiatrist's "third" ear.
  Dismissing the couch, Sybil counted the rose rings in the broadloom rug as she walked across it with slow, strained movements to the desk and chair on the opposite side of the room. She stopped. Beckoning to her from the top bookshelf on a greenish-gray wall were a black pen with a gold band, set in a gold holder on an onyx base, a small green pencil holder, and a green vase with a motif of green leaves. In the vase were assorted green plants and pussy willows. She was glad the doctor didn't have
 
artificial flowers.
  Blocked, Sybil gingerly withdrew a small mahogany desk chair from the knee hole of the desk and perched stiffly on its edge. The account she gave of herself was brief, factual, devoid of emotion. It was as if she were giving a resume in an employment office, not talking to the doctor to whom she had returned as the result of strong intention and after great striving. Such items as her graduation from college, her teaching, her work in art therapy, the exhibits of her painting, her not having been analyzed, as Dr. Wilbur had suggested in Omaha, and even her mother's death, mentioned without feeling, filled the frozen hour.
  The deep freeze continued as Sybil introduced the subject of Stanley Macationamara, an English teacher with whom she had taught in Detroit, just before coming to

New York. Although their relationship had developed to the extent that Stan had asked Sybil to marry him, she talked of him coolly, as a social worker might. Skirting her actual relationship with him, avoiding any mention of intimacies or her own feelings, she reported only that he was part Irish, part Jewish, that his father had deserted his mother, and that his mother later had abandoned Stan. The "report" also included the observation that Stan had been raised in an orphanage, had worked his way through college, and had made his own way.
  For her part, Dr. Wilbur was more interested in what Sybil did not say about Stan than in what Sybil did say. But the doctor didn't press. The hour was almost over, and she asked only: "Just what do you want from me?"
  "I want to work in occupational therapy," Sybil replied.
  "I think you already have."
  "And I think I want to marry Stan. But I'm not sure."
  When the doctor asked whether her patient wanted to see her again, Sybil shamefacedly lowered her head, peeked from under her eyelids, and remarked diffidently, "I would like to come back to you for analysis."
  Dr. Wilbur was pleased. Sybil
Dorsett would be an interesting analytical subject--bright, competent, talented, but also
 
aloof, remote, and afraid. The fact that the pupils of her eyes--dilated as a result of anxiety--were the size of the irises themselves had not escaped the doctor.
  In the weeks that followed, the analysis became so pivotal in Sybil's life that she almost literally lived for her Tuesday morning appointments with Dr. Wilbur. Getting ready for the appointments, Sybil would make a ritual of deciding whether to wear the gray suit with the rose sweater, the navy suit with the twin blue sweaters, or the gray skirt with the aqua sweater. At the same time Sybil indulged in the ritual of making frequent pilgrimages to Schermerhorn, the university's psychology library, where she steeped herself in psychiatric literature, especially case histories. She read about

symptoms, but not strictly out of intellectual curiosity. The more she knew about symptoms in other patients, the more adept she would become, she believed, at concealing her own. In seemingly no time it had become her fixed purpose to keep hidden what she had come to New York to reveal.
  Sometimes a patient gives one a glimpse even on the first visit. This one, the doctor thought ruefully, even after almost two months, buries herself, presents only the outer rim of the surface. On that outer rim sat Dr. Klinger, Sybil's art teacher, with whom she had differences of opinion. There, too, sat Stan, whom she thought of marrying but who in analysis had emerged wooden, a stick figure. But it was only through patient probing that the doctor finally uncovered the fact that he had made clear--or rather unclear in vague, oblique phrases--he was proposing a sexless marriage. Platonic was the word Sybil had used.
  Why, the doctor wondered, should an intelligent woman allow herself to become involved with a man who apparently had no sexual responses, an abandoned child who had never known and could not give love? What could account for a libido so markedly low that it would countenance such a relationship?
  Libido down, reserve up. At first the doctor had attributed the reserve to Sybil's strict upbringing. But that could not account for the aloofness masking the terror in her eyes. "She's fooling
 
around," the doctor thought. "She isn't being candid with me."
  On December 13 Sybil did finally strike a new note: "I'm concerned about Christmas vacation."
  "Why?"
  "Vacations bother me."
  "In what way?"
  "There's so much to do. I don't know what to do first, then I don't do anything. I get mixed up or something. I can't describe it."
  "Why don't you come three times a week during the holidays?" the doctor suggested. "That way we can get more said and ease the tension."
  Sybil agreed.

  And it was on December 21, 1954--when the analysis was just three months old--in an hour that began innocuously enough with Sybil's saying, "I want you to see the letter I received from Stan this morning," Dr. Wilbur came measurably closer to the truth about Sybil Isabel Dorsett.

  Sybil seemed calm that morning and talked of Stan's letter with her customary lack of emotion. But when she opened her purse, she became suddenly flustered. She saw that only half of the letter was there, a half with a zigzag edge.
  She hadn't torn it. Who had?
  She ransacked her purse in search of the missing half. It was not there.
  She shuffled the other two letters she had received that morning in her lap. They were intact, exactly where she remembered having put them. But she also remembered having put Stan's letter--it had been whole then--with them. Now the missing half of his letter was not even to be found. Who had removed it? When? Where had she been when it happened? She had no memory of the moment.
  It had happened again--this terrible thing that happened to time. It had followed her here, to the haven of the doctor's office, this black shadow that followed her everywhere.
  Gingerly, stealthily, in an effort to conceal what had happened from the doctor, who was sitting away from her on the chair at the head of the couch, Sybil slipped the mutilated letter behind the other two. But the doctor was asking, "Do you want me to see the letter?"
 
  Sybil started to stammer ... and the stammer dissolved into something else.
  The prim, gentle midwestern schoolteacher, her face contorted with fear and fury, jumped up from the desk chair, and, moving so fast that she seemed to do everything at once, ripped up the letters that had been in her lap and threw their remains in the wastebasket. Then, clenching her fists, she stood in the middle of the room,

ranting, "Men are all alike. You just can't trust 'em. You really can't."
  She headed with rapid, spiderlike movements toward two long casement windows. Swinging the green draperies aside, she clenched her left fist again and pounded with it at a small windowpane. "Let me out," she screams "Let me out!" It was an agonized plea--the call of the haunted, the hunted, the trapped.
  Dr. Wilbur moved swiftly but not swiftly enough. Before she could reach her patient, there was a crash. The pounding fist had gone through the windowpane.
  "Let me see your hand," the doctor insisted as she grasped the wrist. Her patient shrank from her touch. "I only want to see if you cut yourself," the doctor explained gently.
  This time the patient stood absolutely still, her eyes wide with wonder as she looked at Dr. Wilbur for the first time since jumping up from the chair. In a plaintive "little-girl" voice, a voice quite different from the one that had denounced men, the patient asked: "You're not mad about the window?"
  "Of course not," the doctor replied. "I'm more important than the window?" The tone was one of curious disbelief.
  "Of course, you are," the doctor remarked reassuringly. "Anybody can fix a windowpane. I'll call the handyman. He'll do it."
  Suddenly the patient seemed more relaxed. This time, when the doctor took her hand, she offered no resistance. "Come. Let's sit on the couch," the doctor suggested. "I want to have a good look at your hand. Let me see if it's bruised."
  They turned away from the window and walked toward the couch, past the purse, which had fallen on the rug when the patient had jumped up, past
 
assorted papers, drawing pencils, the outpourings of fury that had belched forth from the fallen purse. But now the fear and fury were gone.
  Sybil had always maintained a safe distance from the doctor by sitting at the desk. This time, however, Sybil sat right up beside the doctor and let her hand linger

in the doctor's even after the latter had declared: "No cut. No bruise."
  But once again there was a shift of mood. "There's blood," the patient said.
  "No blood," replied the doctor. "You didn't cut yourself."
  "Blood in the hayloft," the patient explained. "Tommy Ewald was killed. I was there."
  "You were there?" the doctor echoed. "Yes, I was. I was, too."
  "Where was the hayloft?"
  "In Willow Corners."
  "Did you live in Willow Corners?"
  "I live there," came the correction. "Jist everybody knows I live in Willow Corners."
  Jist. Sybil didn't talk that way. But, then, the Sybil the doctor knew didn't do any of the things that had been done since the patient jumped up from the chair. Gradually, as Sybil continued to relive what had transpired in the hayloft, the doctor was overtaken by an uncanny, eerie feeling.
  Since the patient had jumped up from the chair, the feeling had been there--muted yet insistent, like the traffic noises that trickled into the room through the broken windowpane. The more Sybil talked, the more insistent the feeling became.
  "My friend Rachel was sittin' with me in the hayloft," Sybil was saying. "And some other children. Tommy said, "Let's jump down into the barn." We jumped. One of the kids hit the cash register. There was a gun there. The gun went off. I went back, and Tommy was lyin' there, dead, a bullet through his heart. The other children ran away. Not Rachel and me. She went for Dr. Quinoness. I stayed with Tommy. Dr. Quinoness came and told us to go home. We didn't go. We helped him remove the gun and put a blanket over Tommy. Tommy was only ten years old."
  "You were two brave little girls," Dr.
 
Wilbur said.
  "I know Tommy's dead," the childlike voice continued. "I understand. I do. I stayed because I didn't think it right to leave Tommy lyin' there dead."

  "Tell me," the doctor asked, "where are you now?"
  "There's blood," was the reply. "I see blood. Blood and death. I know what death is. I do."
  "Don't think about the blood," the doctor said. "It makes you sad."
  "You care how I feel?" Again there was the look of curious disbelief.
  "I care very much," the doctor replied. "You're not jist tryin' to trick me?"
  "Why should I?"
  "Lots of people trick me."
  The sense of being tricked. The anger. The terror. The feeling of entrapment. The profound distrust of people. The wi/l, plaintive conviction that a window, a thing, was more important than she. These feelings and attitudes, expressed in the course of this hour, were symptoms of some profound disturbance. And all had turned up in the tortured mind of the patient like a dark deposit in a turbid well.
  From the moment the patient had dashed to the window, the doctor had been aware not only that her behavior was uncharacteristic but also that she actually looked and sounded different. She seemed smaller, shrunken. Sybil always stood as tall as she could because she considered herself small and didn't want to appear so. But now she seemed to have shrunk into herself.
  The voice was also quite different, childlike, not like Sybil's voice. Yet that little girl voice had uttered a woman's words in its denunciation of men: "Men are all alike. You jist can't trust 'em." And the word jist. Sybil, perfectionist schoolteacher, strict grammarian, would never use a substandard word such as jist.
  The doctor had the distinct impression that she was dealing with someone younger than Sybil. But the denunciation of men? The doctor couldn't be sure. Then the thought she had reined back broke forth: "Who are you?"
  "Can't you tell the difference?" was the reply, accompanied by a resolutely independent tossing
 
of the head. "I'm Peggy."

  The doctor didn't answer, and Peggy continued: "We don't look alike. You can see that. You can."
  When the doctor asked for her last name, Peggy replied airily, "I use Dorsett and sometimes Baldwin. I'm really Peggy Baldwin."
  "Tell me something about yourself," the doctor suggested.
  "All right," Peggy acquiesced. "Do you want to hear about my painting? I like to paint in black and white. I do charcoal and pencil sketches. I don't paint as much or as well as Sybil."
  The doctor waited a moment; then she proceeded: "And who is Sybil?"
  The doctor waited, and Peggy replied, "Sybil? Why, she's the other girl."
  "I see," the doctor replied. Then she asked, "Where do you live?"
  "I live with Sybil, but my home, as I told you, is Willow Corners," Peggy replied.
  "Was Mrs. Dorsett your mother?" the doctor asked.
  "No. No!" Peggy backed away, cowering against the small pillow. "Mrs. Dorsett's not my mother!"
  "That's all right," the doctor remarked reassuringly. "I just wanted to know."
  There was sudden movement. Peggy had left the couch and was moving across the room with the same swift, spiderlike movement with which she had earlier rushed to the window. The doctor followed her. But Peggy had vanished. Sitting on the small mahogany chair near the desk was the midwestern schoolteacher --Sybil. This time the doctor knew the difference.
  "What's my purse doing on the floor?" Sybil murmured. She leaned over and with patient restraint replaced the scattered contents of her purse. "I did that, didn't I?" she said, pointing to the window. "I'll pay for it. I'll pay for it. I'll pay." Finally she whispered: "Where are the letters?"
  "You tore them up and threw them into the wastebasket," the doctor replied with conscious deliberateness.
 
  "I?" Sybil asked.

  "You," the doctor replied. "Let's talk about what happened."
  "What is there to say?" Sybil remarked in hushed tones. She had torn the letters and broken the window, but she didn't know when, how, or why. She leaned toward the wastebasket and salvaged parts of the letters.
  "You don't remember, do you?" the doctor asked softly. Sybil shook her head. The shame of it. The horror of it. Now the doctor knew about the terrible, the nameless thing.
  "Have you broken glass before?" Dr. Wilbur asked quietly.
  "Yes," Sybil replied, hanging her head. "Then this is not different from what you've experienced before?"
  "Not entirely."
  "Don't be frightened," the doctor said "You were in another state of consciousness. You had what we call a fugue. A fugue is a major state of personality dissociation characterized by amnesia and actual physical fright from the immediate environment."
  "You don't blame me, then?"
Sybil asked.
  "No, I don't blame you," the doctor replied. "Blame has nothing to do with it. We need to talk more about this, and we'll do it on Friday."
  The hour was up. Sybil, fully in control, rose to go. The doctor followed her to the door and said: "Don't worry. It's treatable."
  Sybil left.

  "What do I have here?" the doctor said to herself as she dropped into her chair. She seems to be more than one person. A dual personality? Sybil and Peggy, totally different from each other. It seems quite clear. I'll have to tell her on Friday.
  The doctor wondered about Miss Dorsett's next appointment. Or should she say the Misses Dorsett? She (they) was (were) now coming three times a week because of the Christmas vacation. Well, Sybil had better continue to come that often. This case was more
 
complicated than she had first thought. Miss Dorsett would be back on Friday. Who?

          Peggy Lou Baldwin

  It was Sybil. Sybil calm; Sybil collected.
  "I want to apologize for not keeping my appointment on Wednesday," she began this December 23, 1954. "I ..."
  "You did come on Wednesday," Dr. Wilbur replied with deliberate bluntness. "But you were in one of those fugue states, and you don't remember."
  Using "fugue states" as a framework, the doctor planned to tell Sybil that, while she herself blacked out during these states, someone called Peggy appeared. But Sybil, skillfully changing the subject, did not give the doctor the chance. "I'm relieved," Sybil said, "that I didn't let you down. And now I have something I want to tell you. I really need to get it off my chest. May I tell you right now?"
  The "important" revelation was, however, only: "You should have heard Klinger this morning. That man has no instinct for modern art. He has repeatedly disappointed those of us who believe in it."
  Sybil was so effectively evasive that, when the hour was over, the doctor still had not told her about Peggy. Nor did the doctor have the opportunity during the next appointment. When she stepped into the foyer to greet her patient, it was Peggy who was waiting. The doctor had no difficulty recognizing her. Hatless, gloveless, Peggy was looking at two enlargements of sea and

island scapes the doctor had photographed in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, the pictures that Sybil had observed on her first visit.
  "Come in, Peggy," the doctor said. And Peggy, obviously pleased that the doctor had been able to tell her apart from Sybil, entered with quick, confident steps.
  Relaxed and cooperative, Peggy was more than willing to talk about herself. "I told you a little the
 
other day," she said. "I was angry then.
I had a right to be." Her tone became confidential as she looked directly at the doctor and said, "You know Stan sent us a "Dear John" letter. Only it was "Dear Sybil." Do you want to know what he said? He said, "I think we should discontinue our friendship-- for the time being, anyway." That's what he said. I was so mad I tore up his letter and threw it in a trash can on Lexington Avenue at 65th Street on the way here. And I threw that letter away. Only it wasn't the whole letter. I thought it was. But you saw the other half here. Well, I was insulted. Who wouldn't be?"
  Peggy paused, rose from the couch, paced a bit, and, with an impish glint, remarked rather than asked: "Want to know who wouldn't be insulted? Well, I'll tell you. The answer is
Sybil. She can't stand up for herself. I have to stand up for her. She can't get angry because her mother won't let her. I know it's a sin to get angry, but people do get angry. It's all right to be mad if I want to be."
  Coming back to the couch and sitting close to the doctor, Peggy asked, "Wanna know somethin' else about Sybil? She's scared. She's jist scared all the time. I get tired of it. She gives up, but I don't."
  "Peggy," the doctor asked, "do you and Sybil look alike?"
  "Not at all," Peggy replied indignantly as she pulled away from the cushion, rose to her feet, and began to prance around the room. "We're completely different. You see how my hair is. And the shape of my face."
  Dr. Wilbur didn't see the difference. While Peggy did seem younger and did talk and behave differently from Sybil, the hair, the face, and the body were the

same. Peggy was in complete command of the body, but the doctor knew from her experience of the previous week that at any moment Peggy could change into Sybil. In fact, Peggy stayed the whole hour.
  As the doctor probed, Peggy remarked with a touch of edginess, "Boy, you ask a lot of questions!" And when the doctor tried to search for the thread that connected Peggy to Sybil, Peggy replied cryptically, "Oh, leave me alone.
 
There are things I can't tell you. I jist can't. It's like the guards around the palace. They can't smile. They're on duty." Then, smiling herself, Peggy added, "I suppose they'd smile if you tickled them with a feather. Not me, though. I don't smile or talk if I don't want to. And nobody can make me."
  When it was time to go, Peggy said pleasantly as she rose from the couch: "You know, we met before."
  "Last week," the doctor replied. "Here." "No," Peggy insisted. "We met in
Omaha. At the window. The way we met here. I talked to you my own self in Omaha, but you didn't recognize me. I told you I was Peggy, but you thought it was Sybil's nickname."
  When Peggy was gone, she remained very much in the doctor's questing thoughts. Peggy was angry because Stan had sent Sybil a "Dear John" letter. Could this mean, the doctor wondered, that even though Sybil didn't know about Peggy, they were closely allied and that Peggy carried the emotional impact of Sybil's experiences?
  Peggy had said that Sybil couldn't get angry but that she could. Was Peggy Sybil's defense against anger? Was the rage in that fist, when Peggy broke the windowpane, the embodiment of what Sybil repressed? The doctor knew that she would have to learn a great deal more before she could confirm this hypothesis. Perhaps she simply was being bombarded with insights. In any case, the questions poured into her mind urgently and insistently.
  Suddenly thinking about Peggy out on the streets alone, Dr. Wilbur was concerned. Peggy, an assertive personality, should be able to take care of herself. Yet when she said, "Sybil's mother won't let her," as if the

mother were still alive, she had clearly shown, as had also been the case on the previous visit, that she didn't know present from past. And she was young. How could she negotiate the streets of New York, the doctor wondered. Dr. Wilbur hoped that she would get home safely. Home? Home was Sybil's home.

  Peggy Baldwin, sometimes Dorsett, had no intention of going back to the dormitory when she left the doctor's office. "I want to go someplace," she murmured half aloud as she
 
strode through the front door of the building onto Park Avenue. "I want to do what I want to do."
  The broad street, with its islands of Christmas trees sparkling with leftover snow, its shining limousines with men at the doorways, their bright buttons glistening in the sun, fascinated her. It was all so different from Willow Corners. Quickly she corrected herself: she had to admit that she lived in this wonderful, new city with Sybil. But her home was Willow Corners.
  How would it feel, Peggy wondered, to live in one of these houses? She wanted someday to be somebody. When she was, maybe she could live in a house with a doorman with shiny buttons. She wanted to be like all those important people, to do lots of things and go lots of places.
  She decided to walk for a while, look, see, experience. There were so many things she wanted to know about. That's why she was always listening, trying to hear everything, her ears straining to capture all she could. She often went to different places just to find out what was going on.
  Crossing over to Madison Avenue, she looked at the shops that she passed-- shops with slender stoles of sable, lovely knitted suits, pink peppermint nightgowns, black jersey tops above red and white cotton skirts banded with black velvet rickrack. She loved pretty things, but she didn't dare buy anything from good places like these. She just looked.
  The bar she passed back on West 44th Street was another place to which she didn't dare go. But she could

look in at all those people in there this day after Christmas doing what nobody she knew in Willow Corners did.
  Two men came out. One brushed against her and asked, "How about it?" How about what? she wondered as she looked at him sternly. The man laughed. Laughter scared her. When people laughed, she was sure that they were laughing at her. She began to walk quickly but not fast enough to avoid hearing the man who had brushed against her remark to the other man: "Pretty independent, no?"
  Pretty independent, yes, Peggy simmered as she raced ahead of her anger. Blamed
 
independent. She wasn't going to take anything from anybody. She could fight back.
  Forgetting about the incident, she walked on, finally finding herself in a big store. Passing over a ramp upstairs, she went into a station: "Pennsylvania Railroad," the sign said. Oh, boy, she thought, I can go somewhere. In the station she found a place to eat. She liked to eat.
  After lunch she found herself at a bookstand, looking at a doctor's story. She wasn't too crazy about doctor stories, but Sybil liked them.
  Sybil. How had the nice lady with the red hair mixed her up with Sybil? Couldn't she see that Peggy and Sybil were not the same? All of a sudden Peggy laughed out loud. People turned to stare.
  The people. She could cry when she thought of all the people. Sometimes when she thought of people, she felt lost and alone. There were too many cross people, and cross people made her angry. She knew it wasn't right to be angry, but many things made her angry. Her anger was purple and violet.
  The ramp, which was long, made her feel small. She went through a turnstile, walked down a long corridor, and came to a place where they were selling tickets. She went up to the window. The woman behind the window looked cross. Peggy said evenly: "I don't have to buy a ticket from you!" It wasn't right to get mad, and now she had done it.

  "Ticket, please," she said as she walked up to an other window.
  "Elizabeth?" the new lady asked.
  Peggy nodded her head yes. Why not? She could see that lots of people were waiting until a sign was put up. She wanted to be the first through the gate, but even though she hurried, she was the fifth in line.
  The next thing she knew she was in a restaurant near a railroad station, and she was ordering a hot chocolate. When she asked the waiter whether she was in Elizabeth, he looked at her in a peculiar way and said, "Well, sure." Funny, she didn't know how she had gotten there. Her last memory was of moving through the gate at Penn Station. Well, she supposed Sybil or one of those other people had taken the train
 
ride. Who cares, Peggy thought, I bought the ticket for Elizabeth and I'm here.
  She walked apprehensively along the street outside the restaurant. This place wasn't very interesting, but she had to do something. She was surrounded by unfamiliar sights. Spotting a parking lot, she walked briskly across it. She hadn't gotten very far when she felt the sudden joy of recognition at seeing her father's car.
  It was! She had found her father's car, something familiar.
  She walked to the car and began trying its doors. All the doors of the car were locked. She tried the doors again, but no matter how hard she tried, they just wouldn't open. She felt trapped, not by being locked in but by being locked out. It could happen both ways, she knew.
  Anger, purple and violet, welled within her. Its quick, sharp, heavy pulsations throbbed through her body. Almost without knowing what she was doing, she took her handbag and banged the metal frame against a slightly open window. After a few blows she heard the tinkle of broken glass. She loved the sound of breaking glass.
  A man in a tan suit was standing beside her. "What did you do? Lock yourself out?" he asked.

  "It's my daddy's car," she replied. Before the man in tan could reply, a man in a gray suit, who had joined them, snarled, "No, it isn't. It's my car."
  Peggy didn't like this man in gray one bit. And he had no right to talk to her like that. "It's my daddy's car," she insisted, "no matter what you say."
  "Who's that?" asked the man in tan. "Willard Dorsett," she replied proudly.
  The man in gray reached into his pocket, took out his wallet, and displayed the car's registration card. "You see, sister, the numbers match the license plate," he sneered.
  Her head high, her eyes flashing fire, she started off to tell her father what had happened. She would find him, and he would make everything all right. But the man who claimed to own the car was hollering at her in a loud and ugly way: "Hey, come back here. You ain't going nowhere."
  Peggy didn't like being left alone with these men.
 
They were mean and ugly, and she was afraid of them. She feared that they would stop her if she tried to get away. She tried to escape anyway, but the owner of the car grabbed her by the arm.
  "You take your hands off me," she warned. "I might jist hurt you."
  Peggy tried to pull away, but the owner of the car placed a restraining hand on her shoulder and said, "Cool it, sister, cool it." She felt like an outcast, enmeshed by strangers from whom she could expect only mistrust, rejection, insult.
  "Well, sister," the owner of the car insisted, "you broke the window. It will cost me $20 to replace that window. Are you going to pay for it?"
  "Why should I? It's my father's car," Peggy replied.
  "Who are you anyway?" the car owner asked. "Let me see your identification."
  "I won't," Peggy asserted. "I won't. And not you or anybody else can make me."
  The car owner, infuriated by her refusal, pulled her

purse away from her. "Give it back to me," she screamed. "Give it back to me right this minute."
  He removed a plastic identification folder from the purse and returned the purse. "Sybil I. Dorsett," he read aloud. "That your name?"
  "No," Peggy said.
  "What are you doing with it, huh?" he snapped. Peggy didn't answer. She certainly wasn't going to tell him about the other girl.
  "Give me the $20," he ordered. "Damn it. Give me the money, sign this paper, and we'll let you go."
  Peggy was raging mad. The next time the car owner asked for twenty dollars, pointing his finger at her, she bit his finger--hard. "Damn it," he sputtered, "you, Sybil Dorsett, give me the money and we'll let you go. Well?"
  "I'm not Sybil Dorsett," Peggy replied coolly.
  The man studied the picture in the plastic folder.
  "That's you, all right," he said with conviction. "And that's your name under the picture. You're Sybil I. Dorsett."
  "I'm not," Peggy protested.
 
  "Well, what's your name?"
  "I'm Peggy Lou Baldwin."
  "Alias," said the man in tan.
  "She said her father was Willard Dorsett," remarked the man in gray. "There's something rotten here."
  "There sure is," the man in tan agreed. Peggy tried to pull away, but she couldn't move. And she knew that she was being stopped as much from within as from without. In fact, it was because of what was happening within that she didn't move.
  She thought of not having been in command during the train ride to this horrid town, and she knew that she wasn't at the helm now, either. She knew that it was Sybil who had control. She could feel Sybil reaching into their handbag as the car's owner repeated, "It will cost me $20 to replace that window. You're going to pay or I'll call the police." Peggy could feel Sybil handing two crisp $10 bills to the hateful man.

  The man wrote something in a loose leaf notebook. "Okay," he said, "sign this."
  Peggy could hear Sybil saying no, in a firm voice.
  This time Peggy was proud of Sybil.
It isn't like her to stand up for us, Peggy thought, but this time she is.
  "If you don't sign this paper," the man muttered, "we won't let you go!"
  Peggy watched Sybil reading the paper but couldn't see what the paper said. Only one phrase seeped through. It was: "The owner of the vehicle."
  The owner of the vehicle? These words scared Peggy. They meant that this wasn't really her father's car. Not her father's car? Realizing this for the first time, Peggy again started to run away. But the owner of the car grabbed her, placed a ballpoint pen in her hand, and commanded, "Sign the paper." He then held the paper right up to her face, saying, "You broke the window in my car. You paid me for it. But not for the inconvenience--not for the time I'll waste having it repaired. You really ought to pay extra ..."
  "You put my name on that little card. You said I could go. And I'm going," Peggy announced firmly. "But I don't know why you want me to sign my name."
  "I thought you said it wasn't your name," the man
 
replied. "You're too much! Go!"
  Peggy walked back to the depot. As she rode the train home, she thought of how silly it had been for them to make all that fuss about a little broken glass.
  It was nearly dark when Peggy returned to the small room she shared with Sybil. Twilight peering into the room, so like the one they had occupied as undergraduates in college, cast a pale sheen here and there on the ceiling and on the upper surface of the dresser and chairs.
  Peggy kicked off her shoes and stretched out on the bed. Then she got up and moved swiftly to the portable phonograph. Should she play "Mockin'bird Hill," or "Galway
Bay"? Deciding on "Mockin'bird Hill," she sang along with it.
  Still singing, she went to the window and looked out. The trees in the dormitory courtyard glistened with the

snow that had just begun to fall. She stopped singing. She was afraid of snow, afraid of the cold.
  Suddenly she had an idea. This was the night of the pre-Christmas social in the rec room, and, tired of all the dreary things that had happened during the day, she decided to go to the party and forget. She would wear the apple green dress that she had bought in a Chinese store on upper Broadway. She had gone there to buy only a tiny ten-cent paper parasol, but the moment she had seen that dress, she knew she had to have it.
  As the record still played, Peggy took the dress off its hanger in what she humorously called "our closet." This dress is "jist" as pretty, she thought, as those she had seen in the windows of the fancy Madison Avenue shops. And her dress, which was all the rage this season, cost only $12. It would have been worth the price even if she had paid $30, $40,
$50, $80, $200, maybe even $300 for it. But Sybil had to go and spoil everything. Peggy liked Sybil best when Sybil minded her own business.
  As she slipped gracefully into the dress, which opened down the front, the pleasant feeling she had felt toward Sybil earlier in the day vanished. Sybil, she felt, stood between her and her desires, her needs, and the expression of her individuality. The dress had brought back all
 
her dormant complaints against Sybil, keeper of their body and head of their household.
  Sybil was a fact of Peggy's life, but sometimes Sybil could be an awful nuisance. When Sybil had found this beautiful dress in the closet, she had acted as if she had seen a ghost or something. How did it get into my closet? What is the sales slip doing in my purse?
  Perhaps what had hurt most was that she had found the dress at all. Peggy had hidden it on the top shelf of a closet that Sybil used as a catch-all for everything except dresses. Who would ever have expected Sybil to look there?
  Had Sybil been upset, Peggy wondered, about the money? Certainly $12 wasn't too much for the dress. Sybil had the money. But, Peggy supposed, Sybil had her own ideas and would go and use her money for

furniture, art supplies, and all those medicines--all the things Sybil called necessities.
  Sybil's always messing around with the things I buy, Peggy fretted. It was the same way with my blue suit and blue shoes.
I got them out twice one day, but both times Sybil put them away again. Yes, she certainly can be a nuisance.
  Peggy looked at herself in the mirror. The effect was beautiful, simply beautiful. Anybody would like such a dress. Maybe Sybil wasn't really upset because of the dress but because of Peggy. No, that's nonsense. The truth was--and Peggy had to face it--that Sybil didn't know of her existence. It wasn't very flattering, but that's the way it was.
  A little jewelry would add to the effect, Peggy thought as she continued to examine herself in the mirror. It would be such fun to wear it, but she knew that she couldn't. It was wrong for her to wear jewels. Hadn't they said so in church? Hadn't she been told that ever since she could remember? Still, she did like pretty things. She hesitated. There was a string of pearls belonging to Sybil's mother. No, she wouldn't wear them. She didn't like Sybil's mother, and that made it doubly wrong to wear those pearls.
  Peggy could not pull herself away from the mirror. Her square body gave her a chunky appearance
 
that she wasn't too crazy about, but she liked her Dutch haircut, her straight black hair, her bangs, her round face, her pug nose, her bright blue eyes and--yes, she had to admit it--her mischievous smile. Ofta mia, she hadn't thought of it before, but she did look like a pixie. Sybil, with her thin, lean body, her light brown hair worn loosely, her heart-shaped face, her gray eyes, and her serious expression, was altogether different. Couldn't the nice doctor see that? Couldn't the men in Elizabeth who looked at Sybil's picture and at Peggy see that? Why were people always mistaking her for Sybil?
  Suddenly Peggy moved swiftly from the mirror. The sight of her lips made her turn away. Full and big. The sort of lips Negroes have. She was afraid of her lips. She had begun to think of herself as a Negro. She was

afraid of Negroes, afraid of the way people treated them, afraid of the way people treated her. She reached for her purse and left the room.
  In the dormitory courtyard, with snow falling on her hatless head and trickling down her nose, Peggy raced ahead of her fear. As if to banish it, she found herself again humming "Mockin'bird Hill."
  The recreation room was already crowded when she arrived. Students were gathered in groups, talking about everything under the sun. There were card tables and a ping pong table. Sybil didn't play cards or ping pong, but Peggy did. Peggy was well coordinated and quick.
  Peggy looked at the men students. There wasn't one among them, she thought, who wasn't nicer than Stan. But was Sybil interested in them? She was not. Stan hadn't broken Sybil's heart; she simply didn't care that much. And Peggy's heart wasn't broken, either, not at all. Peggy wished that Sybil would find somebody else they could like.
  The long refreshment table, covered with a lovely white lace tablecloth and displaying two large copper samovars, one for coffee and the other for tea, reminded Peggy that she had had no food since her snack in Elizabeth. She knew she couldn't have the coffee or tea because her religion wouldn't let her, but the little sandwiches and dainty
 
cookies looked good. She had just begun to nibble on a sandwich when she heard a cultivated midwestern voice asking, "Have a good day, Sybil?"
  "Great," Peggy replied without hesitation as she looked up at Teddy Eleanor Reeves, a good-looking woman even though she was indifferent about how she dressed, wore no makeup, and had a diamond shaped body. Teddy, who occupied the room next to her own, always called her "Sybil." Long ago Peggy had agreed to answer to the name of Sybil when necessary. It hadn't been necessary with those sinister people in Elizabeth, but with Teddy, who had become a good friend of Sybil, it was different.
  "Where have you been all day? I was worried about you," Teddy continued. Teddy, all five-feet-ten of her,

with broad shoulders, wide hips, and very small bust, was always a dominating figure, forever playing mother. Peggy couldn't see how Sybil could stand her. Peggy knew that Teddy was on tenterhooks to have a blow-by-blow description of Sybil's day. Well, it hadn't been Sybil's day, and Peggy had no intention of telling about it.
  "Glad to see you, Dorsett," Laura Hotchkins said as she came up and joined them. "You said you weren't coming. I'm glad you were able to." Laura was another of Sybil's friends. Again Peggy kept her own counsel.
  Teddy, Laura, and several other girls had clustered around Dorsett, all talking about Professor Klinger. All at once
Dorsett took hold of a crayon pencil that was in her purse, pointed it against the wall and began, in an affected voice: "Now, ladies and gentlemen, you have to listen closely if you're going to listen at all. Art is in the great tradition of human experience, and unless you give it your undeevided attention, you are insulting the muse." The girls began to giggle. Peggy, making two large holes in a paper napkin, converted it into simulated eyeglasses, which she put on the edge of her nose. She squinted and said, "Sculpture is probably the oldest of the arts. As you know from other courses, its technical beginnings go back to the first prehistoric man who chipped an arrow head or carved a club or
 
spear. As you also know, the relative permanence of stone, baked clay, or metal is, of course, a major factor in our dependence upon sculpture and inscriptions upon stone or clay as conveyors of historical record.
  "In the long run, however, other kinds of written records finally undermined sculpture's supremacy and made painting of all kinds, at least in the West, the art having the widest use and popular appeal. And that is why I want you to concentrate on painting as if it is the most important thing in the world. Perhaps it is. But I mean the painting of Rubens, of Rembrandt, of the other masters. I don't mean the silly utterances of Picasso and other contemporaries. They're cheeldren prating in the cradle, babbling nothings that aren't so

sweet. What they call experimentation is an excuse for empt-EE-NESS.
  "Now, Miss Dorsett, you're a serious woman with great talent. Why must you paint in this seely tradition?"
  Laura Hotchkins's giggle turned into an unrestrained laugh. Teddy guffawed.
  Peggy went on, bringing the house down. What had started as a performance for a few had become a show for everybody. Her imitation of Professor Klinger became the high point of the evening. Amid applause, Peggy removed her simulated eyeglasses with great deliberateness, returned her pencil crayon to her purse, took several bows, and made a grand exit from the room.

  It was a different Peggy who saw Dr. Wilbur two days later on Christmas day--a Peggy silent about the trip to Elizabeth and her triumph at the college social, a Peggy who in a low whisper iterated and reiterated: "The people, the people, the people."
  "What people?" asked Dr. Wilbur, who was sitting beside Peggy on the couch.
  "People? Yes, there are people," Peggy replied ominously. "They're waitin' for me."
  "What are their names?"
  "The glass," said Peggy, ignoring the question. "I can see the glass. I'm goin' to break the glass--and get away. I'm goin' to get away from it! I don't want to stay. I won't. I
 
won't!"
  "Get away from what?" Dr. Wilbur asked.
  "The pain. It hurts," Peggy whispered. She began to sob.
  "What hurts?"
  "It hurts. It hurts. My head hurts. My throat hurts."
  The words of agony poured forth. Then came the angry accusation: "You don't want me to get away." Growing defiant, she warned: "I'm goin' to break the glass and get away even if you don't want me to."
  "Why don't you go through the door? Go on. Just open it."

  "I can't," Peggy screamed. She pulled herself up from the couch and began pacing like a trapped, hunted animal.
  "But you can," the doctor insisted. "It's right there. Go and open it!"
  "I want to get out! I want to get out!" Peggy continued with sustained terror.
  "All right. Just turn the knob and open the door!"
  "No, I'm goin' to stay right here by the white house with black shutters and the doors with steps leadin' to it and the garage." Suddenly calm, Peggy said, "My daddy's car is in the garage."
  "Where are you? In Willow Corners?" the doctor asked.
  "I won't tell! I won't tell," Peggy chanted.
  "Can you tell Dr. Wilbur?" "Yes."
  "Then will you tell Dr. Wilbur?" "Yes."
  "Then go ahead. Tell Dr. Wilbur!" "Dr. Wilbur went away," was Peggy's wi/l reply.
  "Dr. Wilbur is right here." "No, she went away and left us in Omaha," Peggy insisted. "You're not Dr. Wilbur. Don't you know you're not? I've got to find her." The calm evaporated. Hysteria returned. Peggy pleaded, "Let me out!"
  The plea seemed to have no relation to the particular room or the special moment. It was a plea rising from the past that for her was present, a past that
 
reached out to her, encircled her, and kept her captive.
  "Open the door," the doctor said firmly. "I can't get through the door. I'll never get through. Never."
  "Is the door locked?"
  "I can't get through." It was the whine of a hurt, lost child. "I've got to get out of here."
  "Out of where, Peggy?"
  "Out of wherever I am. I don't like the people, the places, or anything. I want to get out."
  "What people? What places?" "The people and the music." Peggy was breathless.

"The people and the music. The music goes round and round and round. You can see all the people. I don't like the people, the places, or anything. I want to get out. Oh, let me out! Please. Please!"
  "Just turn the knob and open the door." "No. I can't." Peggy's fury was suddenly directed at the doctor. "Why won't you understand?"
  "Why don't you try? You haven't even tried. Why don't you turn around and open it?" the doctor insisted.
  "It's got a door knob, and it won't turn. Can't you see that?"
  "Try it."
  "It's no use to try." There was momentary relaxation, but it was the relaxation of resignation, of doomed acceptance. "They won't let me do anything. They think I'm no good and that I'm funny and my hands are funny. Nobody likes me."
  "I like you, Peggy."
  "Oh, they won't let me do anything. It hurts. It hurts bad." Peggy was sobbing. "The people don't care."
  "Dr. Wilbur cares. She asks you what's on your mind."
  "Nobody cares," Peggy replied defiantly. "And the hands hurt."
  "Your hands?"
  "No, other hands. Hands comin' at you. Hands that hurt!"
  "Whose hands?"
  "I won't tell." Again there was that childlike chant. "I don't have to tell if I don't want to."
 
  "What else hurts?"
  "Music hurts." Peggy was speaking again in a low, breathy whisper. "The people and the music."
  "What music? Why?"
  "I won't tell."
  Gently, Dr. Wilbur put her arm around Peggy and helped her back to the couch.
  Moved, Peggy confided softly, "You see, nobody cares. And you can't talk to anybody. And you don't belong anywhere." There was a tranquil pause. Peggy

then said: "I can see the trees, the house, the school. I can see the garage. I want to get into the garage. Then it would be all right. Then it wouldn't hurt so much. Then there wouldn't be so much pain."
  "Why?"
  "It hurts because you're not good enough." "Why aren't you good enough? Tell Dr. Wilbur some more about how it hurts and what's the matter."
  "Nobody loves me. And I want somebody to care a little bit. And you can't love somebody when they don't care."
  "Go on. Tell Dr. Wilbur what the trouble is."
  "I want somebody to love, and I want somebody to love me. And nobody ever will. And that's why it hurts. Because it makes a difference. And when nobody cares, it makes you all mad inside and it makes you want to say things, tear up things, break things, get through the glass."
  Suddenly Peggy grew silent. Then Peggy disappeared. Seated where Peggy had been was Sybil.
  "I had another fugue?" Sybil asked as she quickly drew away from the doctor. She was frightened, anxious.
  The doctor nodded.
  "Well, it wasn't as bad as the last time," Sybil reassured herself as she looked around the room and saw nothing out of place, nothing broken.
  "You mentioned music to me once, Sybil," the doctor replied in an effort to discover what Sybil knew about what Peggy had said. "Why don't you tell me a little more about it?"
  "Well," Sybil replied with composure, "I took piano lessons, and Mrs. Moore, my piano teacher, used to say, "You
 
have all the native ability. You have a good ear, nice hands. Your fingering is good. But you must practice more. You can do all this without practicing. What would you do if you did practice?"' But I didn't practice. And
I didn't tell her that I didn't because mother was overcritical. Whenever I made a mistake while practicing, mother would holler, "That's not right. That's not right." I couldn't stand it, so I didn't practice when mother was around. But the minute she left

the house, I'd drop whatever I was doing and dash to the piano. I could always work things out at the piano. If I didn't have that, the tension would have gotten me long before it did. When I started teaching, the first thing I bought was a piano."
  "Umm," Dr. Wilbur replied. "Tell me, do you have any special feelings about glass?"
  "Glass," Sybil echoed thoughtfully. "Mother had some lovely crystal. So did my grandmother. Both grandmothers, in fact--Grandma Dorsett and Grandma Anderson. Oh, I remember something. When I was about six, we were visiting the Andersons in Elderville, Illinois.
We went there for three weeks every summer until Grandma Anderson died. Well, this time my cousin Lulu and I were drying the dishes. She hurled a lovely crystal pickle dish through the French doors. She was a real brat. And then she told my grandmother and my mother and everybody else that I did it, that I broke the crystal dish. It wasn't fair. But I didn't say anything, just took it. My mother let me have it, but good."
  "I see," said Dr. Wilbur. "Now tell me whether hands disturb you."
  "Hands? Well, not particularly. My own hands are small and thin. My mother didn't think they were very attractive. She often said so."
  "Did hands ever come at you? Someone else's hands?"
  "Hands coming? I don't know what you mean." It was apparent that Sybil's discomfort suddenly was greatly intensified.
  "I see," said the doctor. "Another question: does the sight of blood disturb you?"
  "Well, yes. But doesn't it bother everybody? Grandma Dorsett had cancer of the cervix and bled. I saw that. And when I started
 
to menstruate, I wondered about the blood like most girls. There's nothing very unusual about that."
  "But tell me, did you ever see other blood as a child? The blood of a playmate perhaps?"
  Sybil sat back and thought. "Well, let's see. Tommy

Ewald. His father had a barn and kept horses. Tommy was his mother's favorite child. He died in the hayloft. We were playing. It was an accident. A gun went off. That's all I remember. There could have been blood in the hayloft. I haven't thought about Tommy in many years."

  By February, 1955, the doctor was ready to tell Sybil about Peggy, who remembered what she had forgotten. There was no point in procrastinating any longer. But while the words were forming on the doctor's lips, Sybil's face went white, the pupils of her eyes became dilated even more than usual, and in a strained, unnatural voice she asked, "How do you know these things?" Wanting to tell her about her other self, the doctor could sense that she had become that self.
  "Hi," Peggy said.
  "Hi, dear," said the doctor.
  "I'm goin' out now," Peggy told the doctor. "Right through the door. A long time ago Dr. Wilbur said I could."
  And Peggy walked through the door that only minutes ago had been impenetrable, the tangible symbol of her captivity.
  Dr. Wilbur, feeling that the diagnosis of dual personality had been confirmed beyond a shadow of doubt, could not take her mind off this unusual case. Peggy and Sybil, although existing in the same body, had different memories, different moods, different attitudes, different experiences. The experiences that they shared were perceived differently. Their voices, their diction, and their vocabularies were different. They presented themselves in different ways. Even their ages were different. Sybil was thirty-one, but Peggy ... the doctor couldn't decide whether Peggy was a precocious child or an immature adult. Peggy was unself-conscious in a little-girl way, not easily embarrassed. Instead, she got mad. Instead of being like Sybil, circuitous, she
 
gave vent to undisguised terror. And unmistakably Peggy carried some terrible burden that Sybil refused to face.

  Dr. Wilbur's mind teemed with speculations, insistent but inconclusive. She had never treated a dual personality. She would have to treat the disturbance as she would any other case. First you get to the roots of the disturbance; then you proceed from there.
  The immediate problem was to tell Sybil about the diagnosis, a task more difficult than the doctor had first realized. When a situation arose with which Sybil was unable to cope, she seemed to let Peggy take over. To tell Sybil about Peggy would be to invite a dissociation that would bring Peggy back.
  The evasions were so effective that the problem remained unresolved until March, 1955. At that time, however, an event took place that, changing the diagnosis, made Dr. Wilbur glad that she had not yet told Sybil.

                                  
                  6
     Victoria Antoinette Scharleau

  March 16, 1955. Dr. Wilbur took a moment between appointments to replace her pussy willows with the new spring flowers, anemones and jonquils, that she had just bought. Then, wondering whether it was Sybil or Peggy who was waiting, she opened the door to the anteroom.
  The patient, sitting quietly, was absorbed in the pages of The New Yorker. When she saw the doctor, she got up at once, smiled, walked toward her, and said warmly, "Good morning, Dr. Wilbur."
  It isn't Peggy, the doctor thought. Peggy doesn't sit still. Peggy doesn't read. Peggy's voice doesn't have that

cultivated tone. It has to be Sybil. But never before has Sybil spoken to me before I have addressed her. Never has she smiled in this spontaneous way.
  "How are you today?" the doctor asked. "I'm fine," was the reply. "But Sybil isn't. She was so sick she couldn't come. So I
 
came instead."

  For an instant the doctor was stunned. But for an instant only. The strange juxtaposition of "she" and "I" only reaffirmed her already dawning suspicions. I'm surprised, Dr.
Wilbur reflected, but why should I be? There were more than two personalities in the Christine Beauchamp case, which Dr. Morton Prince treated and about which he wrote. But then, he too, had been surprised. In fact, he had been astonished when he had found more than one. I suppose this comes as a surprise to every doctor, Dr. Wilbur reflected.
  All this was running through Dr. Wilbur's mind at top speed while this new "I" was saying: "I must apologize for Sybil. She wanted to come, but couldn't get dressed, though she tried and tried. I watched her last night as she took out the navy blue skirt and the twin blue sweaters that she planned to wear here this morning. Last night she had every intention of coming, but this morning it was different. She sometimes suffers from a complete absence of feeling and a total inability to do anything. This morning, I'm afraid, was one of those times. But how gauche of me to start a conversation without introducing myself. I'm Vicky."
  "Won't you come in, Vicky?" the doctor asked.
  Vicky did not merely walk into the consulting room; she made an entrance, with finesse and elegance. While Sybil's movements were always constrained, hers were free and graceful.
  She was wearing a dress of many colors: rose, violet, and pale green. It had a double top and a slightly gathered skirt that fell just below the knees. Green shoes heightened the effect.
  "This is a lovely room," she remarked casually. "A study in green. The tone must be soothing to your patients."

  Then she walked to the couch and settled herself into a comfortable position. The doctor shut the door, joined her, lit a cigarette, and said: "Tell me, Vicky, how do you come to be here?"
  "It's very simple," Vicky replied. "Sybil was sick. I put on her dress--not the blue outfit I was telling you about. It wouldn't have been appropriate because I have a lunch date.
 
As I was saying, I put on her dress, got on the bus, and came over."
  "But how did you know where to come?" Vicky explained: "I know everything."
  "Everything?" the doctor echoed.
  "I know what everybody does."
  There was a pause. The doctor tapped her cigarette against the side of an ashtray.
  "You may think that is insufferable of me," Vicky went on. "I must admit it does sound presumptuous. But it won't seem so when you know the circumstances."
  The circumstances? Perhaps this meant that Vicky had a clue to the total situation in this case. But Vicky only said: "I certainly don't claim omniscience. But I watch everything everybody does. That's what I mean when I say I know everything. In this special sense I am omniscient."
  Did this mean, the doctor wondered, that Vicky could tell her everything about Sybil, Peggy, and herself? So far she had revealed very little.
  "Vicky," said the doctor, "I'd like to know more about you."
  "I'm a happy person," Vicky replied, "and happy people don't have big stories. But I'll be glad to tell you anything you want to know."
  "What I'm really trying to say," the doctor replied, "is that I should like to know how you happen to be."
  Vicky twinkled and said, "Oh, that's a philosophical question. One could write a tome on that." Then she became more serious and looked directly at the doctor. "But if you want to know where I come from, I'll be happy to tell you. I come from abroad. I come from a very large family. My mother and father, my brothers

and sisters--there are lots of them--all live in Paris. Mon Dieu, I haven't seen them in years. My full name is Victoria Antoinette Scharleau. Vicky for short. One becomes Americanized, you know. One can't go around being called Victoria Antoinette. Vicky is easier."
  After a pause, during which Dr. Wilbur suspended disbelief, she asked, "Don't your parents feel bad that you're not with them?"
  "Not at all, Doctor," Vicky replied
 
with assurance. "They know I'm here to help. After a while they will come for me and I'll go with them. Then we will all be together. They're not like some other parents. They do what they say they will do."
  "You're very fortunate," the doctor remarked. "Oh, I am," Vicky asserted. "It would be dreadful to have the wrong parents. Simply dreadful."
  "I understand," said the doctor. "My family will come eventually," said Vicky.
  "Yes, I understand," said the doctor. Vicky moved closer to Dr. Wilbur and confided with concern: "But, Doctor, I really came to talk about Sybil. It's simply appalling the way she worries all the time. She doesn't eat enough, doesn't allow herself to have enough fun, and generally takes life too seriously. A little less self-denial and a little more pleasure would go far to counteract Sybil's sickness." Vicky paused; then she added thoughtfully: "There's something else, Doctor. Something deep inside."
  "What do you think it is, Vicky?" "I can't really say. You see it started before I came."
  "When did you come?"
  "Sybil was just a little girl then." "I see." The doctor waited for a moment and then asked: "Did you know Mrs. Dorsett?"
  Vicky was suddenly aloof, guarded. "She was Sybil's mother," she explained. "I lived with the Dorsetts for many years. Yes, I knew Mrs. Dorsett."
  "Do you know Peggy?" asked the doctor. "Of course," Vicky replied.
  "Tell me about Peggy."
  "You want me to tell you about Peggy?" Vicky re-

peated. "You mean Peggy Lou? Would you also like to hear about Peggy Ann?"
  "Peggy who?" asked the doctor. "Stupid of me," Vicky apologized. "I had quite forgotten that Peggy Lou is the only one you've met. There are two Peggys."
  "Two Peggys?" Again the doctor wrestled with amazement. But why should a fourth personality surprise her? Once she had accepted the
 
premise of multiple selves, she realized there was no longer any reason for surprise.
  "Peggy Ann will be along one of these days," Vicky predicted. "You'll meet her. I'm sure you'll like her."
  "I'm sure I will."
  "They do things together, those two, Peggy Lou and Peggy Ann."
  "What makes them different?" "Well it seems to me that what arouses Peggy Lou's anger makes Peggy Ann afraid. But they're both fighters. When Peggy Lou decides she is going to do something, she goes at it in a pretty bull-headed sort of way. You see, Peggy Ann goes at things, too. But she's more tactful."
  "I see."
  "They both want to change things," Vicky concluded. "And what they want to change most of all is Sybil."
  "Very interesting," the doctor replied. "And now, Vicky, can you tell me: was Mrs. Dorsett Peggy Lou's mother?"
  "Well, of course," Vicky answered.
  "But," the doctor pointed out, "Peggy Lou claims that Sybil's mother is not her mother."
  "Oh, I know," Vicky replied airily. "You know how Peggy Lou is." Then with an amused smile Vicky added: "Mrs. Dorsett was Peggy Lou's mother, but Peggy Lou doesn't know it."
  "What about Peggy Ann?" asked the doctor. "Mrs. Dorsett was Peggy Ann's mother. But Peggy Ann doesn't know it, either."
  "I see," said the doctor. "It's all very curious."

  "Oh, it is," Vicky agreed. "But it's a state of mind. Maybe you'll be able to help them."
  There was a silence, which the doctor finally broke by asking, "Vicky, do Peggy Lou and you look alike?"
  Vicky's face darkened with disappointment. Then she asked: "Can't you tell?"
  "I can't tell," the doctor temporized, "because I've never seen you together."
  Vicky rose from the couch and walked to the desk
 
with swift, lithe movements. "You don't mind if I use this?" she asked when she had returned with a prescription pad.
  "Go right ahead."
  The doctor watched as Vicky settled herself on the couch, removed a pencil from her purse, and began sketching on the pad.
  "Here," Vicky said after a while, "are two heads. This is I with my blonde ringlets. I wish I had a crayon to draw the hair color. This is Peggy Lou. Her hair is black. The lack of crayon doesn't really matter. Peggy Lou doesn't like any fuss and bother. She wears her hair perfectly straight, just like this." Vicky then pointed to the pad on which she had drawn Peggy Lou's Dutch cut. "You see," Vicky remarked triumphantly, "how different we are."
  The doctor nodded and asked, "What about Peggy Ann?"
  "I won't bother drawing her," Vicky replied. "The sketch of Peggy Lou could pass for Peggy Ann. They're very much alike. You'll see."
  "You sketch very well," the doctor commented. "Do you also paint?"
  "Oh, yes," Vicky replied. "But
Sybil paints better than I. My forte is people. I like them and know how to get along with them. I'm not afraid of them because my mother and father were always very good to me. I like to talk to people and to listen to them. I especially enjoy people who talk music, art, and books. I suppose most of my friendships spring from this mutuality of interests. I love to read novels. By the way, have you read The Tortoise and the Hare?"

  "No, I haven't."
  "Oh, do," Vicky replied, assuming a light conversational tone. "I finished it last night. It's by Elizabeth Jenkins, and it's new. You might call it a muted novel about a curiously obtuse triangle. The femme fatale is a middle-aged spinster in thick, scratchy tweeds. She rides quietly through the story in a Rolls-Royce."
  "Well, I'm going to get it on your recommendation," said Dr. Wilbur.
  "I hope you enjoy it as much as I did. I really did. I suppose it's because I'm at
 
home with society people. I enjoy them in life and also in books. It's my background showing, I suspect. But I don't think I'm a snob. I just have refined tastes, coming as I do from my kind of family. And why not drink deeply of the better things in life?"
  Vicky became more serious and her tone more reflective as she remarked, "Life has so much pain that one needs a catharsis. I don't mean escape. You don't escape in books.
On the contrary, they help you to realize yourself more fully. Mon Dieu, I'm glad I have them. When I find myself in a situation in which I'd rather not be--because of the peculiar circumstances of my life--I have this outlet. You may think me tr`es sup@erieure but I'm not really, I just am what I am and live the way I like."
  Sighing, Vicky remarked: "You know, Doctor, I wish Sybil could enjoy life the way I do. I love to go to concerts and art galleries. So does she, but she doesn't go often enough. I'm going to the Metropolitan Museum when I leave here. I mentioned that I have a lunch date with a friend. It's Marian Ludlow. We're going to lunch at the Fountain Restaurant at the Met. Then we'll look at the exhibits. We won't have time for all of them. But we especially want to see the collection of prints and drawings called "Word Becomes Image." Marian breathes culture and is impeccably social. She was raised in an East Side town house. They had a large household staff, summered in Southhampton, that kind of thing."
  "Does Sybil know Marian Ludlow?" the doctor asked.

  "I'm afraid not," Vicky replied with faint condescension. "Sybil's not a femme du monde, a woman of esprit. She saw
Mrs. Ludlow in line in the Teachers College cafeteria and wondered what a fashionable woman like that was doing there. The cafeteria was crowded, and Sybil was sitting alone. Mrs. Ludlow asked if she might sit with her. You know Sybil is always afraid of not being polite enough. So she said, "Certainly." But the thought of having to cope with an attractive society woman terrified her. She blacked out. So I took over and had a conversation with the grande dame. That
 
was the beginning of our friendship. And we're very good friends."
  "Does Peggy Lou know Mrs. Ludlow?" "Oh, I don't think so, Dr. Wilbur. They're worlds apart, you know."
  "Vicky, you seem to do many things in which Sybil and Peggy play no part," the doctor observed.
  "That's perfectly true," Vicky was quick to say. "I have my own route. I'd be so bored if I had to follow theirs." She looked at the doctor with an expression that was part mischievous, part quizzical, and confided: "Doctor, Sybil would like to be I. But she doesn't know how."
  "Then Sybil knows about you?"
  "Of course not," Vicky replied. "She doesn't know about the Peggys. And she doesn't know about me. But that doesn't keep her from having an image of a person like me--an image that she would like to fulfill but that constantly eludes her."
  Dr. Wilbur hesitated for a moment, her mind racing as she assessed what she had heard. Sybil and Peggy Lou. Now Vicky and Peggy Ann. Four persons in one body. were there others as well? Believing that Vicky had the answers, the doctor decided to take the plunge: "Vicky, you've talked of the Peggys. Maybe you can tell me: are there any others?"
  "Oh, yes," was the authoritative reply, "we know there are many others. That's what I meant when I told you that I know everything about everybody."
  "Now, Vicky," the doctor urged, "I want all of you

to feel free to come during the appointment hour, no matter who is using the body."
  "Oh, yes, they'll come," Vicky promised. "And I'll come, too. I'm here to help you get to the bottom of what's troubling them."
  "I appreciate that, Vicky," Dr. Wilbur said. Then the doctor was struck by a novel idea: enlisting Vicky's help in the analysis. Vicky, who claimed to know everything about all the selves, could serve as the Greek chorus for all the selves, throwing light on events and relationships that the others might report sketchily or not at all.
 
  "And now," the doctor said as she looked steadily at Vicky, "I should like to ask your advice. I would like to tell Sybil about you and the others. What do you think?"
  "Well," Vicky cautioned thoughtfully, "you can tell her. But be careful. Don't say too much."
  In a confidential tone the doctor explained, "I think she ought to know. In fact, I don't see how the analysis can go anywhere if she doesn't."
  "Be careful," Vicky reiterated. "Although the rest of us know about Sybil, she knows nothing about any of us, never has."
  "I understand that, Vicky, but you see, I had planned to tell her about Peggy Lou when I thought she was a dual personality. But Sybil didn't give me a chance."
  "Of course not," Vicky explained. "Sybil's always been afraid to reveal her symptoms--afraid of a diagnosis."
  "Well," the doctor continued quietly, "I did tell Sybil that she is subject to fugue states during which she is unaware of what's happening."
  "I know," Vicky asserted, "but that's very different from telling her that she's not alone in her own body."
  "I think it will reassure Sybil to know that she is functioning even though she doesn't know it."
  "She, Doctor?" Vicky asked quizzically. "Isn't the pronoun we?"
  The doctor paused and made no direct answer. It was a thoughtful Vicky who broke the silence, saying,

"I suppose you can tell Sybil. But I repeat: is it she who is functioning?" Without waiting for the doctor to reply, Vicky asserted, "We're people, you know. People in our own right."
  The doctor lit a cigarette and listened thoughtfully as Vicky went on: "Still, if you want to tell her, go right ahead. But I would advise you to let her know that none of the others would do what she wouldn't like. Tell her that they often do things she can't do but that these are things that wouldn't make her angry if they were done by someone else."
  "What about Peggy Lou?" the doctor asked. "Doesn't she sometimes do things of which Sybil would disapprove?"
 
  "Well," Vicky explained,
"Peggy Lou does many things Sybil can't do, but Peggy wouldn't hurt anybody. Really, Doctor, she wouldn't." Vicky's tone became confidential: "You know, Peggy Lou went to Elizabeth and got herself into quite a mess there."
  "I didn't know."
  "Oh, Peggy Lou goes many places."
Vicky looked at her watch. "And talking of going places, I suppose I myself had better be going some place right now. To the Met to meet Marian."
  "Yes," the doctor agreed, "I'm afraid the hour is up."
  "Doctor, do you ever get to the Met?" Vicky asked as they walked to the door. "You'd enjoy it. Also the memorial show of paintings and sculpture in honor of Curt Valentin-- "honour" with a U, according to the gallery. It's at the Valentin Gallery, in case you get around to it. Well, I must be going. And please know that you can count on me whenever you need me."
  Just before Vicky left, she turned, looked at the doctor, and said: "It seems strange for me to be coming to a psychoanalyst. The others are neurotic, but I'm not. At least I don't think I am. In this chaotic age one never knows. But I do want to help you with Sybil and the others. After all, that's the only reason why I'm not in Paris with my family. I don't believe that either Sybil or Peggy Lou has gotten down to the nitty gritty of what's bothering them. Watching them flounder here, I

knew I had to step in. How could you get anywhere with them? Sybil lives in total ignorance of any of us, and Peggy Lou is too busy defending herself--and Sybil as well--to be objective. So you see I simply had to come and work with you. Together I think we can get to the bottom of this. So please count on me. I know everything about everybody."
  With that, Victoria Antoinette Scharleau, the woman of the world with the graceful movements, the mellifluous voice, and the faultless diction departed as she had come.
  Dr. Wilbur liked Vicky. She was very sophisticated but warm, friendly, and genuinely concerned about Sybil. That concern, she decided, would have to be explored.
 
  What, the doctor wondered, would Mademoiselle Scharleau have said if she had been asked how she had gotten into the Dorsett household or when her family was coming for her? As the doctor walked to her desk to write some notes about the Dorsett case, she asked herself, "How is Sybil to become one? Out of how many?"

  New York, Vicky thought as she walked out of the doctor's building, isn't like Paris or like any other city in which I've lived since leaving Willow Corners. On a gray day like this, this bustling, ever-changing city seems like a shadow of itself.
  She walked briskly because she was late for her appointment with Marian Ludlow at the Met and because she felt free at having left behind her--for the time being--the shadows of those others in whose lives her own was intertwined.
  She thought of Marian Ludlow. Tall, with a strikingly good figure, handsome rather than beautiful, Marian was a volatile person. She had bright brown hair, bright brown eyes, and three freckles across her nose. Those freckles were the blemish that rescued her friend from a physical perfection that she herself, with a capacity for idealization, was always too prone to bestow.

  Marian and she had shared a world of wonder since their accidental meeting in early November, 1954, in the Teachers College cafeteria. Since then, they had been to Carnegie Hall, where they heard the Philharmonic and the Boston Symphony, Walter Gieseking and Pierre Monteux. They had been to the United Nations Conference Building, where they had witnessed a stormy session of the Security Council.
  Nothing had been as exciting as the art exhibits. The two of them especially enjoyed those at the Brooklyn Museum, where they had been enchanted not only with the collection of American artists but also with the marvelous contemporary water-color gallery and with an entire floor devoted to a display of American furniture.
  Antique furniture for both Marian and Vicky was the past made tangible, a mirror of a departed way of life in which they both rejoiced. Heppelwhite tables, Chippendale chairs,
 
lowboys, and highboys filled their conversation. There had been fascination for them in the dissection of a fine point in a Virginia cupboard or in a tastefully scrolled scrap hinge in a Pennsylvania chest.
  Marian had exquisite taste, developed as the result of a wealth that she no longer had. She had been educated in exclusive private schools, had been graduated from Barnard in the 1930's, had gone to finishing school, and, chaperoned by a maiden aunt, had made a typical Henry James grand tour of Europe.
  Born to wealth, Marian had married into still more wealth. After her husband's death, Marian had used her fortune for her pleasure. Seeing it dwindle and discovering that, for the first time, she had to work for a living, she had come to Columbia to prepare herself for teaching by taking graduate courses in art education. That's how she happened to be in the cafeteria at Teachers College the afternoon they had first met.
  Suddenly realizing that she was within a block of the Met, Vicky abruptly emerged from her reverie, quickened her steps, and headed swiftly toward the Fountain
Restaurant.
  Standing at the doorway of this immense room de-

signed as a Roman atrium, with its rectangular pool in its center, arched glass ceiling, towering columns, and tables with simulated marble tops, Vicky was overwhelmed by the mass, of baroque art confronting her. Although she had been here many times, her reaction had always been the same.
  Seated at one of the tables to Vicky's right was Marian Ludlow.
  "I'm afraid I'm late," Vicky remarked as she approached her friend. "I must apologize. It was a business appointment. I just couldn't get away."
  "I've been enjoying my solitude," Marian replied. "I was thinking about what this room will be like when Carl Milles's fountains are installed in the pool."
  "That won't be until summer," Vicky said as she sat down. "I've read that there will be eight fountain figures. Five will represent the
 
arts."
  "Milles," Marian replied, "has always been at home in the classical world. We'll have to come back in the summer and see for ourselves."
  Vicky could feel Marian's eyes, languorous but with a tinge of sadness, resting softly on her. It was an exquisite feeling to be in this woman's presence, a feeling, too, of infinite satisfaction to know that it had been Marrin who had made the initial move toward friendship.
  It was the tinge of sadness in Marian's eyes that proved most compelling to Vicky, who, in spite of the fact that she herself was a happy person, had had long experience in responding to the sadness of another. Vicky's empathy had quickened their friendship.
  If Marian had a daughter, Vicky thought wi/lly, it should have been I. We would have put an end to the generation gap. Though Marian is old enough to be my mother, the years make no difference at all.
  "Let's go," Marian was saying. "They'll be out of everything if we don't."
  They walked through the immense room toward the food counter. "Cafeteria food on marble tables," Vicky remarked, as Marian, obviously concerned with the contours of her excellent figure, reached for a salad of

sliced pineapple and cottage cheese. "It gives a pedestrian flavor to a continental atmosphere." Vicky, slender beyond her desire because Sybil kept her that way, selected macaroni and cheese.
  Back at the table beside the rectangular pool, Vicky and Marian talked of silk-weaving in France, the subject of a term paper Marian was preparing. "You know so much about it," Marian said, "I'm certain you can give me invaluable advice." And so they talked of early inventories of the royal furniture repository of Louis XIV, of how the first known material to originate in France was a piece of velvet having the crown as an emblem, dating from the reign of either Henry IV or Louis XIII. "If you can establish which king it is," Vicky said, "you'll have a coup."
  The conversation turned to the pictorial and landscape patterns that had reemerged during the early eighteenth-century period as a result
 
of the rediscovery of Chinese motifs. "Did you know," Vicky asked, "that these artists were very much under the influence of Boucher, Pillement, and Watteau?"
  "And weren't those artists influenced by the Chinese motifs of Meissen porcelain?" Marian asked. "That was the period of Chinese influence, after all."
  "I give you an A," Vicky said with a smile.
  Marian finished her coffee, Vicky her hot chocolate. Marian lit a cigarette and remarked, "I'm glad you don't smoke. Don't ever start."
  "There's little fear of that," Vicky replied. "It's not one of my vices."
  "I haven't noticed any others," Marian teased.
  "You'll have to look harder," Vicky replied in the same spirit.
  "Well," said Marian, "we have our jewelry class at six. That gives us just time to see "Word Becomes Image.""
  The exhibit, which was in the Great Hall, was intriguing. There were interpretations by American and European artists from D@urer to Alexander Calder of scenes and characters in some of the world's best-known literary masterpieces-- Aesop's Fables, Dante's Inferno,

Faust, Don Quixote, Hamlet, and
King Lear, The Eclogues of Virgil, and the legends from Ovid's Metamorphoses. Among the biblical illustrations was an interpretation of the beasts with seven heads and ten horns from the Apocalypse engraved by Jean Duvet in the sixteenth century.
  Lingering over the Duvet work, Vicky remarked, "I used to paint beasts."
  "You've never mentioned it," Marian said. "No. It was back in Omaha some ten years ago when I used to illustrate our pastor's fiery sermons about the beasts rising from the sea."
  "I'm glad to hear you talk about your painting," Marian replied. "You've always been so reticent about it, Sybil."
  Sybil. The mention of that name didn't really disturb Vicky. That was the only name by which Marian and everyone else knew her--the name on identification cards and checks, in mail boxes,
 
telephone books, in registrars' offices. As a realist Vicky had always accepted these as facts of her unique existence.
  Victoria Scharleau couldn't disavow the name even though it actually belonged to "the other girl," as Peggy Lou called her. It was the name of the lean, frightened figure who was never seen at a time like this, among people, relaxed and happy. The real bearer of the name Sybil was the reserved, contracted being who walked alone and who, Vicky knew, was seeking a self that to her not only had come naturally but also was the substance of her very existence.
  So she was used to the idea of "Sybil." She was discomforted more by the fact that she knew that it was this other Sybil, more than she, who, along with some of the others--those whom Vicky had mentioned to Dr. Wilbur--had really painted the beasts. Vicky felt that even in casual conversation she had been wrong in claiming those paintings as her own.
  "I'm reticent about my paintings," Vicky said aloud, "because I know better painters than I."
  "Well," Marian replied, "that's always true. By that standard no artist would ever have any sense of according- complishment. But you're no slouch. After all, the head of the art department said that he hasn't had anyone in the department with as much talent as you have for better than twenty years."
  "Marian, let's change the subject,"
Vicky replied uneasily.
  It was impossible for Vicky to accept the professor's evaluation of the work of the total Sybil Dorsett as her own. Sybil painted, Vicky painted, and so did most of the other selves of Sybil. Of them all, Sybil, in Vicky's opinion, was the most gifted painter. This ability had manifested itself in childhood. When Sybil's art teachers were impressed by her work, her parents had been confounded until her father had taken her work to be evaluated by an art critic in St. Paul, Minnesota. Only then was there parental acceptance of Sybil's ability. In high school and college Sybil had commanded good sums for her paintings, which were exhibited in prestigious places.
  None of the paintings, of course, was Sybil's alone. Most were collaborative efforts of several of the selves. Collaboration had proved constructive at times, destructive at others.
 
But despite diversity of styles and tell-tale lapses in the paintings, Sybil--the total Sybil Dorsett with Sybil herself as the dominant painter--had always had the potentiality of being an important artist. And although that potentiality was never realized became of the psychological problems that deflected Sybil from that course, there had been realization enough for the Columbia art professor to regard Sybil-- as Marian had reported--as the most gifted student who had been in the department in the course of over twenty years.
  As these thoughts moved through Vicky's mind, she realized how impossible it was to explain her feelings of reticence about talking about her--their-- paintings to Marian Ludlow or anyone else who thought that there was just one artist answering to the name of Sybil Dorsett.
  Vicky and Marian had an early dinner on the roof restaurant at Butler Hall, an apartment hotel near the Columbia campus. Marian ordered Salisbury steak, and

Vicky had spaghetti and meat balls. Then they went to the six o'clock jewelry class.
  The jewelry class was a place to which Vicky went because Sybil couldn't. Taking place in a basement aglow with blow torches used by Vulcanian figures wearing goggles and black aprons, the class stirred in Sybil memories of Willow Corners. And the memories reawakened old, unresolved fears.
  Vicky, stepping into the breach when Sybil blacked out or, as tonight, attending the class on her own because she was in the ascendancy, not only was making an A in the subject but also was helping Marian, who had little previous experience, to score an A.
  Vicky always enjoyed this class. Some nights she sketched designs for jewelry or executed the designs she had already sketched. This night she was making a link necklace of copper and was helping Marian with a silver pendant.
  After class Vicky and Marian went back to Vicky's dormitory room, in which lights from other rooms, turning on and off, were reflected in the window facing the courtyard. Vicky turned on the radio, and they listened to the news and to "The Great Gildersleeve." As the evening came to a close and Marian was getting ready to leave,
 
Vicky very cautiously began putting away the jewelry supplies they had brought back with them. She was determined to leave the room exactly as it had been before they started working.
  "Why are you so fussy?" Marian asked. "You room alone. These things won't bother anybody."
  "Yes, I know," Vicky replied with a wry smile. Then, trying to disguise her feelings, she chatted amiably with Marian as they walked to the door.
  After Marian was gone, Vicky thought of the time that Sybil had brought a sample sketch to Dr. Wilbur's office and had told the doctor that she was afraid to use the sketch because she didn't know if it had come out of a book or just where it came from. It had been Vicky's sketch. Thinking how disturbed Sybil had been then and how disturbed she would also be if she found any jewelry supplies in the room, Vicky wanted to pro-

tect her from another terrifying discovery. Vicky thought: "I live alone yet not alone."
  And Vicky felt that she was moving toward the shadows of something from which she had been free almost all day.

  Sybil was in her dormitory room, studying for an exam in Professor Roma Gans's education course. There was a knock on the door. She thought that it was Teddy Reeves. Standing at the door, however, was not Teddy but a tall, good-looking woman with bright brown hair and bright brown eyes, a woman who was probably in her early forties. Sybil didn't know the woman.
  "I can't stay," the woman said, "I'm late for a hairdresser's appointment. Since I knew I'd be passing here, I thought I'd stop and give you this. You've done so much for me, Sybil. I want you to have it."
  The woman handed Sybil a lovely handcrafted silver pendant with a beautiful blue stone, lapis lazuli. I don't know why she's giving me this, Sybil thought. "Thank you," she replied faintly as she hesitatingly accepted the pendant.
  "See you soon," the woman said and was gone. See you soon? Done so much for her? It's so unreal. Have I spoken to her before? I've seen her around, but we have never exchanged a single word.
 
Yet she acted as if we were friends. Friends? The confusion raged.
  Return to the desk. Try to study.
  Sybil found herself clinging to realities. Even while she did so, however, she realized that the time-honored conundrum, the terrible thing, had overtaken her again. It had been the reality of her life to have something happen that had no beginning and to experience the painfully familiar "This is where I came in" feeling, with its tantalizing withholding of everything that had gone before.
  Study for the exam. As Sybil sat at her desk, however, the pages of the education text blurred with her panic, and she asked herself fervently: Will there never be an end that also has a beginning? Will there never

be continuity bridging the awful void between now and some other time, a time in the future, a time in the past?

  Victoria Antoinette Scharleau, who knew everything, watched Marian Ludlow give Sybil the silver pendant.
                                  
                  7
                 Why

  Dr. Wilbur adjusted her desk lamp beam a fraction. Before her was almost the whole of the relatively sparse literature about multiple personality. In a pensive mood after Vicky had left her office, she had made a trip to the Academy of Medicine Library, where a librarian had assembled for her almost everything there was on this definitely established but rare illness. Morton Prince's The Dissociation of a Personality, first published in 1905, which is well known to students of abnormal psychology, was the only one of the books she had read before. She had tried to get hold of a copy of Dr. Corbey H. Thigpen's and Dr. Hervey Cleckley's 1954 article: "A Case of Multiple Personality" in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, about which some of her colleagues were talking. But this article, about a girl whose pseudonym was Eve, had not been available at the time.
  Now, however, as she read into the night, the names Mary Reynolds, Mamie, Felida X,
 
Louis Vive, Ansel Bourne,
Miss Smith, Mrs. Smead, Silas
Prong, Doris Fisher, and Christine Beauchamp became known to the doctor. These were the people with multiple personalities whom medical history had recorded: seven

women and three men. [Others have been recorded since.] The newly reported case of Eve made it eight women, and Eve was the only multiple personality known to be alive.
  Mary Reynolds, the doctor learned, was the first recorded multiple personality. Her case had been reported in 1811 by Dr. L. Mitchell, of the University of Pennsylvania.
  Mamie's case had been described in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal of May 15, 1890. Following that had come reports of Felida X by M. Azam; of
Louis Vive, studied by several French observers; of Ansel Bourne, observed by Dr. Richard Hodgson and by Professor William James; of Miss Smith, by M. Flournoy; and of Mrs. Smead, by Professor Hyslop. In 1920, as part of a volume entitled The Ungeared Mind, by Robert
Howland Chase, there had been the recapitulation of "The Strange Case of Silas Prong," a ease of multiple personality previously described by Professor William James.
  The complexity of these cases, the doctor realized even after a cursory glance, varied markedly. In cases like those of Miss Smith and Mrs. Smead, which involved dual rather than multiple personalities, the secondary personality, while possessing the faculties of a full human being, exhibited very little independence in voluntarily moving about in a social world--working, acting, and playing. Clearly this characteristic was not true of Sybil. Her alternating personalities were obviously autonomous.
  Cases like those of Felida X, Christine Beauchamp, and Doris Fisher were more interesting, for they were examples of independent personalities in the same body, leading their own lives as any other mortal. Miss Beauchamp had three selves; Doris Fisher, five. It was to this type, the doctor speculated, that Sybil belonged. But Sybil's case--again it was only
 
speculation--seemed more complex than that either of Miss Beauchamp or of Doris Fisher.
  Well, if it is, it is, the doctor thought, hypothesizing

that in Sybil's case there were probably multiple roots. What those roots were, however, was at this stage unknown.
  For a time Dr. Wilbur pondered. Then, beginning to read again, she searched for when, in these other cases, the first dissociation had taken place. She had no idea of when Sybil had dissociated for the first time and whether all the personalities had emerged then or whether some had come later. When had Christine Beauchamp first dissociated? According to Prince, it had taken place when Christine was eighteen and as the result of a nervous shock.
  Dr. Wilbur didn't actually know, but she surmised that Sybil's first dissociation had taken place during her childhood. The childishness of Peggy seemed to be a clue. And probably there had been a shock for Sybil, too. But what? So little had been revealed that it was all but impossible even to speculate about causes. But, hypothesizing, the doctor thought that possibly there had been multiple roots, or shocks, leading to multiple selves, personifying reactions to those shocks. Many other selves could thus be translated into multiple childhood traumas, multiple roots sprouting into this complex condition.
  The Dorsett case was taking on the aspect of an adventure, a whodunit of the unconscious, and Dr. Wilbur became even more excited when she realized that Sybil was the first multiple personality to be psychoanalyzed. This meant that not only would they be breaking new ground, but also that the doctor, through psychoanalysis, would be able to bring a much greater psychological sophistication to an understanding of Sybil than had been available hitherto. Dr. Wilbur's pulse quickened at the challenge and at its possible implications not only for Sybil but for the largely unchartered field of multiple personality.
  The analysis, Dr. Wilbur decided, would have to be an unorthodox one. She smiled as she thought; an unorthodox analysis by a maverick psychiatrist. She did consider herself a maverick and knew that it was this characteristic that would stand
 
her in good stead in

dealing with this extraordinary case. She knew that she would have to utilize the spontaneous reactions of all the selves not only in uncovering the origin of the illness, but also in treating it. She knew that it would be necessary to treat each of the selves as a person in her own right and to winnow away the reserve of Sybil, the waking self. Otherwise the total Sybil Dorsett would never get well. The doctor knew, too, that she would have to make tremendous sacrifices of time and modify her usual consulting-room Freudian techniques to the harnessing of every shred of spontaneity that would help her break through to the truth that lay concealed behind these selves.
  The pivotal question was: why had Sybil become a multiple personality? Is there a physical predisposition toward the development of a multiple personality? Do genetic factors play a part? No one knew. The doctor believed, however, that Sybil's condition stemmed from some childhood trauma, though at this stage she couldn't be certain. To date analysis had revealed certain pervading fears--of getting close to people, of music, of hands --that seemed connected with a trauma. Telltale, too, were the seething rage, repressed in Sybil but bursting forth unbridled in Peggy Lou, and the denial of mother in both Peggy Lou and Vicky. The feeling of entrapment strongly suggested trauma.
  Many characteristics were common to several of the cases. The waking self, corresponding to the Sybil who had presented herself in Omaha and New York, typically seemed reserved and overnice. The doctor hypothesized that perhaps it was the very repression in this kind of temperament that made it necessary to relegate the emotions that had been repressed to another personality. The books talked of the secondary selves as depleting the waking self of emotions, attitudes, modes of behavior, and acquisitions.
  But depletion was the effect, not the cause, of the condition. What in Sybil's case had caused it? What was the original trauma?

  In the morning Dr. Wilbur approached the Dorsett
 
appointment hour, as she now always did, wondering "who" would be there. It was Vicky. That was a good start, for Vicky claimed to know everything about the case.
  Hunting for the original trauma, the doctor asked Vicky, on this her second appearance in the office, just two days after the first, whether she knew why Peggy Lou was afraid of music, as had become evident in a recent session, and why music deeply disturbed her.
  "Music hurts," Vicky replied, elevating her eyebrows and looking at the doctor through the thin wreaths of smoke that came from the doctor's cigarette. "It hurts way inside because it is beautiful, and it makes both Sybil and Peggy Lou sad. They're sad because they're alone and nobody cares. When they hear music, they feel more alone than ever."
  Could this, the doctor thought, relate to the original trauma? Possibly it involved the lack of caring, perhaps the lack of nurturing. When she asked why something beautiful should hurt, Vicky replied cryptically: "It's like love."
  Then, looking steadily at Vicky, the doctor asked, "Was there something about love that hurt?"
  "There was," Vicky replied straightforwardly yet cautiously.
  When the doctor asked how precisely love had hurt, Vicky became even more cautious. "Doctor," she said, "Sybil doesn't want to love anybody. It's because she's afraid of getting close to people. You've seen how she's been here. It's all part of the same mosaic--the fear of hands coming at her, the fear of people, the fear of music, the fear of love. All have hurt her. All have made her afraid. All have made her sad and alone."
  The doctor, very much aware that Vicky was describing the very symptoms, with the addition of love, that she herself had pondered the night before, wished that this co-analysand of hers would get down to causes. "Vicky," she asked in an oblique attempt to steer her in that direction, "do you share any of these fears?"
  "Certainly not," Vicky replied.

  "Why is Sybil afraid when you're not?" the doctor persisted.
 
  "That is an essential difference between Sybil and me. I can do what I want to do because I'm not afraid."
  "But why aren't you?"
  "I have no reason to be, and that's why I'm not." That was as far as Vicky would commit herself. "Poor Sybil," she sighed, changing the thrust of the conversation, "what a trial it has been. She's all choked up. She has an almost constant pain in her head and her throat. She can't cry. And she won't. Everyone was against her when she cried."
  "Who is everyone?" the doctor asked hopefully.
  "Oh, I'd rather not say," Vicky replied with a cautious smile. "After all, I was not a member of the family. I only lived with them."
  Victoria Antoinette Scharleau closed the door that had swung at least partly ajar. Yet there had been a ray of light. The lack of caring, perhaps the lack of nurturing that the doctor had begun to suspect, had assumed greater probability with Vicky's placing the blame for Sybil's inability to cry squarely within the Dorsett family.
  Things happened so fast. As Dr.
Wilbur pondered this last thought, all at once, noiselessly andwitha transition so slight as to be almost imperceptible, the assurance of Victoria Antoinette Scharleau slipped. The aplomb that was characteristic of her disappeared. The eyes that had been serene dilated with the fears that had been recounted. Vicky, who was not a member of the Dorsett family, had returned the body to Sybil, who was.
  Startled at finding herself on the couch, sitting close to the doctor, Sybil moved abruptly away. "What happened?" she asked. "I don't remember coming here today. Another fugue?"
  Dr. Wilbur nodded. This, she decided, was the moment to spell out what these fugues really were. The analysis would proceed more rapidly, she believed, if Sybil knew about the other selves. Then the doctor could confront her with what the other personalities

had said and bring her closer to the memories from which she seemed barred.
  "Yes," the doctor told Sybil. "You had another fugue. But it's more complicated than that."
 
  "I'm afraid."
  "Of course you are, sweetie," the doctor replied consolingly. "Now tell me, you've never said this to me, but I think you're aware that time goes by without your knowing that it has." Sybil was rigid. "Are you?" When Sybil didn't answer, the doctor persisted: "You know that you have lost time here?"
  After a long pause Sybil replied in subdued tones, "I promised myself I would tell you, but I haven't dared."
  Then the doctor asked: "What do you think you do in the time you lose?"
  "Do?" Sybil replied. The doctor could see that it was an echo more than a concept. "I don't do anything."
  "You go right on saying or doing something, even though you're not aware of saying or doing it." The doctor was unrelenting. "It's like walking in your sleep."
  "What do I do?"
  "Did anyone ever tell you?"
  "Well, yes." Sybil lowered her eyes. "All my life I've been told that I had done certain things that I knew I hadn't. I let it go. What else could I do?"
  "Who are some of the people who told you?" "Almost everybody all the time."
  "Who?"
  "Well, my mother always said I was a bad girl. I never knew what I had done that was bad. She would shake me. I'd ask what I had done. She'd holler, "You know perfectly well what you did, young lady!" But I didn't know. I don't know now."
  "Try not to be too worried," the doctor said gently. "Other people have had it. We can take care of it. It's treatable." Dr. Wilbur could see that this statement had made an enormous impression on Sybil. She seemed more relaxed.
  "This condition," the doctor went on to explain, "is more complicated than the fugue states we've already

discussed. In a simple fugue there's just a loss of consciousness, but your fugues are not blank."
  "I've always called them my blank spells," Sybil said. "To myself, that is, never
 
to anyone else."
  "While you yourself lose consciousness," the doctor continued, "another person takes over for you."
  "Another person?" Sybil asked, stunned. The question was again mere echo.
  "Yes," the doctor replied. She started to explain, but Sybil inter- rupted.
  "Then I'm like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?"
  Dr. Wilbur slapped her hand in her fist. "That's not a true story," she said. "It's pure fiction. You're not at all like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Stevenson wasn't a psychoanalyst. He created those two characters out of his literary imagination. As a writer he was concerned only with spinning a good yarn."
  "May I go now? We're running over," Sybil suddenly said, the pressure on her almost unendurable.
  But Dr. Wilbur pressed on relentlessly. She knew that having committed herself, she had to go all the way. "You're too intelligent to subscribe to the popular misconception that has evolved from fiction," she said. "The facts are quite different. I've been reading about other people who have this condition. They don't have a good side and a bad side. They're not torn by the conflict between good and evil.
  "Not a great deal is known about this condition. But we do know that the different selves of any one person are likely to share the same ethical code, the same basic moral structure."
  "We're running over," Sybil insisted. "I have no right to extra time."
  "That's what you always do, Sybil," Dr. Wilbur replied firmly. "Declare yourself unworthy. That's one of the reasons you need other personalities."
  "Personalities?" Sybil echoed fearfully. "Did you say "personalities"? Plural?"
  "Sybil," the doctor said gently, "this is nothing to be afraid of. There's a personality who calls herself Peggy Lou. She's self-assertive. There's Peggy Ann, who also
 
is a fighter, but she is more  tactful than Peggy Lou. The other calls  herself Vicky. She's assured, at  ease, responsible, a very delightful  person."
  Sybil rose to go.
  "There's nothing to be afraid of," the doctor  repeated.
  But Sybil's pleading "Let me go, please  let me go" showed that she had been profoundly  shaken. Thinking it unwise to let her  leave alone, the doctor offered to walk out with  her.
  "You have another patient," Sybil insisted.  "I'll be all right." Walking out the door  through which only an hour before a radiant  Vicky had entered, Sybil was pale as a  cod.
  Later, in the gathering dark of her silent  office, Dr. Wilbur speculated about the  Dorsett case. Sybil had remained herself  throughout the interview. Now that she knew about the other  personalities, the first analysis in history  of a multiple personality was about to begin in  earnest. She turned again to the volumes  about multiple personality that clut-  tered her desk, and she also took copies of  Freud and Charcot from her shelves, combing the  familiar references to hysteria.
  Even though multiple personality was a  bizarre and abnormal phenomenon, it was,  Dr. Wilbur was certain, not a psychosis but a  hysterical condition. This growing realization renewed  her confidence in being able to handle the case; for although  she had never treated a multiple personality,  she had not only treated but had had many successes  in treating hysterics. Her experience with hysterics  had, in fact, begun so early in her career that the  Omaha internist who had sent Sybil  Dorsett to her in the first place had done so because  of her success in treating patients with hysterical  symptoms.
  Multiple personality, it had become  evident to Dr. Wilbur, belongs to the class of  patients known as psychoneurotics. The  specific neurosis is grande  hyst@erie. The kind of grande  hyst@erie from which Sybil Dorsett suffered,  not only with multiple personalities but with a

variety of psychosomatic illnesses  and disturbances in the five senses, was as grave as  it was rare.
  Dr. Wilbur had seen schizophrenics--  psychotics--who had not been as ill as Sybil.  One might say that they were running a psychotic  temperature of 99 degrees, whereas Sybil  has been running a psychoneurotic  temperature of 105 degrees, thought Dr.  Wilbur. Though a psychosis is a more severe  illness, the point is: How ill is the patient?  It is not: How serious is the patient's  illness?
  There is no reason to be discouraged, Dr.  Wilbur assured herself. Maybe she was being  brash in thinking that Sybil Dorsett would get  well. But it was an extremely complicated  case, and it would take brashness to stick with it and  see it through.
  The phone rang. It was after ten. Probably  a patient in a crisis, calling for help.  Please, not a suicide tonight, she thought. When the  day was done, she needed an interval to cleanse  psychoses and psychoneuroses out of her system,  to stop living other people's lives. She  wanted more time for her husband, for  professional meetings, to visit with relatives  and friends, to read and think, to have her hair done and go  shopping. So often these commonplace activities  had to be thrown aside because of a patient's sudden,  urgent need.
  She picked up the phone. It was Teddy  Reeves. "Dr. Wilbur," Teddy  reported, "Sybil Dorsett fell apart.
She really blew. I don't know what to do for  her."
  "I'll come right over," Dr. Wilbur  volunteered. As she placed the phone back in  its cradle, she wasn't really surprised at  what Teddy Reeves had told her. She  suspected that what Teddy had meant by "she  really blew" was that Peggy Lou had taken over.

  When Sybil finally admitted to the doctor that  she had lost time, it had been an admission also  to herself. Never before, despite all the years of  gyrating from now to some other time, with minutes,  days, weeks, years unaccounted for, had she ever  formulated the idea of "lost time." Instead she had  used the circumlocution: "blank spells."
  However, the shiver that went through her  body when the doctor told her, "While you yourself  lose consciousness, another personality takes  over for you," hadn't been fear. It was  recognition. That sentence explained the things, good  and bad, that people had said she had done, but which she  hadn't, the strangers who said that they knew her.  Embarrassed that the doctor would find out about all  the terrible things, the evil things about which perhaps the    doctor knew already but wasn't telling, she had  fled from the office, haunted by self-  accusation.
  Whittier Hall at first brought surcease. The  meeting in the dormitory elevator with Judy and    Marlene, the twins she was tutoring, became a  new affront, a new accusation. Inseparable,  complete as an entity, one, they had spent a  lifetime together, whereas she had not even spent all  her time with herself!
  She fumbled for her key, but with her unsteady hand  she could not insert the key in the lock. Not trusting  herself to negotiate the room alone she tapped  feebly at the door of Teddy Reeves's  room.
  Teddy put Sybil to bed and, standing  by in terror and compassion, watched as  Sybil, getting in and out of bed, also went in and out  of a series of what appeared to be disparate  was moods. One moment she was a ranting child,  walking on the furniture, leaving her fingerprints  on the ceiling. The next moment she was a  self-possessed and knowing woman, talking of herself  in the third person and saying, "I'm glad  Sybil knows. Yes, indeed, it will be better for  all of us this way." Then Sybil became the  quaking person, the one who had tapped at  Teddy's door. She was lying inert on the bed when  the doctor arrived.
  Dr. Wilbur could see that Sybil was  suffering, and she tried to reassure Sybil  by explaining that having other selves was nothing to be  afraid of because it was just a form of what  psychiatrists call "acting out": lots of people  act out what troubles them.
  It didn't work. Indeed, when, far from being  reassured, Sybil protested, "I've never  heard of one person who does that," the doctor  began to question whether,

even after all the delays, she had been  too precipitous in the way she had sprung on  Sybil the knowledge of the other selves.
  "I'll give you a seconal," the doctor  reassured her, "and you'll be fine in the morning."  The doctor had discovered that barbiturate  sedatives relieved Sybil's anxiety for  forty-eight hours.
  Morning came. Sybil awakened, freed of  anxiety by the seconal the doctor had given her  the night before. The multiple selves seemed like  a nightmare that had receded.
  It was well past midnight when the doctor  left Whittier Hall. Although by no means  certain what the alternating personalities  actually represented, she hypothesized that the  waking Sybil more or less corresponded to the  conscious mind and that the alternating selves belonged  to the unconscious. Borrowing an image from  anatomy and biology, she saw the alternating  personalities as lacunae--the very small  cavities in bone that are filled with bone cells  --in the unconscious of Sybil. Sometimes  quiescent, these lacunae, with proper stimulation,  emerged and lived. They functioned within Sybil but  also in the outside world, where they seemed to act out the  particular problem they were defending.
  Defenses in the unconscious, the doctor  thought as she paid the taxi driver. Now  what I have to do is to become acquainted  with each of the personalities, no matter how many  there are, and to determine with what conflict each of  them deals. This will take me to the roots of the  trauma that made necessary the dissociation. This way I  can get to the reality--an intolerable reality, I  suspect--against which the selves have become a  defensive maneuver.
  The analysis, the doctor realized, will, of  course, have to include all the personalities, and  each of them will have to be analyzed both as an  autonomous human being and as part of the total  Sybil Dorsett.
  What was of more immediate importance was to get closer  to the waking Sybil. That was the only way to

get around the anxiety and defensiveness behind which the  other selves lay in ambush.
  But how does one get closer to this remote and  timid Sybil Dorsett?

  "Sybil," Dr. Wilbur asked one morning  in April, 1955, when Sybil had brought some  of her water colors to the office, "how would you like
  
to drive up with me to Connecticut some Sunday  during the dogwood season? The countryside is  lovely then, and you can sketch the flowering  trees and shrubs."
  Dammit, the doctor thought, as Sybil  replied diffidently, "Oh, you have more  important things to do than to spend a Sunday with  me," I must make her understand that I regard her  as an extraordinarily gifted woman, that I  would enjoy being with her even if she weren't my  patient. Is there no way of making her realize  that even though she is extremely handicapped by her  illness, I don't think less of her? Will she  never understand that in spite of the fact that she  undervalues herself to a marked degree, I do not  undervalue her?
  Indeed, it was only after much argument that Dr.  Wilbur was able to persuade Sybil to agree to the  trip--the trip that could, Dr. Wilbur was  sure, make Sybil gain confidence and thaw.
  As Dr. Wilbur drove up to Whittier
Hall at 7:00 A.m. on a sunny
Sunday in early May, 1955, she saw that  Sybil was waiting with Teddy Reeves. Teddy,  who had always manifested a proprietary interest  in Sybil, had become even more possessive after  Sybil had taken her inffconfidence about the  multiple selves. Not knowing about them  that night in March when she called Dr.  Wilbur, Teddy now not only was able  to recognize Vicky and Peggy Lou but also had  set about building a relationship with them. Standing with  Sybil in front of Whittier Hall, Teddy  noted that the top of the doctor's convertible was down,  and she fussed about whether Sybil had a scarf  to protect her against the elements. When Sybil  said that she had, Teddy cautioned that even so it was  too cool to drive with the top of the car down. And  although both Sybil and the doctor as-

sured her that they would be all right, she remained  unconvinced. But Teddy's greatest concerns were  whether during the trip Peggy Lou was going  to remain quiet and through how much of the outing Sybil  would be Sybil.
  For her part, Sybil seemed very much herself as she  waved goodbye to Teddy and stepped into the doctor's  convertible. In her navy blue suit and red hat  she looked attractive and more at ease than the  doctor had ever seen her.
  
  The way that Sybil had concealed her pleasure  in the trip until after they had left Teddy did  not escape the doctor, who thought it  both sensitive and thoughtful of Sybil to be aware  of Teddy's envy and to guard against it.
  Wanting the occasion to be purely social,  Dr. Wilbur confined the conversation to the here and now,  to the towns and houses they passed, to the geography  and history of the land, and to the scenery. They skirted  the small shore cities, turned off at  Southport, and drove directly to the Sound.  "I've always wanted to draw and paint boats,"  Sybil remarked as she looked at the boats in  the Sound for the first time, "but I've always felt that  I couldn't get the shapes right."
  "Try," said the doctor as she stopped the car.  Seated in the parked car, Sybil made some  sketches of sail boats anchored at the marina.
  "I like the sketches," the doctor said.  Sybil seemed pleased.
  Leaving the Sound, Dr. Wilbur drove in a  leisurely way back and forth on various  highways and on old country roads with little  traffic. To Sybil, who had never been in this part  of the country before, she pointed out that some of the houses  they passed were prerevolutionary, while some of the  others, although modern, had either original  prerevolutionary windows or  replicas of such windows. Sybil remarked:
"My father's a builder-contractor. He's very  much interested in architecture, and he developed  my interest." The father had scarcely been mentioned  in the analysis, and Dr. Wilbur was glad  to hear about him.

  The conversation turned to the beautiful plantings of  dogwood, lilac, and flowering crab. Sybil  asked to stop so that she could do a pencil sketch of a  hill studded with flowering crab and dogwood.
  Sybil had insisted upon providing lunch, which the  doctor and she ate at a small camping ground  near Kent, Connecticut. At the time Dr.  Wilbur thought that Sybil had hoped to make the  lunch her contribution to the outing, but she later  learned that the picnic lunch was a precaution against  having to go into a restaurant. In fact,  Sybil's fear of restaurants was so intense that  being in one had often led to "lost time."
  Nor was it until later that the doctor learned  why, when agreeing to the trip, Sybil had insisted
  
upon returning to New York by four o'clock at the  latest, preferably by three. "I have some work  to do," Sybil had explained. The real  reason, as the doctor later learned, was that  Sybil had been afraid that, by staying out beyond  three or four o'clock, she would show the signs of  emotional disturbance, fatigue, and fright that often  manifested themselves at the end of the day. She had  been afraid that she would dissociate. And she  hadn't wanted to risk having the doctor meet the  other personalities outside the office.
  And so, promptly at 3:00 P.m. Dr.  Wilbur's convertible was once again at Whittier  Hall.

  At the time neither Dr. Wilbur nor Sybil  knew that they had not been alone on that trip  to Connecticut. Peggy Lou, who was also  present, was delighted that Sybil had taken her  somewhere at last. Vicky, another unseen  passenger in the doctor's car, couldn't wait  to tell Marian Ludlow about the old  prerevolutionary houses.
  In that car, too, were passengers whom neither the  doctor nor Sybil had ever met. Marcia  Lynn Dorsett, pert and assertive, with a  shield-shaped face, gray eyes, and  brown hair, had watched every step of the  trip.
  As the car swung in front of Whittier  Hall and Dr. Wilbur said goodbye to Sybil,  Marcia Lynn turned to Vanessa Gail, her  close friend, and said in an English

accent: "She cares about us." Vanessa, who was a  tall, slender girl with a willowy figure, dark  chestnut-red hair, light brown eyes, and an  expressive oval face, communicated to Mary  that single, simple sentence: "She cares about us."  Mary, a maternal little-old-lady type,  plump, thoughtful, and contemplative, repeated with a  slight smile, as if it were a question: "She cares  about us?" Then Marcia Lynn, Vanessa Gail,  and Mary put into execution an internal  grapevine through which the message rang loud and    clear: This Dr. Wilbur cares about us.  After that Marcia Lynn, Vanessa Gail,  Mary, and everybody else held a conclave and  decided that "We'll go and see her."

               Part II 125-127
                Becoming

            Willow Corners

  The trip to Connecticut produced a change,  not only in the other personalities but also in  Sybil herself. Less guarded, less constrained  during the summer of 1955 than during the first  seven months of the analysis, Sybil began  to talk of her early environment. There were no  sudden revelations about the root causes of the  multiplicity, but out of the portrait of the town and the  milieu in which Sybil--presumably born one  --had become many, Dr. Wilbur was able  to acquire insights that continued to a later understanding  of causes. Thus it was that, increasingly, Dr.  Wilbur led Sybil--and Vicky as well--  into a minute exploration of Willow Corners,  Wisconsin, where Sybil, who was born on  January 20, 1923, had spent the first  eighteen years of her life.

  Willow Corners stood in the flat  terrain of southwestern
Wisconsin, close to the Minnesota line. The  surrounding countryside was flat, and the hard blue  sky seemed so low as to be within hand's grasp. The  local accent was barbed with a nasal twang, and the  men and women, riding on their open wagons to town  from the outlying farms during Sybil's early  years, were a constant testament to the town's reliance  on the land.
  The town itself was dotted with tall maple and elm  trees, but despite its name it was without willows.  The houses, most of which had been built by the men  who worked for Willard Dorsett, were chiefly  white frame

dwellings. The unpaved streets, dusty on dry  days, were mud-filled bogs on rainy days.
  Outwardly, there was nothing remarkable about  Willow Corners. Founded in 1869, it was not a  small town; it was a tiny town, in which the  monotonous news of its one thousand persons,  living in an area of two square miles, was  recorded in the Corners Courier, the town's
  
weekly newspaper, whose typical headlines  were: SMALL TWISTER DEMOLISHES
JONES OUTHOUSE; MOTHERS CLUB
PICNIC AT HIGH SCHOOL WEDNESDAY.  Originally a frontier town, Willow  Corners had been developed at the coming of the  railroad. During Sybil's time the town was  chiefly a wheat-producing farming community. Main  Street, the hub of the town, had its general  store, hardware store, small hotel,  barbershop, drugstore, bank, and post office.  Particular to Willow Corners were a gun shop  dating back to the town's frontier days and two  grain elevators, which were central to its  economic life. The stores were open on  Wednesday and Saturday nights, at which times  parents and their children made a festive ritual of  shopping together. It was the occasion, too, for the  exchange of news and gossip.
  The town had two policemen: one worked days,  and one worked nights. There were one lawyer, one  dentist, and one doctor. An ambulance always  stood ready to take the sick to the already world-famous  Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota,  eighty miles away.
  A slice of mid-America, the town was  Republican in domestic politics,  isolationist in international sympathies,  and stratified in class structure, which included  at one end of the spectrum a moneyed elite and  at the other a working class. Mistaking money for  virtue, the townsfolk tended to venerate the rich  however their wealth was acquired and however they behaved  --despite the best efforts of the good ladies of the  Willow Corners Reading Club, the Willow  Music Club, and the Choral Society of  Willow County to bring culture to the town.
  Before Sybil's birth and until she was six  years old,

the town's wealthiest man was her father. That stature  was lost in the Depression, in which he met with  serious reverses. From 1929, when Sybil was  six, until 1941, when, at eighteen, she  left town to go to college, the wealthiest persons  were German and Scandinavian farmers, the  Stickneys, who owned the local bank, and a  Mrs. Vale, an uncouth and vulgar woman  who, through marriages to five successive  husbands, had acquired property in town and a
  
silver mine in Colorado.
  Willow Corners, as any sociologist could  predict, had churches of many faiths.
The fundamentalist groups ranged from the  Seventh-Day Baptists, who had founded the  town's first church, to the Seventh-Day  Adventists, the Church of Saint John  Baptist de La Salle, and the Church of the  Assembly of God. The Methodists,  Congregationalists, and Lutherans all looked  askance at one another and at the Roman  Catholics, whom they regarded as the incarnation of  evil.
  Bigotry was rampant, and the town, although    self-righteous in its utterances, was often cruel in  its behavior. There were jeers for the mentally retarded  ice man and snickers for the telephone operator  who had a nervous tic. Prejudice against  Jews, of whom there were a few in Willow  Corners, and Negroes, of whom there were none, was  intense.
  In the course of events, bigotry and  cruelty were overlooked, and the town, proceeding  unthinkingly, abounded in an easy, unreasoned  optimism. That optimism was expressed in such  shibboleths as "If at first you don't succeed,  try, try again" and in copy-book  maxims such as "Today's leaves of  hope are tomorrow's blossoms," which was embossed in  an inscription in the combined  auditorium-gymnasium used by both elementary  and high schools. That tomorrow's blossoms were withering  on today's leaves of narrowness simply did not  occur to the virtuous citizens of Willow  Corners.
  On Vine Street, kitty-corner to the  schools, stood the Dorsett home, which had already  appeared in the analysis: the white house with  black shutters. One could

regard black and white as the extremes of  life, or as life and death, but no such  symbolism was intended by Willard Dorsett, the  builder of the house. Dorsett had had only  utility in mind in providing for spacious  lawns, a basement above ground, a garage, and a  small adjoining building that served as his carpentry  shop and office. Large maple trees shaded the  front of the house. In the rear was a cement walk  leading to an alley, which in turn led to the backs
  
of the stores on Main Street. The Dorsetts'  kitchen steps led to the cement walk.
  Nor could one make too much of the  fact that the Dorsetts' next-door neighbor  was a recluse, the woman across the street a  dwarf, and the man down the street his  thirteen-year-old daughter's rapist who, after the  event, went right on living in the same house with  her as though nothing had happened. It was all part  of the curious deformity and lewdness, resulting in  assorted illegitimate children, that ran like a  subterranean current through this town, outwardly so  average, so normal, so puritanical.
  The Dorsett household had its own  unmistakable peculiarities--perhaps invisible at  first glimpse, often minimized, but pervasive.  When questioned about the Dorsett family, Mrs.  Moore, Sybil's piano teacher, reported that  Sybil was moody and that both mother and daughter had  emotional problems. A distant cousin of  Willard Dorsett characterized the father and daughter as  "quiet" and the mother as "lively, witty, with a lot  of get-up-and-go," but also as "nervous." This same  observer talked of the excessive closeness between  mother and daughter, who were always seen together. A  favorite teacher recalled that "Sybil's mother  always had Sybil by the arm."
  Jessie Flood, who had been a  live-in maid in the Dorsett home for six  years, said only, "They're the most wonderful people  in the world. Mrs. Dorsett was very good to me and my  family. She gave us everything--all kinds of  things. There never were kinder people than the  Dorsetts."
  James Flood, Jessie's father, who worked  for Willard

Dorsett in the carpentry business, remarked that  "Dorsett was the best boss in the world."
  Willard Dorsett, born in Willow
Corners in 1883 and descended from the original  settlers, as were most of the townsfolk, brought the  former Henrietta Anderson home as his wife in  1910.
  The Dorsetts and Andersons were alike in  lineage and tradition. On her paternal side  Hattie was the great granddaughter of Charles, an  English clergyman, who with his brother Carl, a  schoolmaster, emigrated to Virginia from  Devon, England, under a grant from Lord
  
Baltimore. On the maternal side Hattie  was even closer to England. Aileen, her mother, was the  daughter of English-born parents who  had left their native Southampton to move  to Pennsylvania. Aubrey Dorsett,
Willard's father, was the grandson of an  Englishman who came to Pennsylvania from  Cornwall, and Mary Dorsett, Willard's  mother, who was born in Canada, was descended from  an English family that, before settling in  Canada, had fled to Holland to escape  religious persecution.
  Willard and Hattie met on a blind date  while he was visiting in Elderville,  Illinois, the town of which Winston Anderson,  Hattie's father, was a founding father and first mayor.  Winston Anderson came to Elderville after  fighting in the cavalry of the Union forces in the  Civil War. He had joined up at the age of  seventeen by pretending to be eighteen. In  Elderville in later years he ran a music  store, headed the choir of the Methodist church, and  again became mayor.
  The flamboyant and volatile Hattie  embarrassed Willard Dorsett on their very first  date. They were strolling along Elderville's  Main Street when Hattie suddenly  came to a dead halt and made an  impromptu speech on behalf of her father, who was  running for reelection as mayor. Willard,  dismayed, stood passively on the sidelines.
  But while other men whom Hattie's good  looks, wit, and vivacity had won had broken  off with her because of her sharp tongue and her patent  eccentricities, Willard did not. He was  willing to "put up with her," as he

phrased it, because he thought her intellectual,  "refined," and a talented pianist. Since he  himself sang tenor in the church choir, he  pictured Hattie Anderson as his future  accompanist. In the spirit of the easy nostrums and  homespun panaceas of Willow Corners, he  believed that, although Hattie's behavior was often  eccentric, she would change as she got older.  When they married, she was twenty-seven, and what  he meant by "getting older" was somewhat  obscure. At any rate, he was in love with  Hattie Anderson, and after a number of weekend  dates in Elderville he asked her to marry
  
him.
  Hattie wasn't in love with Willard and said  so. Her blind date with him had been a  calculated act of defiance against the jeweler  to whom she had been engaged, but who had reneged  on his promise to give up alcohol.  Moreover, Hattie claimed that all men were  alike, not to be trusted (a sentiment Peggy Lou  had echoed in Dr. Wilbur's consulting room),  with "only one thing on their minds."
  Still, the thought of living in Wisconsin appealed  to Hattie, who had never been out of her native  Illinois. Going to live in another state was the  reason she gave for going, in 1910, to live in  Willow Corners as Mrs. Willard
Dorsett.
  In time Hattie grew to think a great deal of  Willard, even to care about him. He was good to her,  and she tried to reciprocate. She cooked what  he liked, fussed over recipes for good pies and  cakes, and always had his meals on time--dinner  precisely at twelve noon and supper at  6:00 P.m. sharp. Although she didn't  especially enjoy housework, she became a  frantic and fanatic housekeeper. In the early  days of marriage, too, Hattie and Willard  had long, pleasant musical evenings.
She was indeed the accompanist he had  envisioned.
  During the first thirteen years of the Dorsetts'  marriage Hattie had four miscarriages, no  children. Both Willard and Hattie began to think that  they never would have children. Neither was sufficiently  aware, however, to question whether the miscarriages had  any psychological significance. Yet  psychological compo-

nents seemed likely in the light of Hattie's  ambivalence about having a baby. She enjoyed  taking care of other people's babies and on at least  one occasion joked with the mother of a newborn child about  "stealing the baby." But expressing herself as  urgently wanting a child of her own at one minute,  Hattie would express opposite sentiments the  next minute. The actual prospect of having  to care for the child often made her antagonistic  to motherhood.
  Later, Dr. Wilbur speculated that the  powerful surges of conflicting emotions upset  Hattie's hormonal system and became a
  
psychosomatic component of the miscarriages. In  any case, when Sybil was conceived, Willard was  afraid that this baby, too, might not  achieve life. He therefore exerted over  Hattie a dominance he had never shown before,  forbidding her to appear in public during the  pregnancy. Thus secrecy and concealment  surrounded Sybil even in the womb.
  At birth Sybil weighed five pounds, one  and one-fourth ounces. As if ashamed that she was so  tiny, Willard took great pains to have the one and a  quarter ounces included on the birth  announcements. Willard took it upon himself to name  the baby, and Hattie, who did not like the name of  Sybil Isabel, decided to use that name only  when absolutely necessary. At other times Hattie  was determined to call her daughter Peggy  Louisiana, which later was often abbreviated  to Peggy Lou, Peggy Ann, or just Peggy.
  But it was more than Sybil's name that disturbed  Hattie in the first months of the infant's life.  The old ambivalence about being a mother reasserted  itself. Thus Hattie, seeing her daughter for the first  time, remarked darkly: "She's so fragile,  I'm afraid she'll break."
  In fact, it was Hattie herself who "broke."  Severe depression overtook her after  giving birth and lasted for the first four  months of Sybil's life. In this period  Hattie's only contact with the baby was  to breast-feed her. Otherwise, the care of the infant  fell to a nurse, to Willard, and, chiefly,  to Grandma Dorsett.
  When Hattie was well enough to be up and about,

she had a head-on collision with Willard about  nursing the child when there was company in the house. Even  though Hattie wanted to take Sybil into the  bedroom and close the door, Willard issued the  stern injunction: "No. Everybody will know what  you're doing."
  Hattie pointed out that other women--the women in  the back pew at church, the farm women who came  to town on their lumber wagons and often lunched with the  Dorsetts--nursed their babies not only when  other people were around but also in other people's presence--which  Hattie was not proposing to do. But Willard  remained obdurate, pointing out that Hattie was not  a "farm woman."
  Hattie acquiesced but resented her
  
acquiescence. For her part, Sybil, unfed,  cried. In turn, Hattie blamed the baby for the  crying, which made Hattie nervous, and  it was the nervousness this crying produced in  Hattie, more than an awareness of any adverse  effect that the lack of feeding might have on the  baby, more even than resentment at being throttled  by Willard, that made her scream, "I could just go  through the ceiling!" This was one of her favorite  expressions of her chronic frustration.
  The depression that followed Sybil's birth  intensified the volatility and anxiety that had  always been characteristic of Hattie Dorsett. As  time went on, Hattie became less and less  concerned with pleasing Willard. "I don't care.  It's a free country," she would sputter when he  complained about an omission in her hitherto  painstaking care of him. No longer did she have the  patience to sit still long enough to accompany him at the  piano. Indeed, no longer could she sit still under  any circumstances for more than a few minutes  without getting up to straighten the curtain or  to flick off a little dust from the furniture. She  would even act like this in other people's houses. Although  she knew how to sew, her hand wasn't steady enough for  her to thread a needle. Willard sewed all of  Sybil's baby clothes. Restless,  frenetic, Hattie played with words as  she played with curtains and dust. She tossed off  rhymes and fell into the habit of repeating the ends  of people's sentences. If

someone said, "I've got such a headache,"  Hattie would repeat, "Such a headache."

  By the age of eight, Sybil had come often  to sit on the back-porch steps or on the trunk  in the attic or on the box in the front hall  and, leaning her head on her knees, to wonder why  in the world she felt ... not able to find the right word,  she would settle for a "lack of something." But why in  the world, she wondered, should something be lacking when she  lived in one of the best houses in Willow  Corners and had better clothes and more toys than  any other child in town? She particularly enjoyed  her dolls, her crayons and paints, and her little  iron and ironing board.
  The more urgently she tried to define the lack,  the more elusive it became. All she knew was that  some indefinable omission made her feel, as her
  
mother would put it, "sad, down, and blue." What  was most disturbing to Sybil was her feeling that she  had no reason to be unhappy and that,  by being so, she was somehow betraying her parents.  To assuage her feelings of guilt she prayed for  forgiveness on three counts: for not being more grateful  for all she had; for not being happy, as her mother thought  she should be; and for what her mother termed "not being like  other youngsters."
  Disconsolate, tortured, Sybil would  sometimes hasten from the porch steps, the attic, or  the front hall to the upper floor of the house, where  Grandma Dorsett lived.
  Her grandmother's place in Sybil's life was  pivotal; it was, after all, her grandmother and not  her mother who cared for Sybil as an infant. Then,  too, while her mother was volatile and  ambivalent, her grandmother was balanced and constant.  And in the sanctuary of Grandma's home were many  mansions--the recollections of small experiences  that loomed large in the retrospect of Dr.  Wilbur's consulting room.
  Grandma would take Sybil in her lap.  Sitting there, the child would draw pictures on the  drawing paper that her grandmother always had ready for  her. Proud of what Sybil drew, her grandmother  would hang the drawings on the wall beside the  oil paintings she herself

had made many years before. Grandma, who had many  jars of dried prunes, apricots, and figs,  would take Sybil to the kitchen cupboard and let  Sybil choose whatever she liked. Grandma let  her open the drawers and fold everything she wanted  to fold. One day Sybil found a baby  picture of herself in one of the drawers. When she  saw that picture, stored so carefully, she  realized freshly that Grandma really liked her.  There was even greater proof when Grandma came  to Sybil's defense when Hattie accused the child  of being bad. "Now, Hattie," her grandmother would  say, "she's just a child." And Sybil remembered,  too, the times when she felt sick. When, finally,  Grandma came down to stay with her, Sybil, who  had been unable to take food, suddenly could eat.  Besides, when Grandma laughed, it was nice; it  didn't hurt at all.
  The visits upstairs with Grandma were never  long, however. Her mother allowed only a set time  and, as the visit proceeded, Sybil could feel that
  
time was running out. There was so great a need and so little  opportunity for its fulfillment that when her mother  mounted the stairs to reclaim Sybil,  the child could feel time literally slipping away.
  When Grandpa came home, however, it was  Sybil herself who brought the visit to a close.  She didn't like her grandfather, a large, burly  man, given to rough play. The sound of his wooden  leg on the stairs, which heralded his approach,  made her tell her grandmother: "I have to go now."  In reply Grandma would smile understandingly.
  When Sybil was four years old, her grandmother  had a stroke and was sometimes not herself. She would wander  around Willow Corners not knowing her way.  Sybil made it her job to find her grandmother and  bring her home, protecting Grandma until she  recovered as for so long Grandma had protected  her.
  For five years after her recovery, Grandma  Dorsett continued to protect Sybil. But, when  Sybil was nine, Grandma was afflicted by a new  illness--cancer of the cervix--which worried Sybil  and made her afraid.

                                  
                  9
           Yesterday Was Never

  There was a coffin in the big house in Willow  Corners, and they were going to take it away. It was  almost one o'clock, and through the window of the white kitchen  with its speckled linoleum Sybil could see the  men from the funeral home bringing in the folding  chairs for the service.
  "Go to your room," her mother told her. "Mama  will come and get you when we're ready and you can come  down for the funeral."
  Her mother then gave her a lollipop to lick  while she waited. She lay on the bed, toying  with the lollipop. She could hear voices  downstairs, distant voices that, since she had  been removed from them, had nothing to do with her. Then  for a while she heard nothing.
  Suddenly her father was standing over her. "Come  on," he said, "the service is all over. You can  come with us to the cemetery."
  They had forgotten her. They had promised she  could come down for the service, but they hadn't kept
  
their promise. She was nine years old. The  service had taken place in her own house. But  they left her upstairs, with a fool  lollipop as if she were a baby. She could not,  would not forgive her parents.
  On went her coat, on went her tam and  plaid scarf. Down the stairs she went, past  all those people, silent and motionless, on to the  sidewalk. "You're to go in this car, Sybil," the  minister said.
  Inside the car were her uncle Roger and his  wife,

another Hattie, whom she didn't like. Her  uncle and her father looked so much alike that the  minister had put her with the "wrong" daddy. She was  upset.
  She was also disturbed because this was her grandmother,  yet she was the one her father and mother, so busy with all  those other people, overlooked or pushed around. It was  unfair. The tears, ice cold, stayed within her.  She never cried aloud.
  The car had stopped. They were walking toward the  Dorsett family plot on a road in a  cemetery in the village of her grandfather's birth.  He was the first white male to be born in the  county.
  Walking here, Sybil thought about  death. Death, she had been told in church, was a  beginning. She couldn't quite see that. Her grandmother had  told her that someday Jesus would come to raise from the  graves those who loved Him. Then, Grandma had  said, she and Sybil would be together forever in the earth  made new.
  Uncle Roger and Aunt Hattie led
Sybil to where the family was standing: mother and daddy,  Aunt Clara and her husband, Anita and Ella  (two years old), and, of course, grandpa.  Together they stood some ten feet from her grandmother's  grave, silent beneath an overcast Wisconsin  sky. It was a cold, windy April day.
  The gray metal casket, with banks of  flowers over it, had been placed near the grave.  The minister was standing beside it. "And I saw a new  heaven," he began, "and a new earth ... and I  John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem,  coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a  bride adorned for her husband. ... and there shall be  no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall  there be any more pain. ... And he that sat upon the
  
throne said, Behold, I make all things new."
  Sybil saw not the metal casket, the  flowers, or the people; what she saw was  Mary, her Canadian grandmother married to a  native of Willow Corners, living in .his  town. An outsider to the people in his church, Mary had  been forced to do his bidding. She loved to read, but he  had stopped her with the injunction: "Any-

thing but truth is false." Religious writings  alone were true, he thought.
  Sybil could see her grandmother in her long  skirts, her hightop shoes, her white hair,  her small blue eyes, her warm, sweet  smile.
  What Sybil heard were not the words of the minister  but her grandmother's gentle voice saying, "It's  all right, Hattie," when her mother had said,  "Sybil, you mustn't bounce on grandma's bed."
  Her grandmother's big bed was high and soft.  Sybil bounced on it all she liked. Her  grandmother would scoop her up, rock her and say,  "Sybil, Sybil, Sybil." When she was with  her grandmother, there was no hollering. Home, just  downstairs, seemed miles and miles away--a  memory to forget.
  Sybil would show her grandmother her  drawings, and her grandmother would say,  "Wonderful," and hang them on the wall. Her  grandmother had a big box by the window, and she had a  lot of magazines and papers in it, with all the  children's pages, which she saved just for Sybil. And  she let Sybil draw pictures, and Sybil  stayed inside all the lines, coloring neatly.  Her grandmother liked what Sybil did.
  Her grandmother let Sybil set the table and  didn't say Sybil did it all wrong. If  Sybil did do something wrong, her grandmother  didn't get mad at her. Sybil could tell  her lots of things, pleading, "You won't tell  mother, will you?" Her grandmother would say, "I never  tell Hattie anything that you tell me." And she  didn't.
  There were flowers in the woods where Sybil had  walked with her grandmother to the river, but now the minister  was saying, "For so much as it has pleased  Almighty God to permit our sister, Mary  Dorsett, to fall asleep, we do tenderly  commit her body to the ground ..."
  Asleep. Her grandmother was asleep. They would
  
not again walk together to the river. Only the flowers  would be there--the flowers all alone, without her  grandmother and also without Sybil.
  "... Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust  to dust, in

the hope of her joyful resurrection through Jesus  Christ, Our Lord."
  The wind howled over Sybil's father and her  uncle Roger in silent grief, over her aunt  Clara, wringing her hands and moaning hysterically,  over these grown children bereft of a mother. It howled  over her grandfather's soft moan. Sybil alone,  her throat constricting, her chest growing heavy, and  her fingers becoming prickly and numb, was  dry-eyed.
  The wind was cold. The feeling was icy blue with  brown specks. Anything that is cold is not  love. Love is warm. Love is Grandma.
Love is being committed to the ground.
  The glimmer of the metal casket in the streak of  sun momentarily superseded the gray of the day. The  casket was in the hands of the men who had come to do a  terrible thing. They had lifted the casket and were  beginning to lower it. Inch by inch, moment by moment, they  were pushing her grandmother down deep, more deep into the  earth. They were burying love.
  Everyone was weeping now, but still  Sybil's eyes were dry, dry as the barren world that  stretched before her, a world in which nobody said,  "Sybil, Sybil, Sybil," a world without  anyone to listen when she tried to talk, a world without  love.
  Propelled by powerful feelings, galvanized  into locomotion, Sybil found herself moving forward.  It was one or two slow steps at first, but then there  were more steps, faster steps toward the banks of  flowers over the lowered casket. She was at the  grave, her body poised to jump into it, to join  her grandmother forever.
  Then there was that hand grabbing her arm with a swift,  sharp movement. The restraining hand was pulling her,  dragging her away from the grave, away from her  grandmother.
  The wind howled. The sky grew dark. There was  nothing.

  That hand with its overwhelming force was still pulling  her. Its pressure was deeply embedded in her
  
flesh. Her arm ached with the soreness engendered by the  sharp, jerky movement.
  Sybil turned to see who it was who  had so forcibly removed her from her grandmother. Was it  her uncle Roger, her father? They were not there.
  There was no grave. There were no banks of  flowers. No wind. No sky. Daddy and Mother,  Uncle Roger and Aunt Hattie, Aunt
Clara and the rich old man she married, the  minister, all those other people were not here.
  Instead of a grave there was a desk. The banks  of flowers were blackboards. Instead of a sky there  was a ceiling. Instead of a minister there was a teacher.
  The teacher, who talked quickly in short nervous  sentences, was tall and thin. She wasn't  Sybil's teacher. Miss Thurston, her teacher,  spoke slowly and deliberately and was stout and of  medium height. The third-grade teacher was  Miss Thurston. This should be Miss Thurston,  but it was Miss Henderson. Sybil knew
Miss Henderson as the fifth-grade teacher.  What has happened? Sybil wondered. It was  no dream. The room, a regular classroom in  the school she had attended since kindergarten,  seemed normal between its four walls. Only it  wasn't her classroom. The windows of the room  faced the east, not the west, as they did in  the third-grade classroom. She  knew all the rooms in the school, and this, she  knew, was the fifth-grade classroom.
  Somehow she had gotten into this fifth-grade  classroom. She had done something wrong, a  terrible thing. She had to get out, had to get back  to the third grade where she belonged, where Miss  Thurston had probably marked her absent. She  had to apologize to Miss Henderson for being here,  had to explain to Miss Thurston for not being there.  But what was the explanation?
  Then she began to notice the other children. There was  Betsy Bush across the aisle, Henry Von  Hoffman in front of her, Stanley, and Stuart  and Jim and Carolyn Schultz and all the rest.  Well, she thought, the whole third grade is in  here.
  Most of these children had started with her in

kindergarten, and she knew them well. They were the  same children, yet they were not the same as when she had  seen them last. They were dressed differently from when  they were in the third grade. They looked bigger
  
than they had been before she left for her grandmother's  funeral. How could that be? How could all these children  get bigger in a moment?
  Betsy Bush, assured and confident as always,  was waving her hand as usual to answer the teacher's  question. She acted as if she belonged here. All the  other children did, too. None of them seemed to think  there was anything wrong about being here. Why should  Betsy be answering questions when Miss Henderson  was not her teacher?
  Sybil's eyes turned next to the page of the  notebook open on her desk. She thought of  concentrating on the page and forgetting all the  nonsense. But it could not be done, for the page made  no sense to her, and in her present state of mind  the notebook only induced more terror. There were  lots of notes, but she hadn't taken them. There  was completed homework, which she hadn't done, but she  noted that the homework was consistently graded A.  However urgently she forced herself to minimize the  meaning of all this, the more terrified she became.
  She tried hard to shut her eyes to this teacher who  wasn't hers, to this classroom with the windows on the  wrong side, these children, blown up beyond their normal  size and dressed in strange clothes they hadn't  worn before. It didn't work.
  Sybil began to feel a strange  compulsion to examine herself. were her  clothes "different"? Was she bigger, too? Her  eye descended to her own dress. It was of yellow  voile with green and purple embroidery, as  totally unfamiliar as those of the other children. She  hadn't owned it, didn't remember her mother's  buying it for her, hadn't worn it before, and hadn't  put it on this morning. She was wearing a dress that  didn't belong to her in a classroom in which she  didn't belong.
  Nobody seemed to think that anything unusual was  happening. The third-grade children kept on  answering

questions about things she'd never studied with them. She  didn't understand any of it.
  She looked at the clock above the teacher's  desk. It was two minutes to twelve. She would  soon be saved by the bell. Waiting, she was  overtaken by panic. Then the bell sounded, and she  heard the teacher's high-pitched nervous voice  saying, "Class dismissed."
  Sybil decided to sit still. She was afraid
  
to move, afraid to face going home. The children,  however, made a mad dash to the coat hall,  shouting, laughing. The boys, shoving with  their elbows, pushed their way past the girls.
  Sybil saw them leave, going quickly out of the  coat hall. She was certain that they must have just  grabbed their coats, helter-skelter, without any  semblance of order. The way the children acted was very  bewildering and frightening.
  Tense before, she became even more tense as she  watched them. Miss Thurston knew how to keep  order, and this mad scramble could not have taken place  in her class. Sybil had always heard, however,  that Miss Henderson could not manage a class.  Because of the way the children acted it suddenly seemed that  this might be Miss Henderson's class after  all.
  Everything was running through her mind at such speed  that she was unable to make any sense of it and to do the  sensible thing: go home. When she looked up, the  room was deserted. Certain that the other children had  indeed gone, she rose slowly from her seat and  walked even more slowly to the coat hall.
  Inside the hall she realized that she wasn't  alone. There was Miss Henderson putting on her  coat. It was too late to turn away.
  Except for being on the opposite  side of the building this hall was  exactly like the one in the third grade. All the  classrooms and all the coat halls were alike.  There was nothing unfamiliar about this one.
  There was just one coat still hanging, a plaid  mackinaw. She had never seen it before, but she went  over and examined it. She looked for a name tape  to find the name that belonged to the coat. Miss  Thurston

always had the children put their names on two pieces of  tape, one for the coat, the other to be placed under a  coat hook. There was no name either under the hook or  in the coat. Miss Henderson was about to leave.  "Sybil," she asked, "why don't you put your  coat on? What's wrong? Aren't you going home  for lunch?"
  Instead of replying Sybil simply continued  to stare at the unfamiliar coat, reflecting that it  was not surprising that Miss Henderson knew her  name. In the tiny town of Willow Corners  everybody knew everybody else. Miss  Henderson repeated: "Aren't you going home for
  
lunch?" Then, with Miss Henderson's eye on  her, Sybil finally put on the coat. It  fitted her perfectly. Miss
Henderson left, but Sybil lingered until she  could be certain that the teacher was so far ahead that they  wouldn't meet on the stairs.
  Sybil walked slowly out of the old red-brick  school building. On the corner across the street  was the big house with black shutters, her home.  Before crossing the street she looked to see whether  anyone was coming. Certain that nobody was looking,  she crossed.
  Top, waiting on the front steps, barked his  welcome. She gave him a quick hug around the  neck before hurrying into the house. She wanted to be  inside among familiar things, eager to see this  morning's confusion at school fade away at  home.
  In the small entrance hallway, however, her  longing for normality was crushed. When she hung the  plaid mackinaw in the hallway closet, none  of the clothes she remembered was there. Unfamiliar  reds, greens, and yellows leaped out at her.  Turning abruptly from the closet, she started to go  into the downstairs bedroom, where her grandmother and  grandfather had lived during her grandmother's last  illness. The extra door to the room was  plastered up; it was strange that they had  done this so quickly. In the living room she found some  of her grandmother's furniture incorporated with  theirs. How quickly they had rearranged things. And  what was that on the breakfront? A radio! They  had hesitated about buying a radio because her  grandfather said that it was the work of the devil.

  Mother called from the kitchen, "Is that you,  Peggy? You're so late."
  That nickname again. Her mother, who didn't like the  name Sybil, had invented the name of Peggy  Louisiana for her. When she was cute or  funny, the way her mother liked her, her mother would  call her Peggy Louisiana, Peggy Lou,
Peggy Ann, or just Peggy. Evidently her  mother liked her today.
  The kitchen, Sybil noted with alarm, was light  green. It had been white when last she had seen  it. "I liked the white kitchen," Sybil said.
  Replied her mother, "We went through that last  year."
  Last year? Sybil wondered.
  
  Her father was in the sunroom, reading an  architecture magazine while waiting for lunch.  Sybil went in to speak to him. Her  playroom was in the sunroom, and she kept her  dolls in the window seat. The dolls were there, as  they had always been, but there were more of them. Where did  that big, beautiful, blonde-haired doll with the  bright face and shining teeth come from? It wasn't  hers.
  Her father looked up from his magazine.  "Sybil," he said, as he noticed her for the first  time, "aren't you late?"
  "Daddy," she blurted, "what doll is that,  the great big one?"
  "Are you playing games?" he replied.  "That's Nancy Jean. You won her in a contest.  You were so excited about it."
  Sybil said nothing.
  At the dining room table there were four place  settings instead of three. What was the fourth one  doing there? There didn't seem to be any company.  This time, however, she was not going to ask any questions.  She had been too embarrassed by the doll,  Nancy Jean.
  There was the thumping of a wooden leg, the  familiar thump that had always brought her visits with  her grandmother to an end, the thump, thump,  that had always frightened her. It was her  grandfather, all six feet of him, with his goatee and  his bald head. What

was he doing here? Why did he sit at their table?  The grandparents' living quarters, whether they were  living upstairs or downstairs, were always  separate from theirs. Each family ate by itself and  did not enter the other's sphere. That was her  grandmother's rule. But her grandmother was dead.  Newly dead and already the rule was broken.
  Her father said grace. Her mother passed the  food. The fried potatoes were passed around  twice. There were some left. Her father took the  dish and said to his father, "Dad, here are some more  potatoes."
  Her mother said pointedly, "It went around  twice."
  "He'll hear you," said her father with a pained  expression.
  "He'll hear you," her mother mimicked. "He  won't hear you. He's deaf, deaf, and you know  it."
  
  In fact, her grandfather hadn't heard. He  continued talking awfully loudly, the same old  talk about Armageddon, one of the last  battles that was to take place on earth before the end  of time. He was talking of Alpha and Omega, the  beginning and the end. He talked of the seven last  plagues, the war that was coming with China, and how the  United States would join Russia against China.  He talked of how the Catholics would come  into power, how some terrible day there would be a  Catholic president.
  "There could never be a Catholic president,"  said Hattie.
  "Mark my words," Sybil's grandfather said, "it  will come to pass. Those Romans will rule the world if  we're not careful. Those Romans, they will bring us  trouble without end until the end of the world!"
  Her mother changed the subject. "Willard,"  she said, "I had a letter from Anita today."
  "What does she write?" her father asked.  Then turning to Sybil he remarked, "I'll  never forget how wonderful you were about taking  Anita's little Ella off our hands those few  weeks after grandma's funeral when they were staying  here."
  The weeks after the funeral? Taking care of  Ella? What was he talking about? She  had done absolutely

nothing about Ella. And she didn't know about the  weeks after the funeral. She was becoming confused.  When had the funeral taken place? Hadn't it just  happened?
  Then Sybil looked directly at her mother and  made what she considered a bold plunge.  "Mother," she asked, "what grade am I in?"
  "What grade am I in?" her mother echoed.  "That's a silly question."
  They didn't tell her, didn't understand how  urgent it was for her to know. They didn't seem  to care. What could she tell them if they did  care? Even if she tried, she didn't know what  to tell.
  Her mother turned to her and said, "What's the  matter with you? You're awfully quiet. You're so  different today."
  Her grandfather, seeing how solemn his  granddaughter looked when her mother said that,  proclaimed, "Christians must always smile. It  is a sin not to smile."
  
  Her father rose to go. "I told Mrs.  Kramer I'd be back to the store by one-thirty."
  Sybil's father had worked in a  hardware store since they had come back from the  farm, where they had gone to live briefly as an  economy measure when they had lost their money in  the Depression. Sybil and her mother had come back  first so that she could start kindergarten. Then her father  went to work in Mrs. Kramer's hardware store.  They were in their old house again, with her grandparents  in their own part upstairs. Now her grandfather lived  with them, it seemed.
  Her grandfather got up to go to his room. "Cheer  up, Sybil," he said. "If you smile and be  cheery, life won't be dreary." He bumped  against the corner of the dining room table.
  "He's so clumsy," her mother said. "He  bumps into everything. He bumped the stand by the door  so often, the plaster is all chipped off."
  Sybil lingered, saying nothing.
  "I don't know what's the matter with you today,"  her mother said. "You're not yourself--just not yourself."

  Sybil walked to the closet. Still searching for the  red wool coat she had looked for in the school  coat hall, she dawdled.
  Her mother followed her to the closet.  "By the way," she said, "I'd like you  to drop in on Mrs. Schwarzbard after school.  She has a package for me."
  "Who is Mrs. Schwarzbard?" Sybil  asked.
  "You know perfectly well who she is," her  mother replied.
  Sybil, who had never heard the name, was  afraid to make too much of it. She just stared into the  frightening closet with all those unfamiliar garments,  the visible symbols of the unknown events that  surrounded her on this enigmatic day.
  "What are you waiting for?" her mother asked.  "Miss Henderson will be furious with you if you are  late."
  Miss Henderson? Her mother knew she was in  Miss Henderson's class!
  "Put on the mackinaw you wore this morning,"  said her mother.
  Sybil did as she was told. Her mother  didn't seem to think there was anything odd about doing  that.
  As Sybil left the house, she saw
  
Carolyn Schultz and Henry Von Hoffman  on the school side of the street. She waited  until they had gone into the school. When  she herself entered the building, she was torn between going  to the third-grade classroom and going to the  fifth-grade room. Her mother knew that Miss  Henderson was her teacher, but Sybil still thought she  belonged in the third grade. She tried the third  grade first.
  Miss Thurston was at her desk, sorting  test papers. "How nice of you to come to visit,"  she said when she saw Sybil. "I love having  my girls come back."
  Come back? Sybil headed for the fifth-grade  classroom. Walking gingerly into the room, she  made certain she returned to the seat in which she'd  found herself that morning.
  The first lesson was arithmetic. They were doing  fractions, but Sybil couldn't multiply beyond the  3's and 4's. The last thing she remembered was  doing the 3's and 4's, in the spring of the third  grade.

  Then, they were doing decimals, and Sybil  couldn't do them, either. Miss Henderson said something  about multiplication. Sybil couldn't multiply.  The teacher erased the board, wrote up  new multiplication problems,  distributed paper, and drilled for the next day's  quiz.
  Sybil stared from her blank paper to the  blackboard and back again. Miss Henderson  watched her; then she walked to Sybil's desk and  leaned over her shoulder.
  "You haven't written anything," Miss  Henderson said crossly. "Now work 'em."
  Sybil did nothing, and the teacher, with even more  irritation than before, pointed to the blackboard and  demanded, "What's this and this?"
  Sybil just shook ber head. "Now, Sybil,"  the teacher said, "what is it?" The other children  laughed. Carolyn Schultz snickered.  "Sybil," the teacher insisted, "tell me what the  answer is."
  "I don't know it. I don't know."  Sybil's tone was hushed.
  Miss Henderson turned on her. "But you've  always been an A student. I don't know  what's gotten into you." The teacher was furious.  "Young lady, you had better get hold of yourself.
  
Or are you playing games with me?"
  There was no answer to the baffled teacher's  rhetorical question. Then, in total  perplexity, the teacher, walking back to the  blackboard, threw a parting shot over her  shoulder: "You knew it yesterday."
  Yesterday? Sybil was silent. For her--she was  beginning to know it now--yesterday was never. Things had  taken place that she was supposed to have done or  learned of which she had no knowledge.

  This was not altogether a new experience. At other  times, too, time seemed to have been erased for her the  way Miss Henderson had erased those numbers  from the blackboard. But this time seemed longer. More  had happened, more that Sybil didn't understand.
  She had never mentioned this strange feeling  to anyone. It was a secret she didn't dare  tell.
  But how much time had gone by? This she still  didn't

know. She was in the fifth grade and didn't  remember being in the fourth. Never before had that much  time passed. Things were happening to her of which she  knew nothing and over which she had no control.
  "Is there something bothering you?" asked  Miss Henderson, who had come back  to her desk.
  "No, no," Sybil replied, with a brave  show of conviction. "But I can't do the work."
  "You did it yesterday," Miss Henderson  repeated icily.
  There was no yesterday. Sybil remembered  nothing since being at the cemetery.
  What she couldn't understand was that other people didn't  know that she didn't know. Miss Henderson kept  talking about yesterday as if she had been right at this  desk then. But she wasn't here. Yesterday was  blank.
  At recess time the children scrambled out to the  playground. Both the boys and girls had their  baseball and softball teams. They chose  sides, but Sybil stood alone--unchosen.
To be left out was a new, terrible experience. In  the past the children didn't leave her out of anything, and  she couldn't understand why they did now.
  When school was over, Sybil waited until  the last child was safely out of reach and then started for  home. She wasn't going to Mrs.
  
Schwartzbard, whoever she was, to pick up her  mother's package. Her mother would be furious. But  there was nothing she could do except accept  the fury, as she always had.
  In the school's main lobby, with its cold,  austere marble, Danny Martin called to Sybil.  Danny, who was a year older than Sybil, was  a very good friend. They had many long talks on the  front steps of the white house with black  shutters. She could talk to Danny more than  to anybody else. He had been at her  grandmother's funeral. Maybe she ought to ask him  about the things that had happened since then. But what a  fool he'd think her if she asked him outright.  She would have to find subtle ways to make her own  discoveries.
  Danny walked across the street with her. They  sat

on the front steps of her home and talked. One  of the things he said was: "Mrs. Engle died this  week. I went with Elaine to take the funeral  flowers to invalids and shut-ins, just as I went with  you when your grandmother died."
  When Danny said this, Sybil remembered, as  if it were a dream, that a girl whom they called  Sybil but who wasn't Sybil went with
Danny Martin to distribute her  grandmother's funeral flowers to the sick and poor of the  town. As in a dream, she remembered watching that  girl. It felt as if she had been beside this other  Sybil, just walking along. And she couldn't be  certain whether or not it was a dream. But although she  knew now that time, unaccounted-for time, had passed  since the funeral, this was the only memory that  came back. Otherwise there was nothing but  emptiness, a great, cavernous emptiness between the  moment that a hand had grabbed her at the cemetery  and the time that she first found herself in the fifth-grade  classroom.
  Had she dreamed about that girl and those flowers?  Or had the event actually happened? If it was a  dream, how could Danny be in tune with it? She  didn't know. But she didn't know about many things that  had happened during this time, cold, blue,  unreachable. To forget was shameful, and she felt  ashamed.

                 10
            Thieves of Time

  The vague memory of the girl who had  distributed the funeral flowers gave Sybil the  incentive to ask Danny about all of the things that were  different.

Houses had been built. Stores had changed  hands. The town was not the same. Sybil knew that  she could ask Danny about any or all of it.
  "How come the Greens are living in the Miners'  house?" Sybil asked.
  "They moved there last summer," Danny  replied.
  "Who's the baby Susie Anne is pushing in  the buggy?" Sybil wanted to know.
  "That's Susie Anne's little sister,"  Danny explained. "She was born last spring."
  "Who is Mrs. Schwarzbard?"
  "A dressmaker who came to town a year  ago."
  Danny never asked, "How come you don't  know?"
  Sybil was freer with Danny Martin  than she had been with any human being  except her grandmother. The freedom with Danny was  the more remarkable because it came during the spring,  summer, and fall of 1934, the very period during  which, tricked by time, Sybil enshrouded herself in a  green aloneness and fortified her usual reserve  with a special invincible armor against the world.
  Danny became the antidote to the loneliness and  vulnerability Sybil experienced after "coming to"  in the fifth grade. Inexplicably, she had  lost her friends. And, although her fundamentalist  faith had always set her apart from other children, it was  now as if they were noticing it for the first time. Now,  because she could not do all the things they did--because of the  prohibitions of her faith--they directed at her  the sinister epithet "white Jew."
  Less painful, too, because of Danny, was her  father's coolly critical counsel, "You should be  able to talk to people and to face the world," and her mother's  reactivation of an old complaint, "I never know  from one day to the next what mood you'll be in or  what kind of person you'll be."
  If it weren't for Danny, Sybil knew she
  
could not have endured the humiliation at school, where,  because of her problem with math, her marks had gone  down. Without Danny, Sybil could not  have withstood her mother's unrelenting accusation: "But you  used to

know the multiplication tables. You used to know them.  You're just pretending to forget. You're a bad  girl--bad." And without Danny it would have been  impossible to weather the stormy confrontation with her  mother over the lost place in the school's honor  roll, regularly published in the Corners  Courier for the whole town to see. "You were always  there," her mother lamented. "I don't know what I  would do if I had a dumb child. You're bright.  You're only doing this to hurt me. Bad.
Bad!"
  Although Sybil didn't actually enumerate  these things to Danny, she felt that without her doing  so, he somehow understood. Sybil felt so close  to Danny that there were times when she would have liked  to talk with him about why time was so "funny," and about  how unaccountably she had discovered that she was  eleven years and two months old without ever having  been ten years old--or eleven. But in the end this  was too painful to talk about even to Danny.  Besides, her reluctance grew with the  recollection that when some years earlier  she had expressed this thought to her mother, Hattie  had laughed sarcastically and chided, "For land's  sake, why can't you be like other youngsters?" All the  same, time, Sybil knew--even though her mother  scoffed and Sybil was afraid to tell Danny  about it--was funny.
  Upon occasion, however, Sybil was able to forget the  strange, immutable subject of time--when she  sat on the front steps talking with Danny, or  when they played in the sunroom, where he made  Shakespearean costumes for her dolls,  transforming Patty Ann into Portia, Norma  into Rosalind, and a nameless boy doll into the fool  in Twelfth Night. Just as miraculously,
Danny transformed going to a party from a terror  to a pleasure. While the parties of the past,  attended only at her mother's harping insistence,  went unremembered, the parties to which Sybil went  with Danny were never forgotten.
  When Sybil was with Danny, she was able to forget  that otherwise she walked alone. And she was alone.  In the morning she was careful not to leave home
  
until after she had ascertained that none of her  classmates  was in sight. After school she lingered at  her desk until all the other children had left.  When she walked on Main Street, doing some  errand for her mother, she often crossed from one side  of the street to the other six or seven times in a  single block to avoid an encounter with one of the  townsfolk. Turning from everybody else, she  turned to Danny. Danny, without erecting  barriers against other children, turned as surely  to Sybil as she did to him. Sybil and Danny  just naturally assumed that when they were old enough, they  would marry. Sybil firmly believed that when this  happened, time somehow would cease to be funny.
  Then, on a brisk October day, as Sybil  and Danny sat on the front steps, Danny  said, somewhat awkwardly, "Syb, I have something  to tell you."
  "What?" Sybil, sensing his tone, asked  anxiously.
  "You see," Danny continued, "my Dad--  well, he bought a gas station in Waco,  Texas, and, well, we're going there to live.  But you'll come see me. I'll come back here.  We'll see each other."
  "Yes," Sybil said, "we will."
  That evening, when Sybil told
Hattie Dorsett that Danny was leaving  Willow Corners forever, Hattie shrugged and  said, with great deliberateness: "Well, Daddy  didn't like you to spend so much time with that boy  anyway. Daddy thought you were too old to be  playing together."
  When Sybil reported to Danny what her mother  had said, he answered quietly, "If your mother    knew it would hurt you, she'd tell you." Sybil  was surprised that Danny should say that.
  The next month, while Danny's family  got ready to leave Willow Corners, seemed like  a reprieve, as if they had been spared the parting.  Between Sybil and Danny nothing was changed  except that they did everything together more intensely because  they knew that time was running out. It was the same  feeling that Sybil had experienced during her  truncated visits with her grandmother.
  Ultimately, however, the day came for  Danny to say goodbye. Sybil, sitting with him  on the front steps,
  
which for so long had been the scene of close  communion, was quiet and composed.
  "You'll come see me," Danny  reminded Sybil.
  "I'll come," Sybil temporized.
  "We'll see each other," Danny repeated.  "We'll see each other," Sybil echoed.
  Danny rose to go. Sybil sat motionless on  the steps. "Well, Sybil," he said. "Well  ..." Overwhelmed by adolescent embarrassment and  unable to complete the sentence, he fell silent,  bending over instead to where Sybil was still sitting.  He kissed her swiftly on the cheek, pulled  away, turned, and was gone.
  Sybil, who, since early childhood, had  shunned even the most casual physical contact,  was now transported by a joyous tingle. At first  she was not even aware that Danny was no longer beside  her. Then, when awareness did come, she panicked,  apprehensively searching for Danny. There he  was--his blond hair, his lithe body--moving,  retreating.
  As he turned from Vine Street into Main  Street, he faded out of sight. Sybil sank  down onto the steps. The rescue that Danny  represented had been withdrawn. The town was  deserted. All that existed now was an  unmitigated aloneness.
  And there still was something funny about time, which, like  invisible soap in imperceptible water, slipped  away.

  The sky is blue, Vicky thought, as, getting  up from the front steps, she stepped into the time from which  Sybil had just departed.
  Vicky walked around the white house with black  shutters thinking about how nice it was to be able  to give locomotion to the body, which for the very first time  belonged wholly to her, Vicky.
  At last, the eyes were Vicky's alone to see  the world steadily and to see it whole, to look up at  the blue sky, clean and clear.
  Having reached the back porch steps, Vicky  decided to enter the house through that route. "That you,  Peggy?" Hattie called from the kitchen window.

  No, Vicky thought, it isn't Peggy, or  Sybil. It's a person you haven't met before.  I'm not your daughter in reality, but I'm here  to take Sybil's place, and, although you will call
  
me your daughter, you will discover that I'm not  afraid of you. I know how to cope with you.
  "That boy gone?" Hattie asked as
Vicky entered the kitchen.
  "Yes," Vicky said.
  "You had no business sitting out there in the  cold. You'll come down with pneumonia. You know  you're not very strong."
  "I'm used to our midwestern winters, and  by comparison this autumn weather is child's play,"  Vicky replied.
  "Don't act smart with me," Hattie  warned.
  "I was only stating a fact," said Vicky.  "Well," Hattie answered as she changed the  subject, "I'm expecting a package from  Elderville. Go on over to the post office and  get it for me."
  Vicky went.
  Strange that it should be autumn. The time of  beginnings is spring, she thought, as, listening to the  rustling of the dry leaves, she walked down the  back porch steps and along the alley that led  to Main Street.
  Autumn without, it was nevertheless spring within--the  spring that followed the long, subduing winter of a little  over eight years of secret residency  within the recesses of being. Subdued,  quiescent, nameless, she had been from the autumn  of 1926 to this October day in 1934, from the time  Sybil was three and a half until she was  eleven. Quiescent, yes. Powerless, no.  During that period, by exerting a variety of  internal pressures upon Sybil and the other  selves, Vicky, still nameless, had become  silently instrumental.
  It had been a momentous decision--Vicky  knew--that she had made as Danny Martin  receded out of sight and she rose from the inner  recesses of being to the surface of life. Yet  at that moment there had been no other possible  course of action, for Vicky had realized that the  time of instrumentality had passed and

that of active intervention had come. She realized that  to be effective she would have to take command of the body  away from Sybil, who was obviously too  traumatized by the parting to carry on. And so,  christening herself by a name borrowed from Sybil, who in  the fantasy of the pretend world of childhood had
  
created a girl, bright and unafraid, by the name of  Victoria Antoinette Scharleau, this hitherto  quiescent self entered the world.
  It was good, Victoria thought as she walked  along Main Street, to feel the bitter, biting  wind and to be in control of the body that did the  feeling. A newcomer to commanding the body that walked  along the street, she felt like an old-timer in the  street itself. She had seen everything many times before.
  Vicky knew what had happened in the life of  Sybil Isabel Dorsett, whether or not
Sybil herself had been present. Paradoxically,  while time had been discontinuous for Sybil, who  had lived in the world, it had been continuous for  Vicky, who had existed in the recesses of being.  Time, which had been capricious and often blank for  Sybil, had been constant for Vicky. Vicky,  who had total recall, served as a memory  trace in the disjointed inner world of Sybil  Dorsett.
  This solidity of memory, combined with the fact that,  in surfacing into the world, Vicky incorporated within  herself a powerful fantasy of Sybil's own  coinage, became the source of Vicky's  strength. The Victoria of the fantasy, like the  new Vicky, an alternating self, was  confident, unafraid, immune from the  influence of the relationships that had  disturbed Sybil.
  Vicky thought wryly of the persons who, seeing  the slender frame of Sybil Dorsett, would  expect the repeated crossing of the street in  flight from people. Well, they will not see it now,  Vicky thought, as she entered the post office.
  The package from Elderville was waiting. This  was a good beginning, Vicky decided. If that  package hadn't been here, Mrs. Dorsett  would have blamed her. How well, Vicky felt,  she knew this woman--no mother to

her--with whom all these years she had tried to help  Sybil cope.
  Home only long enough to give Mrs.  Dorsett the package, Vicky again walked  down the back porch steps and headed for the swing. It  was natural for her to do so, for it had been she who  had prevailed upon Sybil to adopt the swing as the  perfect solution to Hattie Dorsett's  constant haranguing for not "doing something." When  Sybil, absorbed in thought, sat quietly,
  
Hattie would harp, "Don't just sit there. For  land's sakes, do something!" In the swing it had been  possible to think and "do something" at the  same time.
  That evening when supper was over, Hattie  suggested to Vicky that they go for a walk. In  silence Hattie and Vicky walked,
Hattie's controlling hand holding the putative  daughter in check. Passing the Stickneys'  house, twice the size of the Dorsetts',  Hattie snorted, "Old man Stickney is  senile. I hope they put him away." As they  walked, Hattie talked of Ella Baines,  who "did nasty things with a teacher in town" and should be  "harpooned by the authorities"; of Rita  Stitt, whose mother wasn't really her mother and who some  months before Hattie had confounded by telling her so.  (vicky thought: you're not my mother, and I could  retaliate for Rita by telling you so.)
  Hattie Dorsett talked of Danny
Martin. "I'm glad to see you're not blue because  that boy went away," Hattie said. "I told  you that Daddy objected to your playing with him."
  "You did tell me," said Vicky, knowing that it  had been not to her but to Sybil that Mrs.  Dorsett had conveyed that cruel intelligence.
  "Well, young lady, there's something  else," Hattie added with a childishly  triumphant expression. "You don't know that  Daddy had a talk with Danny's father a few  months ago. Daddy told him straight from the  shoulder that it was wrong for you to mix in with people like the  Martins, outside our faith."
  Vicky winced. The Martins, like Hattie  Dorsett herself before her conversion, were Methodists.  Willard Dorsett had married a Methodist,  yet he objected to his

daughter's friendship with one. What hypocrisy!  But Vicky said nothing.
  "Well," Hattie continued, "Daddy looks  down on the Martins for other reasons, too. He  feels that they have no class, no background, no  style. The father came here from New Jersey  looking for gold, and he ended up driving a milk  truck. Now he's on his way again, still looking.  Where he got the money to buy a gas station down  there in Texas nobody can figure out.  Anyway, Daddy had a good long talk with  Danny's father. Mr. Martin said they would be
  
leaving town soon, so nobody did anything. But,  young lady, I thought you should know what Daddy thinks  about Danny and Danny's family."
  "Danny's gone," was all Vicky said.
  "A good thing, too, according to Daddy," Hattie  reported, careful to remove herself from the judgment.
  Vicky thought: it's a good thing that Sybil will  never know what her father did.
  "Well, let's go back," Hattie said.
"I wanted to tell you this when Daddy wasn't  around. Now that you know, we can go back."
  At school the next morning Vicky was in  command of both the body and the school work. And although the  other children were aloof, Vicky understood that the  aloofness was rooted in the happenings of the two years  that followed the death of Mary Dorsett,  Sybil's grandmother.
  Vicky had watched with close scrutiny how,  during those two years, Peggy Lou, in complete  control of the body, the person who did the actual  living, had lost all Sybil's school friends.  Peggy Lou would sit at her school desk during  recess and make paper dolls instead of going  into the yard to play with the other children. At lunch and at  the end of the day she would dash out of school, snubbing  the children who attempted to talk or walk with her.  When asked to go some place with them, she  replied cryptically, "I can't."
Then she'd run. After a while nobody asked  her to go anywhere or do anything.
  Vicky knew that Peggy Lou had isolated  herself from

the other children not because she disliked them but because being with them  made her angry at not having what they had--a  home in which there were brothers and sisters, where there was  no reason to be afraid. Rather than go with the other  children to those homes, she persuaded herself that she  didn't need anyone and, fully persuaded,  raced alone to the white house with black shutters,  where what made her angry lurked in every corner.
  Her bitter loneliness had one compensation. She  had a real sense of accomplishment at being  independent and doing exactly what she desired,  with no one stopping her or telling her what to do.  Isolated, she managed somehow to feel free--  albeit with a freedom that made her want to smash  a hole in the very center of the universe.
  Sometimes Vicky regretted having let
Peggy Lou take over at Mary Dorsett's
  
grave. But Vicky had felt then--and still felt  when she recalled the event--that no other course of  action had been possible.
  Too, Vicky assured herself, even though  Mary Dorsett was a lovely person, she  wasn't her grandmother, and there was no reason for her  to involve herself in that macabre business. It  seemed fitting to let Peggy Lou take over.  Besides, Sybil, standing at the grave, was angry.  Dealing with anger was Peggy Lou's function--not  Vicky's.
  Moreover, the two Peggy years hadn't been  all bad. It had been Peggy Lou's emergence  more than the restraining hand that had kept Sybil from  jumping into Mary Dorsett's grave. After the  funeral Peggy Lou, an active child, had been  able to do what Sybil, an inactive child, could not have  done. When the mourners stayed on as the  Dorsetts' houseguests, Peggy Lou had  earned the gratitude of Mr. and Mrs.  Dorsett by taking Cousin Anita's  obstreperous two-year-old Ella off their hands.  The Dorsetts, in fact, were pleased that their  daughter was active at last, and Vicky had  been amazed to discover that Hattie Dorsett  got along better with her daughter after than before the  death of Mary Dorsett. The daughter  who came home from the funeral and

stayed for two years talked back and walked on  the furniture in a rage, but she also seemed more  winsome than the daughter who lived in the white  house before Mary Dorsett's death.
  Peggy Lou was much more "l" other youngsters than was  Sybil. Although Vicky wasn't certain, she  felt that this was because Peggy Lou, the daughter of the  years after the death, was so much more like Hattie herself  than was Sybil. It had been amusing, too,  to observe that, upon Sybil's return, Mrs.  Dorsett regarded Sybil, not Peggy Lou, as  the "different" one. "That child is so different now,"  Hattie screamed. "I could go right through the  ceiling!"
  Vicky recalled having told Peggy Lou  at Mary Dorsett's grave to answer to the name  of Sybil Dorsett because it wasn't polite  to point out people's mistakes. Then, on the second  day of her residency in the world, Vicky took  her own advice. In the sixth-grade  classroom, she immediately recited when the name of
  
Sybil Dorsett was called by Mr. Strong, the  teacher.
  Vicky liked Mr. Strong and  remembered that Sybil had liked him too. One  afternoon, while Sybil was raking leaves in the  backyard, Mr. Strong, who happened to be  passing, called to Sybil. Roused from day-dreaming  about the Victoria Antoinette of her  fantasy, Sybil had been thrilled that the teacher  had spoken to her first.
  Isn't it pathetic, Vicky thought, that  Sybil doesn't know about me, but keeps thinking  about that imaginary girl whose name I now bear? It  is sad that Sybil doesn't know about any of the people  who live within her.
  Having acquitted herself beautifully on the first  day of school, in all subjects, including  arithmetic, which Vicky had absorbed through silent  observation, Vicky went home, sanguine about  her new existence.
  Approaching the Dorsetts' home, Vicky  observed that Mrs. Dorsett was peering out of the  window. Mrs. Dorsett, Vicky thought, always  seems to be spying. "Come on. Let's go  visit somebody," Hattie said. "There's a  new baby at the Greens' house. Let's go  down there and see what's going on."
Here it is, Vicky thought, the almost daily  ritual with its everlastingly boring adult-woman  talk to which Sybil had been subjected. Well,  Vicky decided, I'll go. Peggy Lou fought  back, but I'll be diplomatic.
  Mon Dieu, Vicky thought as in  subsequent weeks she took a good look at  Willow Corners, the people in this town had no  style, no @eclat. Narrow, provincial, and  dull were the adjectives for them. Even at the  age of thirteen she had outgrown them. She was  certain that they and she were worlds apart. As for  Sybil's parents ... well, the father was nice,  but he didn't care enough. In fact, he  didn't come up from behind his newspaper or his  blueprints long enough to see enough of what was happening  to be able to care. The mother was a different story.  She was always saying, "You should do it this way or  that." And Vicky decided that it was this that had  hampered Sybil in doing things. How, Vicky  speculated, can you do anything when there are so many  shoulds and shouldn'ts, and nothing is any fun? Still,
  
Mrs. Dorsett was hard to fathom. She was either  too much there or not there at all. But Vicky had  the consolation of knowing that she was here  to help, that after a while her own loving parents and  her many brothers and sisters would come for her and she  would go back to Paris with them. How she looked  forward to the time when they would all be together. Contrasting  her parents with the Dorsetts, she felt almost  guilty at her own good fortune. She promised  herself that before she left this family she would arrange  to let Sybil have as many good days as possible--as  many in fact, as the outside world and the other people within  her would allow. Poor Sybil, Vicky thought.
  There were times when Vicky retreated to the more  congenial inner stratum and allowed one of the other  selves in the Sybil Dorsett entourage, or  even Sybil herself, to take a seat in the  sixth-grade classroom.
  One day Mary Lucinda Saunders
Dorsett, who had emerged during the first year of  Peggy Lou's two-year tenure, when Sybil was  ten, took that sixth-grade seat. Before the day was  over Mary suddenly didn't feel well.

It wasn't a pain she felt; it was more like a  stretching.
  When Mary got home, she headed for the  bathroom. Grandpa Dorsett was in  it, so Hattie called, "Why can't you use the  other bathroom?" What other bathroom? Mary  didn't remember there was any and only learned  later that her father had built it during the second  year, during which Peggy had been there and Mary had  paid no attention.
  In the new bathroom Mary blanched at the  sight of what she later described as "this  brownish red stuff" in her underwear. She had seen  her grandmother, who had had cancer of the cervix,  bleed, and she was afraid that she too was going  to die.
  "Why are you in there so long?" Hattie  called.
  "I'll be right out, Mom," Mary replied.  Mary, who didn't feel that Sybil's mother was  hers, always called Hattie "Mom," which seemed  like a general word for any older woman who took  care of one. Washing her underwear to make sure that  Hattie wouldn't know what had happened, Mary  lingered long in the bathroom, worrying about the  strange condition in which she found herself.
  
  At bedtime that night Mom came in and said,  "Let's see your underwear." Mary hesitated.  "Show it to me this minute," Hattie  demanded. When Mary did as she was directed,  Hattie remarked, "Just what I thought. It's  your age working on you. It's simply awful. The  curse of women. It hurts you here, doesn't  it? It hurts you there, doesn't it?" And pushing  at various target points of Mary's anatomy,  Hattie jabbed hard, accentuating the pain.
  "It's sick time," Hattie said as she  prepared a cloth for Mary to wear. "Only women  have it. Don't mention it to Daddy." Then  Hattie stalked out of the bedroom, muttering, "The  curse of women. The curse. I wish men had  it. It would serve them right. Men!"
  Mary was frightened because Mom had said "sick  time." Sick meant staying home from school;  school meant getting away from Hattie. And  Mary wanted to get away. Next day Mom  explained that with this sickness girls did go  to school. So Mary went to school.

  What Mary didn't know was that what had  happened to her for the first time had already happened  to Sybil for two successive months without  Hattie's knowing and without pain. In the  future, Mary, who carried the burden  of menstruation, inflicted the pain on Sybil or  whatever other self was in the ascendancy during the  menstrual period.
  Mary continued to appear occasionally during the  sixth grade, but it was Vicky who was there most  of the time. Toward the end of the school term Sybil  arrived one day on the way to school, feeling that the  Victoria of her fantasy was taking her there.  This return, however, was not so alarming as had been  the return in the fifth grade. Although Sybil still  thought that time was "funny," she found herself somehow more  at ease about this spell.
  At the time of Sybil's return Mary  talked to Vicky about Danny Martin. "Sybil  doesn't know," Mary said, "that while Peggy  Lou was there, Danny was jealous of Billy  Denton. Peggy Lou didn't pay any  attention to Danny, but she certainly did latch  onto Billy."
  "Yes," Vicky agreed, "she certainly  did. And Billy could never understand--after Sybil  came back--why the Dorsett girl acted as
  
if she didn't know him."
  Mary, who was interested in poetry, became  grandiloquent, telling Vicky that for
Sybil the mighty heart of the world often lies still and  that at such times there are for Sybil no fresh  woods, no pastures new, just pastures fallow  with forgetfulness. "Sybil calls it nothingness. And  that's not very flattering to us!"

  In the months that followed Sybil found herself  floating in and out of blankness. Disguising the  fact, she became ingenious in improvisation,  peerless in pretense, as she feigned knowledge of what  she did not know. Unfortunately, from herself she  couldn't conceal the sensation that somehow she had lost  something. Nor could she hide the feeling that  increasingly she felt as if she belonged to no one  and to no place. Somehow it seemed that the older she  got, the worse things became. She began  repudiating herself with unspoken self-

derogating comments: "I'm thin for a good reason:  I'm not fit to occupy space."
  Spring was bad because of her grandmother. Now summer  was approaching, and summer would be bad because of  Danny. Sitting on the front steps or high  in the swing, Sybil would remember the  summer leading to Danny's departure.
"Break, break, break, ar On thy cold grey  stones, O Sea! ar ... But O for the touch of a  vanished hand, ar And the sound of a voice that is still!  ... But the tender grace of a day that is dead ar  Will never come back to me," Mary recited as she  took over the swing from Sybil.
  During the late spring of 1935, Sybil  faced a new terror, brought on by the  vulnerability of puberty. The terror centered  around hysterical conversion symptoms that were part of  her then undiagnosed illness. For hysteria--  grande or otherwise--is an illness re-  sulting from emotional conflict and is generally character-  ized by immaturity, dependency, and the use of the  defense mechanisms not only of dissociation but also  of conversion. Hysteria is classically manifested  by dramatic physical symptoms involving the  voluntary muscles or the organs of special  senses. During the process of conversion,  unconscious impulses are transmuted  into bodily symptoms. Instead of being experienced  consciously, the emotional conflict is thus
  
expressed physically.
  Suddenly, half of Sybil's face and the  side of her arms would become numb.
She would grow weak on one side, not always the  same side. Almost constantly her throat was  sore, and she had trouble swallowing. She began  to suffer from tunnel vision; sight would often leave  one eye. She--and some of the other selves as  well, notably Mary--developed a nervous  tic, which, like that of the telephone operator, caused  consternation in the town.
  Sybil or one of the others would twitch, jerk,  and carry on with unrestrained body movements.  Sybil or the others would aim for the doorway and  run into the door, aim for the door and run into the  doorjamb. The symptoms were intensified  by headaches so bad that

following such an attack, Sybil had to go  to sleep for several hours. Sleep after one of these  headaches for Sybil, who was generally a light  sleeper, was so sound that it seemed she had been  drugged.
  Most disturbing of all, life seemed to be  floating by in an unreal kind of way, filled with  strange presentiments. Sybil would remember that  she had been somewhere or had done something as  if she had dreamed it. She seemed  to be walking beside herself, watching. And sometimes she  couldn't tell the difference between her dreams and this  dreamlike unreality.
  One night Sybil mentioned this feeling of  unreality to her parents, who then decided to take  her to Dr. Quinoness, the town's doctor.
  Dr. Quinoness diagnosed Sybil's case  as Sydenham's chorea, a form of St. Vitus  dance. Explaining that there was a psychological  component, he advised that Sybil should see a  psychiatrist and made an appointment for her with a  doctor in Minneapolis. Willard and Hattie  refused to keep the appointment. If it were only  psychological, Willard claimed, he could  handle it himself. Upon this assumption he bought  Sybil a guitar and engaged a guitar teacher for  her. Father and daughter practiced together and later  gave recitals. Since Vicky, Mary,
Peggy Lou, and some of the other selves also learned  to play and did so with different degrees of  enthusiasm, the performances Willard Dorsett's  daughter gave were strikingly uneven.
  
  Despite her father's easy optimism,
Sybil admitted to herself that she was having "mental  trouble," which in the Dorsett household  and in the town of Willow Corners was considered a  disgrace. Indeed, new fears began to revolve  around the state hospital, where her uncle Roger  worked as a purchasing agent and her aunt  Hattie, as a nurse. Sybil had often    visited her uncle and aunt at the hospital.
  Trying to take her mind off her trouble,  Sybil threw herself into her school work. At  school, however, she was disturbed by not knowing the  European history that had been taught while she  was not present. Vicky carried history, just as  Peggy Lou was the keeper of

multiplication. With science, however, Sybil  caught up quickly. Fascinated as Mr. Strong  elucidated the mysteries of the human anatomy,  she didn't even notice that he carefully  bypassed the sexual parts. When students were  required to draw a large sketch of a heart,  Hattie bought Sybil a pencil that was red at  one end and blue at the other, which made Sybil  feel like a teacher, grading papers. Sybil's  daydreams were filled with ideas about heart  circulation and doctors, and she would  pretend that she herself was a physician  explaining heart function to patients.
  One day Sybil dashed into the house after school  to tell her mother about heart function. Refusing  to listen, Hattie said, "I don't want to hear  about that." Sybil, however, was so excited about the  subject that she went right on explaining what she  had learned. "How many times do I have to tell you that  I'm not interested?" Hattie screamed, lashing out  at her daughter. Sybil, who had been standing on  the polished linoleum in the sunroom, took the  blow full on the hip, slipped, fell  sideways over the rocking chair, and landed on the  floor. Her ribs were badly bruised.
  From that time forward Sybil was afraid of the  science class, and even though science continued  to fascinate her, she had a hard time getting through  high school and college biology. She also  became afraid of rooms without rugs.
  That night Hattie took Sybil on an  outing to Main Street. It was a Wednesday  night, and the stores were open. There were popcorn  stands on the corner and popsicles in the
  
drugstore. Children always asked their parents for a  nickel or a dime, but Sybil made no  demands. Hattie asked, "What do  we want tonight? Do we want popcorn or a  popsicle?"
  Sybil replied, "Well, anything is all  right."
  The remark, although characteristic, didn't indicate  that Sybil had no preference. Just as she didn't  dare tell anybody her secret about time, she  didn't dare ask anybody for anything.
  As mother and daughter were enjoying the popsicles  Hattie bought, Sybil caught sight of some  hair bows

displayed on a counter. Thinking how pretty they  were, Sybil hoped that her mother would ask whether  she wanted one. But Hattie passed the counter,  looked at the hair bows, and went down the  aisle. Sybil gave up hope that her mother would  ask her.
  Then Vicky decided to do the asking and pointed  to a light blue hair bow. "I'd like to have it,"  Vicky informed Hattie. "It matches our  blue organdy dress."
  "What do you mean by "our," you  numbskull?" Hattie replied.
"Don't you know that organdy dress is  yours?"
  Hattie paid the cashier for the hair bow.

          The Search for the Center

  Vicky and Sybil, Mary and Sybil,  Peggy Lou and Sybil--what was the connection?  Dr. Wilbur decided to ask Vicky, who  knew everything about everybody.
  It was June 15, 1955, and the analysis  had been proceeding for nine months. Doctor and  patient were seated on the couch. "Vicky," the  doctor said, "I should like to know something. Are you  related to Sybil?"
  Startled, Vicky replied, "You know I know  Sybil because you ask me about her. I tell you about  Sybil."
  "Yes," the doctor agreed, "I know you know  her. But how do you know what she thinks?"
  An amused smile was Vicky's only  answer.
  
  "Vicky," the doctor persisted, "you've  talked of our blue organdy dress. What  else do you and the others share?"
  "Share?" There was a tinge of irony in  Vicky's tone. "We sometimes do things together."

  "You have told me that some of the others have the same  mother? Then would you say they share a mother?"
  "Yes, I suppose you could say that."  "Do they also share the same body?"
  "That's silly," Vicky replied  authoritatively. "They're people. I can tell you  about them."
  "Yes, Vicky, I know they are people. But people have  relationships to each other. How are Peggy Lou,  Peggy Ann, Mary, Sybil, and the others  related? Are they sisters?"
  "Nobody ever said they were sisters," Vicky  replied, looking squarely at the doctor.
  "No," the doctor answered with precise  emphasis, "nobody ever said that. But Vicky,  when people have the same mother, they must either be the same  person, sisters, or brothers."
  Ignoring the implications of the doctor's  logic, Vicky concurred, "I have lots of  brothers and sisters, and we all have the same mother and  father."
  "All right, Vicky," the doctor  continued, "you have just acknowledged the kinship bonds in  your own family. But you haven't said anything about  the family of which Sybil, the Peggys, Mary,  and the others are a part. You haven't told me how  these people are related."
  Vicky shrugged and said, "Well, Doctor,  you just said they must be sisters."
  "No, Vicky," the doctor replied  firmly, "I didn't say they must .be  sisters. I asked you if they were sisters, and I  said that logically, since they have the same mother, they  must either be the same person, or they must be sisters  or brothers."
  Vicky said nothing.
  When the doctor, remorselessly pursuing the  logical course, demanded: "Now, Vicky,  tell me, are they sisters or are they the same  person?" Vicky, forced to reply, spoke with  great deliberateness. "Doctor," she said, "when  you put it that way, I have to admit that they must be  sisters. They have to be sisters because they couldn't be  the same person!" Vicky closed the subject

by opening her purse, putting lipstick  on, closing the purse, tucking it under her arm.  "Mon Dieu," she said as she rose to go.  "What an absurdity it is to think of those  complete individuals as the same. Marian  Ludlow and I are more alike than are any two  or three persons you have mentioned."
  "Now, Vicky," the doctor said firmly,  "the hour is not over yet, and I would like you to listen  to what I'm going to tell you."
  "Our discussion," Vicky said in a tone of  great finality, "has reached its logical  conclusion. What else is there to say?"
  "This, Vicky. Now sit down, won't you,  please?"
  Vicky seated herself, but she didn't really  acquiesce.
  "You say," the doctor remarked  unrelentingly, "that Peggy Lou, Peggy Ann,  Mary, and the others couldn't be the same person. But  they can be. Vicky, don't you see that they could be  different aspects of the same person?"
  "No, Dr. Wilbur," Vicky said  thoughtfully, shaking her head. "I don't see.  You, you're just you. You're Dr.  Wilbur and no one else."
  "Yes?" the doctor asked.
  "And I'm just Vicky. There's nobody else  here. See." Vicky rose from the couch, paced the  room, and asked, "Now do you believe me?"
  Vicky sat down again, smiled at the  doctor, and remarked, "That settles the question.  There's no one else here. You're just Dr.  Wilbur, and I'm just Vicky."
  "Vicky," the doctor replied, "we  haven't settled anything. Let's be honest with  each other."
  "But, Dr. Wilbur," Vicky insisted,  "we most certainly have. We've settled the  large, philosophical question of who am I?  I am I. You are you. I think; therefore I am.  There's a Latin phrase for it: cogito  ergo sum. Yes, that's it."
  "We've settled nothing," the doctor  reminded Vicky. "We haven't established the  relationship among Sybil, Peggy Lou, Peggy  Ann, Mary and the others. What ...?"
  "Questions, questions, questions," Vicky interrupted.

"I'd like to ask a question, too. Why do  you have to ask all these questions?"
  After rejecting the logical conclusion toward which  Dr. Wilbur had been trying to lead her,  Vicky contradicted the earlier contention that the  doctor and she were alone, for she said, "Now,  Dr. Wilbur, Mary would like to meet you. She  wants to participate in our analysis, and I  think we should let her."
  "Our analysis?" Dr. Wilbur echoed.  "How can it be "our" if you girls are not the  same person?"
  Vicky chuckled. "I suppose," she said with  what seemed like deliberate ambiguity, "you  might call it group therapy."
  "You agreed you were sisters."  Vicky was quick. "Family therapy, then, if  you insist. Thanks for the correction."
  Then, as surely as if she had physically  left the room, Vicky was gone. A voice that  definitely was not Vicky's remarked  politely, "I'm glad to meet you, Dr.  Wilbur."
  "You're Mary?" the doctor asked.  "Mary Lucinda Saunders
Dorsett," the voice replied.
  It was not the voice of a woman of the world like  Vicky, nor of an angry child like Peggy Lou.  The accent was unmistakably midwestern, soft,  low, and somber. The doctor had not heard that  voice before and knew of Mary only through  Vicky's recapitulation of the sixth grade.
  The doctor motioned Mary to the couch and waited.  Mary was silent. New patient reserve? the  doctor mused. New patient?
  "What do you like to do, Mary?" the doctor  asked.
  "I keep our home going," Mary replied,  "but it's hard to do so much."
  "What do you have to do?" the doctor asked.  "Follow Sybil."
  "What do you do when you follow Sybil?"  "Go where she goes."
  "What else do you do?"
  "Help Sybil."
  "How do you help her?"
  "Practical ways. Subtle ways."
  
  "Such as?"
  "Well, Dr. Wilbur, right now, it's a  practical matter. You probably  know that Sybil and Teddy Reeves--a friend from  Whittier Hall--have just taken an apartment together  on Morningside Drive. You know what a new  apartment involves. At 8:45 yesterday morning  I had to come out to receive the workmen who are putting in  new windows. I had to come out again at 7:15  P.m. because I didn't want Sybil to put  up the new drapes. I feel it's up to me  to keep the home going. And with all the deliveries  we're getting these days, we can't sleep in the  morning. So I had to put up a sign, "Do  Not Disturb," near the downstairs bell.  Sybil and Teddy are doing over the apartment. The  doing falls to me."
  "What else do you do?"
  "It's hard to do anything with that Morningside  barn called a brownstone. How I wish we had  more space. I'd like to have a flower garden, room for  some animals. We just have Capri."
  "You don't like New York?"
  "Not really. But then I don't get around much.  Sometimes I go to a museum or a library.  That's about it. I rarely leave the apartment."
  "What do you do when you're there?"  "Housework. Read. Listen  to music. Do a little painting. Write poetry.  Poetry eases the pain."
  "What pain, Mary?"
  "Oh, I've prayed about how we feel."  "What pain, Mary?"
  "Haven't they told you? Vicky? Sybil?  Peggy Lou?"
  "Not directly. They've talked of the fear of  getting close to people, of music, of hands, of being  trapped, and, by denying mother, Vicky and Peggy  Lou indicate that they fear her. Do you fear her?"
  "I never felt Sybil's mother was mine."  Mary's tone was confidential.
  "What pain, Mary?"
  "You'll know in time. That's why I told  Vicky that I wanted to come today. I want  to help with our analysis. But I feel guilty  about coming. Maybe it's a sin to go to a  psychiatrist."

  "Now, Mary," the doctor said very slowly, very  plainly, "you know that Sybil, Vicky, and
  
Peggy Lou have been coming here for some nine months.  Do you think that anything they've said or done here is  sinful?"
  "I don't know," Mary answered thoughtfully.  "I really don't know."
  "Then why have you come?"
  "That day last month among the dogwoods and the  flowering crab," Mary answered thoughtfully, "you  weren't a psychiatrist. You were a friend. We need  friends."
  "Sybil has friends. Aren't her friends also  yours?"
  "I suppose so," Mary replied, "but only  in a way. Teddy Reeves knows me by name and can  tell me apart from the others, but Laura  Hotchkins thinks I'm Sybil. Most people do, you  know. I'm sometimes very lonely."
  "Then why don't you go out and make friends on your  own, the way Vicky does?"
  "Well, you know how it is," Mary explained.  "For one thing I don't have the clothes for it. I just  wear what I find in our closet, and what  looks well on the others doesn't  necessarily suit me." Mary paused, ducked  her head, and added with a slight, tired smile,  "But then I'm not as attractive as Vicky or  as glamorous as Vanessa. I can't  compete with them. I am what I am."
  It was not until later that Dr. Wilbur  discovered that Mary saw herself as a plump,  maternal, little-old-lady type, not very stylish.  Mary emerged as a homebody, a nest-maker, the  eternal housewife interested in Kinder,  K@uche, Kirche. And although the children didn't  exist, although the cooking was difficult in, as  Mary put it, "one of these city apartments with  kitchens the size of a pencil box," it became  increasingly clear to Dr. Wilbur that what really  caused trouble for Mary was not the absence of  Kinder, the difficulties of K@uche, but  the problems revolving around Kirche. In time the  doctor discovered that the initial "maybe it's a  sin to go to a psychiatrist," etched in deep  hues, reflected church-centered conflicts.

  In dark hues, too, was Mary's account of  grandmother Dorsett. "Grandma died," Mary  told the doctor during the June 15, 1955,  session. "There was no one to take her place.  Sybil didn't mourn for Grandma. Sybil
  
went away. Peggy Lou mourned quietly when  she was by herself. All of us--except Vicky--  mourned for Grandma, but I was the one who  mourned most. After Grandma died, I came out  to mourn for her."
  "Did you come out at the funeral?"  "No," Mary replied, "I wasn't there.  Sybil was nine then. I came when we were ten and  Peggy Lou was in charge of things."
  "How did you get your name?"
  "It's Grandma's name. I look like Grandma,  and I took her name. Grandma Dorsett's son  is my father, and I also look like him."
  Mary began to cry softly. Here, the doctor  reflected, were the tears Sybil didn't shed.  "What's the trouble, Mary?" the doctor asked.
  "Grandma," Mary replied.
  "But, Mary, that was more than twenty years  ago."
  "It's now," Mary answered, shaking her head  sadly. "There is no past. Past is present  when you carry it with you." Later Dr. Wilbur  learned that Mary always hankered for the only real  home she ever knew--Mary Dorsett's home.
  "Mary," the doctor asked as the visit drew  to a close, "I hope you won't resent my  asking, but where are you going when you leave  here?"
  "Home," said Mary. "Home, where I  belong. When I get there I'm going to phone  Daddy. Did Sybil tell you that he and his  wife, Frieda, live in Detroit? I want  to reassure him about many things. You see, Sybil  doesn't show him that she can try harder. I'm the  one who has to show him."
  "But suppose something gets in the way of the  trying?" the doctor asked pointedly. "Shouldn't  you get that something out of the way before you try?"
  "You try," Mary answered firmly, almost  self-righteously. ""In the world's broad  field of battle, you try.""
  The doctor nodded.

"In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!"

  The doctor tried to say something, but Mary,  explaining that the poem was "A Psalm of  Life," by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
  
went right on quoting from it:

"Lives of great men all remind us  We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us,  Footprints in the sands of time!"

  Again the doctor tried to speak. Mary went on  reciting:

"Let us, then, be up and doing,  With a heart for any fate,
Still achieving, still pursuing,  Learn to labor and to wait!"

  Mary's voice broke as she added, "Oh,  poor ... poor ..."
  "Poor what?" asked the doctor.  "Life," Mary replied promptly. "These  bivouacs, where the soldiers are, are bad. We  can't all be heroes."
  "A bivouac," the doctor pointed out, "is not  where the soldiers are. A bivouac is any  encampment."
  "I'm telling you the way it was," Mary  replied with a tinge of irritation. "A word  doesn't matter. The bivouac, where  all of us were, was bad. We were  soldiers in a losing battle. That's the way it  was. Still achieving, still pursuing, we learned  to labor and to wait. We tried to be patient.  We were very good all the time when we were little. We  learned a lot, and we tried and tried and tried.  Sybil tried. I tried. We all tried. But  it didn't work."
  "Mary," the doctor remarked gently, "perhaps  some-

thing stood in the way of the trying. Perhaps the trying will  work when we discover what that something was."
  "So you see," Mary answered, ignoring the  doctor's comment, "you can't always trust the poets.  I don't trust anybody."
  "You trusted grandma?"
  Mary nodded.
  "You trust your father."
  "Yes." The yes was emphatic. "He's an  almost perfect human being." Mary, it was  apparent, loved her father unreservedly.
  "You must trust me, or you wouldn't be here."
  
  "Well, we'll see," said Mary.
  "But what about the trying?" the doctor said,  returning to the question that Mary had evaded.  "Do you think we can find what keeps the trying from  working?"
  "The word is opportunity," Mary replied.  "We have to make the most of our opportunities.  We all want Sybil to do that." It sounded like  an echo of the platitudes of Willow Corners.
  "But, Mary," the doctor persevered, "you still  haven't answered my question."
  "Like the gardener," Mary replied slowly, "we  must pull up the weed and destroy it."
  "That's exactly right," the doctor agreed.  "But what is the weed?"
  "For the soul is dead that slumbers," Mary  recited nonresponsively, "and things are not  what they seem."
  Mary continued to be evasive. For a moment, when  she had talked of pulling up the weed, the doctor  had thought her on the threshold of revealing something  of the nature of the original trauma. But with  poetry as a mask behind which to hide, Mary kept  the trauma obscure. Still, it was the doctor's  distinct impression that Mary, who was thoughtful and  contemplative, did have some access to the  traumatic truth. It seemed clear  to the doctor, too, that, although mournful,  lachrymose, and torn by religious conflicts,  Mary was positive in seeking solutions to the  problems that beset Sybil and Sybil's  selves. It was apparent that Mary had a genuine  desire to destroy the hidden weed.

  The hour was up. Dr. Wilbur walked her  new patient to the door.
  "Do you know "The Egotist," by Sarah  Fells?" Mary asked. "Both Sybil and I  liked it when we were little girls. This is how it  goes:

"In a self-centered circle, he goes round  and round,
That he is a wonder is true;
For who but an egotist ever could be  Circumference and center, too.""

  Who is the circumference, the center? the  doctor wondered. Is Sybil the center or is  one of these others?
  
  The search for the center was complicated further by the  arrival the next day of two selves Dr.  Wilbur had not met before. From the moment  Vicky introduced these newcomers, the consulting  room seemed so alive and there were so many  impressions, that, gazing at the woman beside her,  who at the moment was simultaneously Marcia  Lynn and Vanessa Gail Dorsett, the  doctor, who had thought herself inured to the  surprises that a multiple personality had  to offer, could not refrain from being excited by this  simultaneous sharing of the body. Nor could the  doctor keep from speculating on how so many  diverse characters could simultaneously flourish in the  small, slight frame of Sybil Dorsett.
The thought was fanciful because occupancy was not a  matter of inhabiting space but of sharing being.
  The little that Dr. Wilbur knew about Marcia  and Vanessa had come from Vicky. "Marcia,"  Vicky had said, "feels what Sybil feels    --only more intensely. Vanessa is a tall,  red-haired girl who plays the piano and is  full of joie de vivre. The two have many  tastes in common and enjoy doing things together."
  Yet after she met Marcia and Vanessa, the  doctor knew less about them than about Mary.
  Since the body was now  simultaneously occupied by Marcia  and Vanessa, the doctor wondered how she was going  to be able to tell them apart. But after the first  exchange of pleasantries, she was able to distinguish  one

from the other by the difference in their voices, which, even  though both spoke with English accents in similar  diction and speech patterns, were markedly  individual. Vanessa talked soprano,
Marcia alto. Vanessa's voice had a  lilting, Marcia's, a brooding, quality.
  As she had with Mary, the doctor began their  conversation by asking, "What do you girls like to do?"
  "Travel," said Marcia.
  "Go places," said Vanessa. "We're always  interested in new and different places to see and  things to do. Life is for living."
  Marcia and Vanessa then talked about how they  both enjoyed airplanes, big cities, the  theater, concerts, places of historical interest,  and buying choice books. "We have our own  likes," Marcia explained, "but Vanessa and I
  
enjoy things most when we do them together." It became  clear to the doctor that, just as Vicky and Marian  Ludlow were special friends in the world,  Marcia and Vanessa were special friends within the  "circumference" of Sybil Dorsett.
  "Tell me a little about how you feel,  Marcia," the doctor suggested.
  "You don't know what you're letting yourself in for,  Doctor," Marcia replied with a slight  smile. "You've opened Pandora's box with that  question."
  "Doctor," Vanessa chimed in, "you shouldn't  ask her. She might tell you!"
  "I see you girls have a sense of humor," the  doctor observed.
  "You have to have humor to survive in the Dorsett  clan," Vanessa replied promptly. "Mary,  Peggy Lou, and, of course, Sybil worry so  much that they make life sound like a Russian  novel. It's really comical to watch them. It's  so out of character with the town of Willow Corners, whence  we hail. When I got there, Sybil was  twelve, and I stayed a long time. But I  couldn't stand that town. Honest, you should see it.  God-fearing and man-hating. Sugar. Sugar.  There was so much sugar in the way they pretended  to treat each other that I suffered from  diabetes of the soul."
  "That's a good phrase," Marcia interrupted.  "I never

heard you use it before. Are you sure you didn't  steal it from me? I'm the writer! Why don't you  stick to your piano playing and let me coin the  phrases?"
  "But I'm the one who came up with it. I'm the  one ..."
  "Oh, Vanessa, please. I was only  kidding."
  "Careful," Vanessa cautioned with a satiric  overtone. "As our mother would say, "Kidding is not  a word we use when people are around."" Vanessa's  voice had changed. It was clear that she was  mimicking Hattie Dorsett. Then, turning  to Dr. Wilbur, Vanessa said, "We were never  "kids," Doctor, outside the family  circle. And in the home even the word heck was not  allowed."
  "It's not right to criticize mother," said  Marcia.
  
  "Oh, you make me sick with your clinging. You  never were able to untie the umbilical cord. That's  what they call it, Doctor, isn't  it? That is why this nice lady is going to have  to help you to grow up."
  "Vanessa, please ..." Marcia pleaded.  "It's not a crime to want to be loved."
  "Lands ... lands--I'd say God if I  hadn't been brought up in the Dorsett  household--you sound like a soap opera." Vanessa  punctuated each word with an extravagant  gesture.
  "Vanessa, it isn't fair for you to talk like  that," Marcia replied tearfully.
  "Fair! What do any of us know about  fairness?" Vanessa countered. "Is it fair that  we've been denied what other girls have? Someday  I'll break loose, be on my own, and you, my  dear Marcia, will come with me. You have the taste for  life, the vitality for it, and we've always been  together even though you entered Sybil's life long  before me. Marcia, you'll learn that you can sleep  at night and feel good when you wake up in the  morning only if you will stop looking back. You  remember what happened to Lot's wife!"
  "Vanessa," Marcia pleaded, "you've said  enough. The way we're talking to each  other, the doctor will think we're one  person talking to herself."
  "No," the doctor interrupted, "I understand  perfectly well that you are two different people. I  want both you

girls to feel perfectly free to come here whenever  you like and to say whatever you want to say."
  "When we don't have competition from the others,"  Marcia said mischievously. "Vicky, for  instance. She's pretty smart, and she helps us  out a lot. But she talks too much--almost as much  as Vanessa."
  Then, since the hour was up, the doctor asked,  "What do you plan to do when you leave here?"
  "I'd like to go to International Airport and go  somewhere," Vanessa said without hesitation. "But last  time I did that Peggy Lou gummed up the works.  I was going to buy a ticket for San  Francisco, but she bought one for Cleveland. So  I guess I'll just go home and play a little  Mozart."
  "I'm going home," Marcia volunteered,
  
"to work on my article for Coronet."
  "Now, feel free to come back," the doctor  reminded her patients.
  When they had gone, Dr. Wilbur thought of the  mechanics involved in Vanessa's pounding Mozart  on the piano while Marcia pounded her article  on the typewriter. They were two persons, but they  had, after all, only two hands.
  For three days in a row Marcia and Vanessa  came back, and the doctor began to wonder what  had happened to Vicky, Mary, Peggy Lou, and  Sybil herself. Through the three successive  visits, however, the doctor was able to resolve  her initial incredulity that Marcia and Vanessa,  who seemed so different, were good friends, closely  linked. What linked them, the doctor came  to believe, was that they were equally dynamic.
  Still, there were differences. There was an excitement,  an electric quality about Vanessa, who was  full of energy, used extravagant gestures,  and dramatized everything, that neither Marcia nor  any of the other selves, at least among those the  doctor had met, shared. Marcia was a calmer  version of Vanessa, more somber and brooding. Even  though Marcia could be light-hearted, she was  basically a pessimist. She found escape with  Vanessa or in books, but essentially  she thought of

life as "horrid and futile" and of people as being  "simply awful."
  What Vicky had said about Marcia's sharing  yet intensifying Sybil's feelings seemed  true. What Vanessa had said obliquely about  Marcia and soap operas also seemed true. When  Sybil and the others watched something sad on  television, Marcia was the one who cried. Whenever  a child or dog returned to its home or was taken  back to its parents or found its mother again, Marcia  would weep copiously. And Marcia, who had  criticized Vanessa for criticizing their mother, was  the one who seemed to need her mother most.  "Marcia," Vicky told Dr. Wilbur, "will  weep just because she's lonely for her mother."
  Shortly after Vanessa and Marcia arrived at  the doctor's office for the fourth time, Vanessa  put on a show. "Goodbye, dear," Vanessa said  in dulcet tones, "I'm sorry to be leaving you.  I shall miss you, but I will try to have fun in  Europe. Try, my dear. But it will be hard
  
because I shall miss you." Then, changing her position  and speaking in an aside, Vanessa exploded:  "I can't stand the sight of her. I wish  the bitch would go home and get off this pier."
  Changing her voice and position, Vanessa  slipped into the role of the second woman on the  pier, who was seeing the first woman off. "I'm  sorry you're leaving me, but take good care of  yourself and have a simply marvelous time in  Europe." Then, turning for an aside,  Vanessa, still playing the woman who was not sailing,  muttered with a taut, twisted curve of the lips,  "I hope she drowns!"
  Dr. Wilbur could see clearly the two  women saying goodbye to each other on a pier near  a ship about to depart. The scene was so well done that  the doctor remarked: "Vanessa, you missed your  calling. You should be in the theater."

           Silent Witnesses

  As the summer of 1955 gave place  to autumn, Dr. Wilbur found the analysis  reverting to the spring of 1934, the time of  Sybil's return after the two-year absence between  the ages of nine and eleven. The  bewilderment Sybil had felt had been  compounded by the discovery that for the first time in her life  she no longer was required to sleep in her  parents' bedroom. As this pivotal realization  came into focus, so did the experiences she  endured in that bedroom from the day of her birth to the  age of nine. Those experiences, spanning the years  1923 to 1932, provided a continuum that Dr.  Wilbur saw as the matrix of Sybil's  attitudes toward sex and, perhaps even more  important, as an incubator of the illness itself.

  The evening meal was over on the first day of  Sybil's return in March, 1934. The    Dorsetts were in the living room. Hattie was  reading a volume of Tennyson and listening to the  radio. Willard was absorbed in the pages of  Architectural Forum. Sybil was trying to do  a charcoal sketch, but she found it difficult  to concentrate because of the strange concatenation of events  she had recently experienced.
  "It's time to go to your room, Peggy,"  Hattie ordered.
  
  Sybil was accustomed to being called Peggy, but  she didn't understand her mother's instructions. She  had

never had a room of her own. Always she had  slept in her parents' bedroom.
  Sybil said good night and walked thoughtfully  toward the downstairs bedroom. To her amazement,  the crib was not there. The only bed in the room was the  familiar large white iron bed in which her parents  slept.
  "Peggy Louisiana!" her mother's voice  echoed sharply from the living room. "Aren't you going  upstairs?"
  Upstairs? Sybil didn't know what her mother  was talking about.
  "It's after eight!" her mother's voice had  become sharper. "You won't be able to get up in the  morning. You'll have to answer to Miss Henderson  --not me."
  Upstairs? Some years earlier Hattie had  designated an upstairs bedroom as Sybil's  room. Somehow, however, Hattie had never  gotten around to moving either the crib or Sybil  there. With nothing to lose, Sybil decided to find  out whether that room could be what her mother meant.
  The crib was not in this other bedroom,  either. Instead there was a full-sized bed.  The fresh sheets and pillowcases invited  occupancy. Was the room for company? There was no  company. Could the grown-up bed be hers? Her mother  had sent her there. It had to be. But when had they  given this bed to her?
  Sybil undressed and--for the first time--slept in  an adult-sized bed in a room of her own. It  was the first time that she could remember not having to face  the bedroom drama that was always there.

  No doubt the moment she had first become aware  that merely going to bed at night was profoundly  disturbing could not be fixed by clock or calendar.  The cause of disturbance was always there. Only now,  at last, she discovered, she could go to sleep without  squeezing her eyes shut or turning to the wall.
  The drama from which Sybil rebelliously  removed herself was what, in psychoanalytic  terms, is known as the "primal scene"--a child's  auditory and visual perception of the parents'  sexual intercourse. The scene is called  primal because it is first in time in the sense that

it is the child's first encounter with adult  sexuality and because, as a foundation on which a youngster will  build future feelings, attitudes, and  behavior, it is of first importance of the child's  development.
  For some children there is no primal scene; for many  others there is a moment in which the door opens  slightly, and a child glimpses sexual intercourse  between his parents. Usually the moment is accidental,  inadvertent, and the way a child is affected depends  on the general atmosphere of the home. When  sexual intercourse is made to seem something  private but not forbidden, the effects of this brief  encounter are often free from psychological  damage.
  In Sybil's case the primal scene was no  momentary glimpse, no single accidental moment.  It was always there. For nine years Sybil had  witnessed her parents' sexual intercourse as a  fixed, unchangeable part of life and in marked  contrast to the excessive propriety and coolness  of their daytime behavior.
  By day they never kissed, touched, or addressed  each other by any endearment, either affectionate or  perfunctory. By day there was no display.  The observation of the parental copulation,  moreover, took place in a household in which  sex was regarded as wicked, a form of degradation.  Theirs was a household in which alcohol and  tobacco, dancing and the movies, even novels  (which, because they were "made up," were regarded as  lies) were strictly forbidden.
  The daughter's normal questions about the facts of  life were left unanswered. When Hattie was  pregnant, Sybil was excluded from the "filthy"  truth. When the pregnancy resulted in a  miscarriage and Willard Dorsett buried the  fetus--a boy--alongside the back steps,  Sybil did not know what he was doing or why.  Babies, born or unborn, somehow happened,  but nice people did not admit how.
  There were no hows or whys, only the conversational  assumption of an incorporeal saintliness that,  denying the flesh, consigned it to the devil. "All  men," Hattie counseled her daughter, "will  hurt you. They're mean, worthless." On other  occasions, however, she did say,
  
"Daddy is not like other men." But so saying, she  led Sybil, who had seen the penises of little  boys, to believe that her father didn't have  a penis. With father "castrated" and because of the  negative attitudes toward sex inculcated  within her by day, Sybil was shocked and bewildered  by what she saw and heard at night.
  Riveted to the nighttime lie that represented the  hypocrisy of her formative years, Sybil was  forced to watch a drama from which she could escape  only by closing her eyes and covering her ears.
  The shades were usually halfway down in the  twelve-by-fourteen bedroom. The crib was  placed so that a street light shone in the bedroom  window, silhouetting the penis that Sybil denied  her father had. Three or four nights a week,  year in and year out, from the time Sybil was born  until she was nine years old, parental  intercourse took place within her hearing and vision.  And not infrequently the erect penis was easily  visible in the half-light.
  Observing this primal scene, directly and in  silhouette from the time of their individual  arrivals, the various selves had different  reactions to it.
  Peggy Lou was wakeful, uneasy, but she did  not try to cover her eyes or to keep from  listening.
  "What are you talking about?" she would sometimes  demand to know.
  Hattie would reply, "Go to sleep."
  But instead of going to sleep, Peggy Lou would  strain her ears in the hope of unscrambling what  was being said. She didn't like to have her father and  Sybil's mother whispering about her. They often  whispered about her at the table, and she thought they were  doing the same in the bedroom. Enraged by the  feelings of exclusion engendered by the whispering,  Peggy Lou was also made furious by the rustling of the  sheets. Every time she heard that rustling she wanted  to stop it.
  It had been a relief to have been moved into the  upstairs room shortly after Grandma  Dorsett's funeral and not to have had to hear that  rustling any more.
  Vicky had seen the erect penis in  silhouette on many

occasions. Unafraid, she would turn from the shadow  on the window to the substance in the bed. What
  
happened in bed was not always visible and, when visible,  not always the same. A humped figure, Willard  would sometimes move towards Hattie and  mount her. At other times he would approach her as  they lay side by side.
  In the beginning Vicky thought that perhaps Willard  was going to crush Hattie and kill her, but instead  of dying, Hattie rolled over with Willard.  They embraced. And it went on. Vicky had  decided that if Mrs. Dorsett hadn't wanted  him to do what he was doing, she would have stopped him.  At any rate, Vicky knew that it certainly  wasn't up to her to help Mrs. Dorsett.
  Usually the faces of Mr. and Mrs.
Dorsett were hidden in the darkness. There were times,  however, when the room was light enough for Vicky to see  the faces--tense, strained, transformed,  unrecognizable. Looking back from the vantage  point of later years, Vicky could never decide  whether these were the faces of ecstasy or of some  malign affliction.
  Vicky often felt that perhaps it wasn't right for  her to look. She dismissed the scruple, however,  with the realization of whether or not she looked, she would  have heard anyhow. And she was curious. There was also  something else: Vicky had the distinct impression  that Hattie Dorsett actually wanted  her daughter to look. That "something  else" was that Hattie customarily threw the  sheets back as if to reveal what was happening.
  Marcia feared for mother's safety.
  Mary resented the denial of privacy.  Vanessa was revolted by the hypocrisy of  parents who paraded in their daughter's presence the  sexuality they pretended to deny.
  Watching and listening in that parental chamber of  sexual display was a self called Ruthie, who  emerged in analysis during the reliving of the  primal scene. She was only a baby, perhaps of  three and a half, and she could not give the date of  her arrival in Sybil's life. But of all the  silent witnesses to the parental intercourse it was

Ruthie who was most actively indignant.  Acting in concert with Sybil, who was then of the same  age, Ruthie retaliated against her parents with  undisguised rage.
  When the parents came into the room, Ruthie would  lie very still, pretending to sleep. The pretense would  continue while the parents undressed--Hattie in
  
the bedroom, Willard in the adjoining doorless  bathroom. But when the parents got into bed and her  father moved to her mother's side, Ruthie  would make her presence known. "Go to sleep,  mama," she would call. "Go to sleep, daddy."
  Ruthie was angry because she didn't want her  father on her mother's side of the bed. Ruthie  didn't want her father to whisper to her mother, or  embrace her or breathe heavily with her or  rustle the sheets with her. When he was near her mother  that way, Ruthie felt that he liked her mother  better than he liked her.
  One night, seeing and hearing these things, Ruthie  climbed out of the crib and walked very quietly  toward her parents' bed. In the car Ruthie always  sat in the middle. If she could do that in the car,  she could do it in the bedroom. Climbing onto the  bed, she attempted to get between her parents and  to reclaim her rightful place in the middle.
  Infuriated, Willard jumped naked out of  bed, dragging his daughter with him. He sat down  on a chair, placed the child over his knees, and  spanked her hard. Then he put her back into her  crib and returned to his wife to discover that for  Hattie as for himself interrupted intercourse was  to be followed by interrupted sleep; for, even after  the morning sun had replaced the street  light, the agonized sobs that had  emanated from the crib from the moment the child had been  returned to it had not ceased.
  "Never again," Willard told Hattie.
"I'll never spank that child again. Anyone who  sobs all night takes things too hard."
  Willard Dorsett, who had never spanked his  daughter before and who kept his promise not to spank  her again, did not know that it had been Ruthie and  Sybil who had interrupted the intercourse but  Peggy Lou who

had sobbed all night. The incident had been so  traumatic that Sybil, who had shared the  experience with Ruthie, blacked out and became  Peggy Lou.
  Willard and Hattie Dorsett, of course,  were not so disturbed by a lost night's sleep that they  did not continue to have intercourse in the presence of  their daughter. And Sybil continued, time after time,  to be exposed to this primal scene until she was  nine years old.
  Awakened at times or wakeful and restless,
  
Sybil tried to shut out the insistent rustling of the  starched sheets of the parental bed, the whisperings, the  murmurs, and the silhouettes. The  penis of shadow and substance, which was visible to the other  selves, was an object of denial for Sybil.  She claimed not to have seen her father's penis until  the morning when her father had leaned over the crib  to tell her that Grandma Dorsett had died. At  that moment Sybil had become uncomfortably  aware of the mass of hair on her father's chest.  She had wondered why she was so shocked, and she  realized that it was not because of the hair on the chest. As  a very young child, hadn't she often made a game of  cutting off her father's chest hair? She was shocked  instead because of how far down she could see. Visible  was something from which she turned with aversion. It was partly  concealed, and the closest she could come to describing it  was to say that it was hidden in feathers. It wasn't very  big, but it was bigger than any boy's she had ever  seen. It was a little bigger around than her father's  thumb, but it wasn't long. It sort of hung  down when her father leaned over. In back of it, on  either side, a pair of little lumps was hanging  down. Sybil felt so scared and so awful that at  first she didn't quite grasp what he had said about  her grandmother.
  If Sybil was terrified by her father's  maleness, Willard Dorsett was  equally terrified by his growing awareness of his  daughter's femaleness. She was only two and a  half when he suddenly began insisting that she was  "too big" to sit on his lap, "too big"  to wander in and out of the bathroom while he was shaving.  By the time she was four, she had become "too big"  to cut the hair

on his chest or to put salve on his feet, both  of which activities she had by then been performing for  about a year. Like a metronome, the phrase  too big ticked off the incestuous stirrings in  Willard Dorsett.
  But to be deliberately exposed to the sights  and sounds of her parents' most private sexual  intimacies, Willard and Hattie
Dorsett's daughter--even at the age of nine  --was not too big.

         The Terror of Laughter
  
  When Sybil was six, however, there had been an  interlude away from the white house with black  shutters. For, when the Great
Depression struck, Willard Dorsett  suffered serious reverses, even losing his home.  The house became the property of his sister in  payment of an old debt, and Willard,  virtually penniless, took his wife and daughter  to live on farm land belonging to his parents five  miles outside of Willow Corners.
  The only house on those forty acres of land was  a one-room chicken house, which the Dorsetts  made their temporary home. High on a hill  in undulating country, the new home delighted  Sybil, who found in it surcease from the strange  occurrences in the white house with black shutters  where she had always lived.
  At the farm, which Willard dubbed The Forty,  autumn had yielded to winter and winter to spring.  It had been snowing for three days, but now it had  stopped. Willard Dorsett was putting wood in  the range--it was only March and still cold--and was  talking to

Sybil in his usual soft voice: "We will go  outside and leave Mama alone."
  That meant that they were going back to the  big oak tree at the bottom of the  hill, which they had been sawing before the snow began.  She enjoyed all the things she could do in the house--  coloring with her crayons, playing with her dolls,  making dresses for them, playing with Top, the big  Airedale her cousin Joey had given her, and  reading in the primer her father had bought for her. But it  was good to be going out again.
  "Are we going right away?" she asked.
  "As soon as I look after Mama," her father  said.
  "Mama." He always called her that, but  Sybil herself never said anything except "Mother."  Sybil had stopped saying "Mama" long ago,  when she was a very little girl. Now Sybil was six  and two months, but her father hadn't noticed that her  mother wasn't "Mama" to her anymore.
  That's the way her father was. So handsome, so  bright, so successful until just before coming here--to this  one room on top of the hill. But his nose was in  his work--designing and building all those wonderful  houses, churches, and barns for people. Some folks  called him "master builder." He just didn't have
  
time to notice.
  At the far end of this room, which served as living  room, bedroom, and playroom, there was  a figure that didn't move. Her mother. The  kerosene lamp with which the room was lighted on dark  days was glowing beside her.
  Sybil could see her mother's gray-white  hair, the bun in the back held together by three  bone hairpins and the wisps and loops in front.  Although it was the middle of the afternoon, she was wearing a  dark blue flannel bathrobe and her feet were  encased in gray-felt carpet slippers. Her  hands were straight down and flat at her sides, and  she hung her head so low that you could hardly see  her face.
  The pelican on the piano in the big house in  Willow Corners: her mother was like that, or like the  statue in

the museum in Rochester. Her mother used not to be this  way. She used to think well of herself, ran things,  held her head high. "Hattie Dorsett  holds her head so high," Sybil once  overheard a neighbor say, "that I'm sure that  she wouldn't see a crack in the ground."
  Other things also were different from her mother here and her  mother in Willow Corners. That mother did  things to you; this mother didn't do any-thing.
  Her father had walked over to her mother and motioned  to Sybil. Sybil knew what that meant. She  didn't like doing it, but her father had crippled hands  and couldn't lift her mother by himself. Now that her mother was  like this, she had to help him.
  Her mother didn't pay any attention even though  her father and Sybil were standing over her. She  didn't notice when they lifted her from her chair  onto the white enamel slop jar they kept just for  her. A shadow passed over her father's face  while they waited for her to finish. Then they lifted  her back to her chair, and her father took the jar  outside.
  Sybil was alone with her mother. In Willow  Corners, in the house with black shutters,  Sybil was always afraid to be left alone with her  mother. Here she was not afraid. This mother didn't do  anything to her. She was a forty-seven-year-old  woman who had to be treated like a baby.
  They had to do everything for her mother now. She  couldn't walk to the toilet, which was outside. They  had to dress her and feed her. She swallowed so
  
slowly that even the liquid meals lasted for hours.
  In the big house her mother had cooked, and  Jessie had cleaned. Here there was no  Jessie, and her father cooked, got water from the  spring, and washed clothes in the river. He had to do  everything--with his hands, crippled with the neuritis he  had back in Willow Corners.
  Sybil turned from her mother to Norma, her  doll. "Norma," she said as she put an  extra blanket on her, "I'm going out.  You'll be asleep, so you won't feel lonely."
  "Mama," her father, who had come back, was  telling

her mother, "I'm taking Sybil out with me. Will you  be all right?"
  Why did he talk to her? She didn't hear  him. She didn't hear anything. Her eyes were  open, but when something passed in front of them, they  didn't even blink. Her mother wasn't asleep,  but she didn't hear or see. And she never  answered when they talked to her.
  "Sit down, daddy," Sybil said as she  lifted his fleece-lined jacket from the padded box  he had made for their clothes. The jacket was so  woolly and furry. It looked so nice over his  long trousers. He never wore  overalls, but the men who worked for him in  Willow Corners did.
  When her father sat down, she buttoned the  collar of his shirt and then helped him into his  jacket. She also helped him with his buckled  overshoes. "Foot up," she said.
  It was so nice to be doing this for her father. It was  only after his hands had been crippled that he had  allowed her to do things for him again. When she was little,  he had come home tired after a long day and she had  put sweet-smelling salve on his feet. Then,  all of a sudden he had decided to put the salve  on by himself.
  "Why can't I do it?" she had asked him.  "Didn't I do it right?"
  "Yes, yes, you did it fine," he had  replied, "but you are too big."
  This too big. She couldn't understand it. Was  she too big for her father?
  "All right, daddy," she said, "you can get up  now."
  She put on her red wool coat with the beaver  collar, her brown knit leggings, her overshoes
  
with three buckles, and her red wool stocking  cap. She never looked in a mirror. She  didn't like to look at herself. Her mother  used to say that she had a funny nose.
  "Daddy, I'm ready," she said.
  "Coming," he replied. Then he walked to her  mother's chair. To protect her against the afternoon chill  in case the range did not provide enough heat, he  placed her black coat around her shoulders as if  it were a cape. Then he went out with Sybil.

  Outside everything was white and beautiful. It  had been autumn when they had arrived. Now it was  the beginning of spring. Soon the trees would grow  leaves. Sybil looked forward to that.
  "A beautiful spot," her father had said.  Her sled was outside the door, and her father said,  "When we come back, you can go sleighing." How she  loved sledding down this rounded, snow-clad hill  on which their house stood. She never hit the  furrow. She was careful.
  They passed the woodpile. She loved helping  her father carry wood from that pile. At first he  couldn't pick up the wood or load it in his  arms. She picked up a stick of wood, placed  it across his arms. Her father was weak, and the work was hard  for him. But he did it.
  Sybil thought of that autumn day when  she had come here with her father and mother. She would never  forget that drive. Nobody spoke. Of the three,  she herself, it was clear from the way the others behaved,  cared least about losing their old home. Now and then  she would try to place bits of talk into the long  silences, but she knew that her parents weren't  listening so she, too, finally said nothing. Her mother  did say, though, "A chicken house is only  fit for chickens."
  Her father had replied: "It's clean, and there have  never been any chickens in it." Then her mother's  neck got red all over, and she had sneered:  "No, we're the first. When I married you, I  didn't think you'd turn me into a chicken. Your    sister Clara did this to us. You were silly to let  her." Her father turned away, concentrated on the  driving, and said nothing.
  Her mother didn't sneer anymore. At  Christmas the change had come. Her mother told her  parents and her brothers and sisters in  Elderville, Illinois, that this year they would not  exchange gifts. But the relatives sent things
  
anyway, and her mother, who didn't have the money  to buy anything for them, had become very depressed.  Then she stopped talking, stopped doing  anything.
  Sybil remembered the time they had come just for a  visit. Someday, her father had said, they would build  a

summer house here, and when she was big enough, she  would have her own pony. Then all of a sudden they had  just come. They hadn't built a house, but they had  come anyway. Daddy and Mother hadn't liked it, but  she had. It was much better here than in the big  house.
  It was fun to walk down the hill with her father and with  Top, who had come along with them. He stopped when  they reached the corn crib and the barn on the side  of the hill. The barn had stalls, where they kept a  cow and horses. Sometimes Sybil came here with  her father to hitch horses. She was too little to lift  the harness in place, but when she stood on the  milking stool, she was big enough to help her father  lift it.
  It was nice to be going back to their tree. When  it wasn't snowing, they came nearly every day to saw  at it. She wanted to cut down the whole tree,  but her father said it was so huge that it was not  safe for just the two of them to cut it.  They sawed, took the saw out, and then a man her  father had hired axed the tree. Then they came  back and sawed some more.
  There were lots of trees, oaks and elms.  Beautiful.
  She was now with her father and Top in a plowed  field covered with snow, where the oak tree waited  for them. "Daddy," she said as she placed her hand  on the tree, "it still remembers us."
  "You certainly have a good imagination," her father  said as, smiling, he handed her one end of the cross  cut saw and took the other himself. Together they ran  the saw, and the wood began to give.
  "It's so peaceful here, Sybil," her father  said. She knew he was trying to forget all the things  that made him sad--mother and the rest.
  The sun was bright. She could see their house on  the hill in the sunlight. She and her father continued  to work. They would have lots of wood. She could see  their shadows on the field.
  "I like shadows," she said.
  Suddenly there was something else. She didn't
  
know what. She could feel it. And her father was asking  nervously, "Did you hear that loud laugh?"
  "There's nobody here," she  answered.

  "But did you hear it?" he asked again.
  "I heard it, but I don't know who it is,"  Sybil said as she stared at the silvered field.
  The laugh was repeated. It was shrill, rising  higher. Sybil began to tremble. She knew that    laugh but was afraid to admit that she did. She  had heard the laugh many times in Willow  Corners. The laugh came when she was made to stand  up against the wall. A broom handle struck her  back. A woman's shoe kicked her. A  washcloth was stuffed down her throat. She was tied  to the leg of the piano while a woman played.  Things were put up inside her, things with sharp edges  that hurt. And cold water. She was made to hold  the water in her. The pain, the cold. Each time  worse than before and always that laugh along with the pain.  When she was placed inside a trunk in the attic  she heard that laugh. It was with her again when she was  buried in the wheat crib and nearly smothered.
  The laughter died and did not come again, but that  sharp, shrill sound, coming to her in the March wind,  had ripped away the quiet of the afternoon,  its peace, its happiness gone.
  Sybil looked up. Her mother was on the top  of the hill in front of the house, near the sled.  How? Only a little while ago she was like stone.  At first she didn't move; then Sybil saw  her drop onto the sled in a sitting position.  With knees drawn up, feet on the steering bar,    she pushed backward with her bare hands in the snow.  The sled shot forward down the hill, gaining speed  as it dizzily angled off to the left, straight  toward the furrow of the plowed field under the snow.
  Sybil, shocked and fearful, stood  immobile. Then she stammered, "She'll hit the  furrow. She'll hit the furrow!"
  Her father, whose back was toward the hill, turned  instantly in the direction of Sybil's  petrified gaze and then shouted as he started  running toward his wife, "Don't, Hattie,  don't. Stop!"
  Sybil herself did not run. The laughter had  made her heart stand still, and her whole body  froze with it. She wanted to run not toward the  hill but away from it, but she could not run anywhere.
  
She could not even move.

She knew that some terrible danger would  surely follow the familiar laugh. Was the  Willow Corners mother back?
  Her father was pretty far away now, but Sybil  could hear him calling, "Hattie, Hattie,
I'm coming." Sybil, still standing in the same spot,  could hear herself breathe. Her mother was once again near  and threatening. Her mother was like the dragon she heard  about in church, a dragon breathing fire.
  Sybil should be moving to avoid the fire. She  could not. "Move. Save yourself." The voices:  "You cannot save yourself. You're bad--bad--bad.  That's why your mother punishes you."
  The moving sled moved closer. She could not  move. Her mother's black cape swept the snow  and turned partly white. Black on white.
  Top began to bark, then to move around in  circles, not knowing what to do either. Another shrill  scream. More laughter, closer this time. Then  silence.
  Her mother had hit the furrow. The sled rose  up and threw her off. Her mother was flying through the  air, a big black bird without wings. Her  shadow, moving, zigzagging, was everywhere on the white  snow.
  Then her mother wasn't flying  anymore. She was lying in the plowed field. Her  father was leaning over her, taking her pulse.
  "Daddy!" Sybil screamed.
  Sybil tried to go to them but was stuck to the spot.  Watching her father and mother as if they were far away,  she clutched the saw tightly as if it could give  her comfort and quiet her terror.
  The only sound was the murmuring of the branches  of the trees. Otherwise the field was as hushed as  her mother had been when they had left her in the house  on top of the hill.
  The sun was sinking lower and was about to set.  Sybil let the saw slip from her hand. She had  been clinging to it perhaps because it was the link to the happy  time, the months from Christmas to now, when her mother was  silent and the Willow Corners mother did not exist.

  Sybil stood near the stove while her father  hovered on one knee over her mother in the chair.  He was applying hot packs to her mother's badly  bruised and swollen leg. Her mother was saying,  "I thought sure it was broke. Put on some
  
arnica when you get done with the hot packs."
  "You shouldn't have steered the sled so hard with one  foot, mother. That's what made it go  sideways into the plowed field," Sybil said  softly. Then, turning to her father, she asked,  "How did you get her to the house alone?"
  Looking up into the child's face, her father dryly  remarked, "Well, you helped me pull her  back up the hill on the sled, didn't you?"
  Had she? Sybil only remembered being in the  field, dropping the saw, and then being beside the  stove.
  Now her father was asking, "How do you feel,    Hattie?"
  "I'll live," said her mother.  "Hattie," her father said, "you shouldn't give in  to your moods."
  "I can do what I like," her mother laughed--that  laugh again.
  "Lie down, Hattie," her father said.  "Later, Willard," her mother answered.  "Get water."
  Her father took a pail and went to the spring for  water. Sybil put arnica on her mother's  legs, which were snow white and bony. Her left  leg was turning all colors now; it had marks  all over it.
  "Hurts, mother?" Sybil asked.
  "Well," her mother said, "use your head. What  do you think?"
  "Oh," Sybil said.
  Her father wasn't here. Would her mother hurt her?  Fortunately, her father soon came back with the  water. He bathed her mother's leg and made hot  packs for it. Then he made supper while  Sybil set the table.
  "You're doing it wrong," her mother said. "The  forks are in the wrong place." The Willow  Corners mother had returned.
  Her father took a plate of food over to her  mother.

Her mother laughed and said, "I'm coming to the table.  Help me." Her mother came to the table and sat with  them, for the first time in months, and she fed herself.
  When supper was over, Sybil helped her father  wash the dishes. Then they put more hot packs and  arnica on her mother's leg. Hours passed.  "Time to go to bed, Sybil," her mother said. It was the  first time in a long time that her mother had said that.
  
Sybil didn't move.
  "I told you to go to bed," said her mother. "I  mean now, this minute."
  "What do you want of her, Hattie?" her father  asked. "She's just a youngster. And she was a big  help getting you back here."
  Sybil said nothing. When people said she had done  something she didn't know about, nothing was all she would  say.
  She walked over to her crib, which they had brought  with them from Willow Corners. Her crib, her  dolls, her doll crib, her doll table and her  little chairs--they had brought all her things. She  put on her nightgown and her stocking cap. Her  mother wasn't laughing now, but Sybil could still hear  her mother's laughter coming from the top of the hill. She  could still see that black cape against the white snow.  And then her father bending over her ... how had he  gotten into all this trouble? The loss of the house in  Willow Corners--overnight, as her mother used  to say, from the richest man in town to the poorest.  Why had Satan struck him? Was this the beginning  of the end of the world that her father and grandfather were always  talking about?
  "Sybil, get a move on," her mother  called.
  From her father: "Sybil, rinse this  rag."
  Sybil took the rag, rinsed the rag, and  gave it back to him. He put it on her mother's  leg. Yes, Sybil did things to make her  mother's bruised leg better.

               Hattie

  Learning of Hattie Dorsett's  catatonia at The Forty and of her later  aberrations within the Willow Corners community,  Dr. Wilbur became increasingly convinced that it  was impossible to treat Sybil without having a  fuller understanding of Hattie. Hattie, it was  becoming evident, had forged an intolerable reality  from which Sybil had to defend herself in order  to survive. Even though the doctor, aware that it  was a psychiatric clich`e to make a  scapegoat of the patient's mother, had resisted  pinpointing Hattie Dorsett as a major  cause of Sybil's dissociation into multiple  selves, it was becoming increasingly difficult
  
to resist the notion.
  In late 1956 and early 1957, as Dr.  Wilbur came closer to the source of the  original trauma that had led Sybil to become a  multiple personality, there was little doubt that the  trauma seemed to revolve around her mother. It was  the Willow Corners mother, who returned from  immobility at the farm, on whom the analysis  then turned.

  Sybil scuffed along the cement path of the  alley behind the white house with black shutters as  she approached the Willow Corners Drugstore  for the first time since coming home from the farm.
  The familiar fly-covered screen door with its  high bent-iron handle intrigued her, and standing on  tiptoe, she grasped the piece of iron and  swung wide the door. As she stepped over the  worn wooden threshold, the

acrid odor she had always known behind this special  door assailed her.
  Sybil tried not to breathe, not wanting to inhale  this hated smell. She wanted to hurry through this  back room with its high tables and shelf-lined  walls filled with bottles, glass stoppers,  bowls, herbs, colored liquids, and  white powders, the room in which medicines  were made by the white-coated, tall, slightly  bent, old Dr. Taylor, whom Sybil had  known since memory began for her. But she could not  hurry, could not move her feet to make the  transition from back room to "up-front," where  the drugstore blended shelves of medicines with  huge glass cases of penny candies, dolls,  combs, and hairbows.
  Sybil's eyes sought the open wooden  stairway standing between the room she had entered from the  alley and up-front. The stairs led to the  fascination of her childhood--the great, bewildering  "something" known as Dr. Taylor's balcony.  None entered there unbidden, and few were bidden. It  was the doctor's retreat.
  Following the hand rail of the stairs, Sybil  looked hopefully for Dr. Taylor's  white-haired figure near the high ceiling. She  couldn't speak, couldn't ask, but breathlessly she  hoped for the druggist's notice of her. Pausing  between hated odors and adored soft-voiced  invitations, she saw the druggist's kind, wrinkled
  
face peer over the rail of the balcony. Dr.  Taylor smiled and said, "Come on up,  Sybil. It's all right."
  Swiftly, with toes barely touching the steps,  Sybil raced to the top, where abruptly she  stopped, hand on rail and eyes wide with  anticipation and delight. Hanging on the walls  and lying in parts on work tables were the violins, the  music makers of Dr. Taylor's creation.
  Here was the special music reached through a  special door, the music accompanied not  by pain, as it was for her at home, but by friendship and the  comforting softness of the druggist's voice. Smiling,  Dr. Taylor played a little on his violin, and  Sybil entered her private world of dreams.  "Someday when you are bigger," the doctor  promised, "I shall make a violin just for you. You  shall play music, too."

  Sybil dreamed of music and also of  pictures. She could see trees, dark trees,  white trees. She could see horses running and  all kinds of chickens. The chickens were all of  different colors. Some had blue legs. Others  had red feet and green tails. She drew these  chickens, and although her mother reminded her that chickens  were white, plain black, or brown,
Sybil continued to draw chickens as  expressions of the feelings her mother denied. And  Dr. Taylor had said: "You shall play music,  too."
  At that moment a voice, sharp, loud, and  shrill, was heard from the bottom of the stairs. It  was her mother's voice, calling. Her mother, who  seldom let Sybil out of her sight, had  followed her here. Quickly Sybil took her  leave of Dr. Taylor, descended the stairs,  and appeared at her mother's side.
  As Sybil and her mother approached the drug  counter, a clerk remarked, "I told you, Mrs.  Dorsett, you'd find her with Dr. Taylor."  While the clerk was wrapping the bottle of  medicine for which Hattie had left a  prescription, Sybil rested her elbow on the  counter and her head on the hand of her upraised arm.  Inadvertently her elbow knocked against a  bottle of patent medicine that had been left on  the counter. The bottle crashed to the floor, and the  crash of glass made Sybil's head throb.
  "You broke it," came her mother's accusing
  
voice. Then there was her mother's contemptuous  laugh. Sybil panicked, and panic produced  a sensation of dizziness that made the  room swirl.
  "You broke it," her mother repeated as she  grasped the iron handle and swung wide the door  with its complaining creak of rusty hinges. As her mother  and she stepped over the threshold into the alley, the  odor suddenly assumed the coloration of all the  hated medicines her mother had poured into the child. The  short walk along the alley, so filled with  expectation minutes before, became a prisoner's  walk.
  Hattie turned abruptly from the alley into the  street, and Sybil wondered where they were going this  time; for many were the walks with her mother that Sybil  would rather not have taken.

  Hattie walked briskly toward the wagons  that the farmers brought to town, lined up for four or  five blocks along Main Street. Sybil's  mother approached the wagons after the farmers had  left them and helped herself to peas and corn, which she  put in her apron. Other people did this, too, but  Sybil was embarrassed because her father had said it was  stealing.
  "Now you get some, too," her mother  ordered, but Sybil refused, as she  also did when her mother asked her to get tomatoes  from the Tomley's vegetable garden or apples,  asparagus, lilacs, or some other produce from  the loading platforms behind the stores. Even though  her mother explained that the items stolen never would be  missed because the owners had more than they needed, or that  the products on the loading platforms were out in the  sun and would spoil anyway, Sybil felt it was  wrong to steal. It continued to seem wrong even when  her mother explained to the farmer, the storekeeper, or  the neighbor: "I didn't have a chance to ask if  I could have some. But you have plenty, and I'm sure  you won't mind."
  It somehow seemed especially wrong that afternoon,    as, leaving the wagons, Sybil and her mother went  to the fruit and vegetable garden belonging to the  Bishop family. Her father had warned her mother  to leave the neighbors' property alone.
  "Let's get some," Hattie suggested  conspiratorially as Sybil walked with her toward  the Bishops' rhubarb stalks. Hattie bent  over the stalks, but Sybil hung back. "You'd
  
be the first to eat the rhubarb pie," Hattie  taunted as she pulled the best stalks. But neither  then nor at any other time could Sybil  eat the rhubarb pie or reconcile herself to the  fact that the Willow Corners mother had returned.
  This was the mother who embarrassed Sybil not only  on the streets but also at church functions. On  these occasions Hattie would be loud. Willard would  caution, out of the side of his mouth, "Don't say  that," and Hattie would announce loudly  to everybody, "He says I shouldn't say that."
  "It was unbelievable," Vicky stated in  analysis. "The

things Mrs. Dorsett did. Who would have thought that  a woman of her background would make a  spectacle of herself at church or turn out to be  a Fagin? But Fagin she was in wanting us  to cooperate with her in taking things. Not one of us  ever did. Not one!"
  But there was a feeling that Hattie also awakened  that went deeper than embarrassment. That emotion was  shame--the raw, naked feeling of a daughter's  watching her mother's voyeuristic peering into other  people's windows or her gossiping about the sexual  peccadillos of persons who came from what she  called the "lower crust."
  "Hattie Dorsett is odd,"  declared the townsfolk of Willow Corners. But,  if by virtue of her filching neighbors' rhubarb  stalks, or being loud at church functions, or  spontaneously getting up from her table to do a  solo dance in a restaurant where there was no  music or dancing, Hattie Dorsett  qualified as "odd," other public performances in  which she indulged had to be described as "crazy."
  There were, for instance, Hattie's nocturnal  escapades. Sometimes, as the shades of evening  drew on, or after supper, she would summon  Sybil with a brusque, "We're going for a  walk." Filled with intense foreboding and dread because  she knew what was coming, Sybil at the ages of  three, four, and five would quietly follow her  mother out of the house and walk apprehensively through the  town.
  The walk, which began as a casual stroll, was  destined to become a demonic ritual. For, with  her head held high and her carriage proud, as  befitted the daughter of the mayor of Elderville  and the wife of one of the wealthiest people in Willow
  
Corners, Hattie Anderson Dorsett  advanced from the sidewalk, the lawn, or the  backyard, to the bushes. Watching,
Sybil cringed with repugnance as her mother pulled  down her bloomers, squatted, and with ritualistic  deliberateness and perverse pleasure defecated  on the elected spot.
  Election it was, and besmirchment was a badge  of honor. For these escapades of Hattie  Dorsett were part of a grand design to single out the  town's elite for her

hostility and contempt. During the years in which the  escapades took place--1926, 1927, and  1928--the Stickneys and Mrs. Vale vied with  Willard Dorsett for the title of the wealthiest  person in town. As editor of the newspaper of which  Hattie was an unpd stringer, Harrison Ford was  Hattie's superior. And so Hattie chose  for the expression of her defecatory contempt  locally prestigious targets that threatened her own  feelings of omnipotence. Converting the more normal  "I shit on you all" into an actual performance,  she responded in the manner of a psychotic,  acting upon the power of the unconscious, which regards  all secretions as gifts of power.
  Hattie Dorsett didn't  silently hypothesize that her feces were  directed at the Stickneys, Mrs. Vale,  or Harrison Ford, or for that matter at  Willard Dorsett, when she similarly performed  in the basement of his (and her) house. Hattie  deliberately defecated on the property of her  victims, at the very spot on which her contempt could  be concretely symbolized. It was an act of  psychotic cruelty, manifesting the wish of the  unconscious to pour upon special persons its  fecal wrath.
  Neither the Stickneys, nor Mrs. Vale,  nor Harrison Ford, nor Willard
Dorsett, nor the town itself seemed to notice.  When Sybil had pleaded, "Mother, someone will see  you," Hattie had invariably retorted,  "Rubbish." And for whatever reason--perhaps the  Dorsetts' prestige in the town--"rubbish" it  seems to have been, since the town of Willow  Corners apparently never made any attempt  to bring Mrs. Willard Dorsett into line.
  The town seems also to have been unaware of  Hattie Dorsett's incredible performances on
  
Sundays when she babysat with a flock of little  girls whose parents were at church.
  On the surface, nothing could be more  virtuous, more harmless, more publicly maternal  than to care for one's neighbors' children, and in fact  the games Hattie played with these little girls  did begin innocently enough.
  "We're going to play horsey," she would  tell them as

she got down on all fours and encouraged them to do  likewise.
  "Now lean over and run like a horse." As the  children squealed with delight at the prospect,  Hattie would motion them to begin. Then, while the  little girls, simulating the gait of horses,  leaned over as they had been instructed, Hattie,  from her perch on the floor, revealed the real  purpose of the "game." Into their vaginas went her  fingers as she intoned, "Giddyap, giddyap."  Watching, Sybil and the other selves responded  with the same intense shame they had experienced during  the pilgrimages of defecation.
  The perversity that was more than "oddness" was also  evident one afternoon when Peggy Lou, looking  into Hattie and Willard's bedroom, saw  Sybil's mother nude on the bed with a  baby boy between her legs. Sybil's  mother was lifting the baby up and down with her hips and  rubbing him between her thighs. The eighteen-month-old  boy was a neighbor's child for whom Hattie was  babysitting. Peggy Lou furrowed her brow and  thought, as she told Dr. Wilbur in  analysis, "What Sybil's mother was doing  wasn't nice." Then Peggy Lou, glad that  Hattie was not her mother, slipped silently  away from the room.
  Shame there was, too, when Sybil walked  through the woods to the river with her mother and her mother's  three teenage friends. All three--Hilda,  Ethel, and Bernice--came from "the lower crust,"  and Hattie let it be known that her fraternizing with  them was a form of social service.
  Sybil never saw her mother and father kiss or  hold hands by day. But as Sybil walked to the  river, she saw her mother do such things with these  special friends. At the river her mother would say,  "You wait here while we go behind the bushes to get  into our suits." Sybil, who was already wearing her  bathing suit, waited. The first few times that her
  
mother went behind the bushes Sybil didn't pay  any attention to how long it took before her mother and  her friends returned.
  Then one day Sybil began to feel uneasy  as, wading along the edge of the river on the sloping  shore, she

realized that her mother and the girls had stayed behind the  bushes longer than was required to get into their  bathing suits.
  Sybil didn't dare call to her mother, but she  decided to walk around the bushes in the hope that she  would be noticed. The woods were silent, but, as she  reached the bushes, she heard soft voices--the  voices of her mother and her friends. What were they  saying? What were they doing? Why were they taking so  long? Overwhelmed by curiosity, Sybil pushed  aside some leaves to see.
  Her mother and the girls were not getting into their  suits, which were lying in a heap. Her mother and the  girls were not standing. Their dresses, pulled up,  were tucked above their waists. Naked from the waist  down, mother and the girls were lying on the ground, their  hands intermingling, their buttocks visible. Fingers  moving. Palms stroking. Bodies gyrating.  Ecstatic expressions. Everybody seemed to be  holding somebody. Her mother was holding  Hilda. Her mother's hands were at
Hilda's crotch.
  The horsey games, Sybil thought as she  turned away and walked slowly back to the edge  of the river. At the age of three Sybil could  think of no other description for the mutual  masturbation, the lesbian encounter, that she had  witnessed.
  Silent witness she was, on that shore, for  three successive summers. Each time she would  wade in the river, play with the rocks, and either  glimpse the scene behind the concealing bushes or  wait without looking for its cessation. How she  wished her mother and the girls would hurry!

              Battered Child

  In early 1957 the analysis unfolded a  drama of cruelty, secret rituals,  punishments, and atrocities inflicted  by Hattie on Sybil. Dr. Wilbur became  convinced that the taproot of Sybil's dissociation
  
into multiple selves was a large, complicated  capture-control-imprisonment-torture theme that  pervaded the drama. One escape  door after another from cruelty had been closed,  and for Sybil, who was a battered child four decades  before the battered child syndrome was medically  identified, there had been no way out.
  Normal at birth, the doctor speculated,  Sybil had fought back until she was about two  and a half, by which time the fight had been literally  beaten out of her. She had sought rescue from without  until, finally recognizing that this rescue would be  denied, she resorted to finding rescue from within.  First there was the rescue of creating a pretend world,  inhabited by a loving mother of fantasy, but, the  doctor hypothesized, being a multiple  personality was the ultimate rescue.
By dividing into different selves, defenses against  not only an intolerable but also a dangerous  reality, Sybil had found a modus operandi for  survival. Grave as her illness was, it had  originated as a protective device.
  At the farm the mother against whom Sybil had  to defend herself had been immobilized by what  seemed to Dr. Wilbur to be the catatonic  phase of schizophrenia. But the return  to Willow Corners had brought with it the  mother who, no longer immobilized, was  again

threatening. Reality again became dangerous, and  once again Sybil sought her customary means of  coping.

  At the moment Hattie Dorsett had  taunted, "You'd be the first to eat the rhubarb  pie," Sybil, in anger, had blacked out  into Peggy Lou.
  Returning home with Sybil's mother, Peggy  Lou went into the sunroom to play, shut the door,  and began to act as if Hattie Dorsett did  not exist. Peggy got out her crayons, sat on  the linoleum, drawing and singing a song that her father  had taught her: "A train's acomin' 'round the  bend, all loaded down with Harrison's men,  goodbye, my lover, goodbye."
  When Hattie shouted, "Stop that infernal  noise," Peggy Lou went right on singing. "You have  to find something you like besides music and all these  colors," Hattie pontificated as she
  
swung wide the sunroom door. "It's not like that  when you grow up. It's not all sunshine and singing and  pretty colors. There's always thorns  in the roses." And at that moment Hattie  punctuated what she was saying by stamping her foot  on her daughter's box of crayons.
  Peggy Lou went on singing and, unable to use the  broken crayons, turned to her dolls. Peggy  Lou, who could get angry, could also defy  Sybil's mother.
  Sybil returned shortly before supper and, when  her father suggested, "Why don't you go color a  while?" replied, "My crayons got  broken."
  "These new ones, already?" Willard asked.  "Sybil, you have to learn to take care of things."
  Sybil said nothing because she knew nothing of how  the crayons had gotten broken.
  The Willow Corners mother laughed when there was  no reason for laughter and didn't allow her  daughter to cry when there was cause for tears.
  Ever since Sybil could remember, the laughter  --cacophonous, wild--had accompanied a  special brand of matinal maternal ministration.  Beginning when Sybil was only six months old,  this special ministration continued throughout early  childhood. In the early morning after  Willard Dorsett had gone to work and  she was

alone with her child for the day, the Willow Corners mother  began to laugh.
  "We don't want anyone looking in, spying  on us!" Hattie would say as she locked the  kitchen door and pulled down both door and window  shades.
  "I have to do it. I have to do it," Hattie  muttered, as with the same ritualistic  deliberateness with which she indulged her aberrations in  the community, she placed her daughter on the  kitchen table. "Don't you move," the mother enjoined  the child.
  What followed was not always the same. A  favorite ritual, however, was to separate  Sybil's legs with a long wooden spoon, tie  her feet to the spoon with dish towels, and then string    her to the end of a light bulb cord, suspended from  the ceiling. The child was left to swing in space while  the mother proceeded to the water faucet to wait for the  water to get cold. After muttering, "Well,
  
it's not going to get any colder," she would fill  the adult-sized enema bag to capacity and  return with it to her daughter. As the child  swung in space, the mother would insert the enema tip  into the child's urethra and fill the bladder with cold  water. "I did it," Hattie would scream  triumphantly when her mission was accomplished.  "I did it." The scream was followed by laughter,  which went on and on.
  These early morning rituals also included  unneeded enemas, which Hattie gave her daughter  with frightening frequency. Almost invariably it was an  enema of cold water administered from an  adult-sized bag, containing about twice as much  water as would normally be given to a child or infant.  After the enema Hattie insisted that the child walk  around the room holding in the water. This resulted  in severe cramps. But if Sybil cried,
Hattie would beat her and say, "I'll really  give you something to cry about."
  The ritual was not complete until Hattie  had warned, "Now don't you dare tell anybody  anything about this. If you do, I won't have to punish  you. God's wrath will do it for me!"
  With frightening frequency, too, during infancy  and childhood, Hattie would force her daughter  to drink a  glass full of milk of magnesia.
Sybil would get cramps. Hattie would pick  up the child, allowing the legs to hang straight. The  cramps would become more severe. When Sybil  pleaded to go to the bathroom, Hattie made her go  to the bedroom instead. Hattie made Sybil  soil herself and then punished the child for doing what  Hattie had made her do. Sybil began  to cry. Then Hattie tied a towel around  Sybil's mouth so that grandmother Dorsett, who  lived upstairs, would not hear the cry. Fearing the  towels, Sybil also was afraid to cry. By the time  she was three and a half she no longer did cry.
  There was still another morning ritual with which  Hattie Dorsett took great pains. After  placing Sybil on the kitchen table, Hattie  would force into the child's vagina an array of objects  that caught the mother's fancy--a flashlight, a  small empty bottle, a little silver box, the  handle of a regular dinner knife, a little silver  knife, a buttonhook. Sometimes the object was  her finger, performing as it did when she bathed the child and  scrubbed so zealously that at two and a half the child
  
locked the door and tried to bathe herself.
  "You might as well get used to it," her mother,  inserting one of these foreign bodies,  explained to her daughter at six months or at  six years. "That's what men will do to you when you grow  up. They put things in you, and they hurt you, and they  push you around, and they hurt you, and you can't stop  them, and when they get tired of one woman, they  get another. So I might as well prepare  you."
  Hattie prepared her daughter so well that  Sybil's hymen was severed in infancy, and her  vagina was permanently scarred. The preparation was  so effective, moreover, that a gynecologist  who examined Sybil when she was in her twenties  stated that, because of the internal injuries, she would  probably never bear a child.
  Sybil fought back at first even though her  mother's "I have to do it" led her to think that this was indeed  something that had to be done. Too, although the fight was  literally beaten out of Sybil by the time she was two  and a half, she blamed not the perpetrator of the

torture but its instrument: the flashlight, the  towels, the silver box, the shoe buttonhook.
  "Sybil," Willard Dorsett said one
Sabbath morning as the family was getting  ready for church. "I don't see why  you scream so every time we put those shoes on you."
  To Hattie, Willard remarked, "Mama,    we'd better get her new shoes."
  Willard Dorsett didn't know that it hadn't  been the white kid shoes that made Sybil  scream. He didn't know that in the Dorsett  household the buttonhook had uses unrelated  to the buttoning of shoes. Hidden from Willard,  concealed from the world beyond the drawn shades, these  sadistic tortures remained nameless.
  These tortures, of course, had nothing to do with  what Sybil had done. When Hattie
Dorsett actually wanted to punish her  daughter, there were other means. Then Hattie would  slap her daughter and knock the child to the ground.    Or Hattie would fling Sybil across the room,  once sufficiently violently to dislocate one  of the child's shoulders. Or Hattie would give  Sybil a blow on the neck with the side of her  hand, on one occasion severely enough to fracture  Sybil's larynx.
  A hot flat iron was pressed down on the
  
child's hand, causing a serious burn. A rolling  pin descended on Sybil's fingers. A drawer  closed on Sybil's hand. A  purple scarf was tied around Sybil's neck    until she gasped for breath. The same scarf was  tied around her wrist until the hand became blue  and numb. "There's something wrong with your blood,"  Hattie pontificated. "It will get better."
  Sybil was tied with dish towels to the scrolled  piano leg while her mother played Bach,  Beethoven, Chopin. The binding sometimes took  place without the preamble of other tortures, but  on other occasions Hattie would first fill the child's  rectum or bladder with cold water. With the pedals  of the piano pushed down, Hattie would pound the  instrument as hard as she could. Vibrations in the head  and reverberations in the full bladder or rectum  created physical agony and emotional horror.

Unable to endure, Sybil would almost invariably  allow one of her other selves to emerge.
  Sybil's face and eyes were bound with dish  towels, and the "blindfold" game served as punishment  for the child's having dared to ask some question to which the mother's  answer was, "Anyone could see that who isn't  blind. And I'll show you what it's like to be blind."  The result was that Sybil feared blindness,  and later, when she suffered vagaries in  her vision, she was terrified.
  There were times when Hattie showed Sybil what  it's like to be dead, when she put the child in the trunk  in the attic and closed the lid or stuffed a damp  wash rag down Sybil's throat and put  cotton in Sybil's nose until the child lost  consciousness. When Hattie threatened to put  Sybil's hands in the meat grinder and chop the  fingers off, Sybil couldn't be sure whether or not  the threat was real. Her mother threatened to do lots of  things; later she did them.
  There were times, however, when it was not Sybil but the  china, the linens, the piano, or books that were the  butt of Hattie's obsessive frenzy. At  these times Hattie Dorsett, who, before Sybil  went to school, spent virtually twenty-four  hours a day in her daughter's presence, didn't  know that the child was there. Completely self-absorbed  and apparently fixated in fantasies of her  late father, Hattie would sit, stroking and  smelling by the hour the quilted smoking jacket that  had belonged to him. When she wasn't holding it,
  
she kept it sealed in a box.
  Or she would wash and polish the Haviland china  that, seldom used, needed neither washing  nor polishing. She would arrange and rearrange,  unfold and refold the linens. She would sit at  the ornately ornamented Smith and Barnes upright  piano to the left of the window in a rather dark corner  of the living room, playing Chopin and Beethoven.  She would put records on the phonograph,  insistent that they had always to be played from the beginning  and in sequence. It was heresy and a violation of her  code to play the fourth movement of a symphony,  for instance, without having preceded it by movements one  through three.

  Hattie would also pace the floors, reciting  passages from "Evangeline," "The Village  Blacksmith," Ivanhoe, and other poems and  novels. A line or a passage would amuse  Hattie, and she would laugh and laugh. Sybil  would ask what was funny, but Hattie would continue  the recitation, intended for nobody except herself.  "Mother, what kind of buttons should I put on  my doll's dress?" Sybil would ask.
  "My Haviland dishes are just like mama's,"  Hattie would reply. "Some day I'll have  mama's because they match mine. I just  love the pattern of those dishes."

  The walls of this prison house began to close  in during Sybil's infancy.
Eleven-month-old Sybil, strapped in a high  chair in the kitchen, played with a rubber kitty and a  rubber chicken. While Hattie entertained herself  at the piano in the living room, Sybil bounced  first the kitty and then the chicken. When both fell  to the floor, Sybil struggled to free herself and to go  after them. Unable to make any headway, she could  only cry. But Hattie went on playing and    singing, refusing to untie the infant's "chains."  "The more Insistent the cries, the louder the jailer  played to drown out the intrusion.
  When the prisoner in the high chair was old enough  to crawl, she managed to achieve an early  retribution over her mother. Playing on the  speckled linoleum floor in the sunroom,  Sybil watched one morning as Hattie left the  house to go to the store. Then Sybil made her  way into the living room and to the piano, where she  scattered Hattie's sheet music over the
  
room. Returning to find Sybil placidly  sitting in the sunroom, Hattie never connected  Sybil with the sheet music's dispersal.
  The child had other means of fighting back. When  her mother tripped Sybil, who was learning to walk,  Sybil refused to learn; she sat on the floor  and slid. Having precociously spoken her first  sentence, "Daddy, shut the barn door," at ten  months, Sybil began belatedly to walk, at  two and a half.
  Retaliation against her mother was easier in these  earliest years of life because even in prison there  were friends. It was not her mother but grandmother who

took care of Sybil during the infant's first  six weeks of life, during which Hattie, who  suffered postpartum depression after the birth, was  unable to care for the child. Grandmother Dorsett  returned to help Willard care for Sybil  later when the infant developed a disease of the  middle ear. Hattie, unable to stand the crying, again  abdicated the mother's role. The ear "broke"  while the infant was resting on Willard's shoulder  with her infected ear toward the hot stove. Her  grandmother again went away, her mother came back, and the  infant connected surcease from pain with her father.
  When Sybil was two and a half,  love returned in the person of
Priscilla, a maid who later cared for the child  while Hattie devoted her time to grandmother  Dorsett, who had had a stroke. Sybil  loved Priscilla second only to her grandmother.  One day Sybil said, "I love you"  to Priscilla. Hattie, overhearing the remark,  said, "Well, you love mama, too, don't  you?"
  Sybil turned around to where Hattie was standing,  polishing some Haviland china. Sybil put her  arms around Hattie's neck and said yes. Pushing  Sybil away, Hattie said, "Oh, you're  too big to act like that."
  Observing that Mrs. Dorsett was being  "cross" with the child, Priscilla spread her arms  toward Sybil in a gesture of inclusion.  Sybil ran over and took hold of  Priscilla's hand. Priscilla said that  Sybil could help her, that Sybil could do the  dusting, and that they'd prepare the noonday meal  together. Sybil had Priscilla and felt she  didn't need her mother.
  
  As Sybil grew older, however, the  interludes of her grandmother and of Priscilla ended,  and her mother steadily took over the  helm. The stage for repression was set as  Sybil, commanded not to tell, not to cry, lest she be  punished, kept everything to herself. Sybil learned  not to fight back because by fighting she evoked further  punishments.
  What did survive, however, was the fascination  of new experiences, of creativity, of making  things. Often the creativity, as in the case of  drawing the chickens with red feet and green tails,  also led to head-on collisions between mother and child.

  One afternoon when Sybil was four, she pasted a  face she had clipped from McCall's  magazine on some tin foil and put some red  Christmas cord on it. Delighted with what she  had made, she ran into the kitchen to show her new  creation to her mother. "I thought I told you not to run  in the house," Hattie said as she placed a pan  in the oven.
  "I'm sorry," said Sybil.
  "Well, you better be," said Hattie.  "Look, mother," Sybil said as she proudly  held up her handiwork.
  "I don't have time to look at it  now," said Hattie. "I'm busy.
Can't you see I'm busy?"
  "Look what I made. It's for our  Christmas tree."
  "Well that's just a magazine and some tin  foil," Hattie sniffed.
  "I think it's pretty," Sybil said, "and  I'm going to hang it on the tree."
  "Well, I'm busy," said Hattie.
  Then Sybil hung the ornament she had made  on the tree that stood near the piano in the living  room. She looked at what her mother had belittled,  and she herself was, nevertheless, proud of having made  it. "Mother, come look," she called, as she went  back into the kitchen.
  "I don't have time."
  "Come on."
  Then all of a sudden Hattie stopped what she  was doing and looked at Sybil. Hattie asked:  "You didn't go hang that on the tree after I said  that?"
  Sybil wanted desperately to get the  ornament off the tree before her mother saw it. But
  
standing at the tree, her mother was already calling, "You  come here this minute and get that thing off that tree."
  Sybil stood still.
  "Do you hear me?" Hattie was standing next to the  tree.
  "I'll take it off in a minute," Sybil  promised.
  "Don't you say "in a minute" to me,"  Hattie's voice rasped.
  Sybil was trapped. If she obeyed, she had  to go to

the tree, where Hattie stood ready to hit her.  If Sybil didn't go, she would be hit for  disobeying. Deciding on the former, Sybil pulled  the ornament down quickly and, eluding her mother, ran  toward the door. Hattie started after her  daughter. Sybil ran faster. Her mother's  menacing, "Don't you run in this house," echoed  everywhere. Sybil wondered whether she should keep  running or stop. If Sybil stopped, her mother  would hit her because of the Christmas ornament. If  Sybil ran, her mother would hit her for running.  Entrapment was complete.
  Stopping, Sybil received a swift, sharp blow  on the right cheek.
  So there were bad days, but there also were good  days--such as the one when the Floods  visited. As the Floods--Pearl, Ruth,  Alvin, and their mother--were leaving in their sleigh,  Sybil waved goodbye from the porch steps. The  sleigh faded from sight, and Sybil turned to go  back into the house. She had been happy that afternoon  as she played on the sunroom floor with Ruth and  Pearl, who were older than she. She was only  three and a half, but they played with her and taught  her many things. Pearl had made Sybil's  doll, Betty Lou, walk.
  Still holding Betty Lou in her arms, Sybil  went into the sunroom. Hattie came after her and  said, "Get that doll out of your hands. I want  to get your sweater off."
  But Sybil didn't want to put the doll  down. It had been a wonderful afternoon, and she had  discovered many things. She had learned how to make  Betty Lou walk.
  "I want to show you how Betty Lou walks,"  Sybil told her mother.
  "I don't have time," Hattie bristled. "I  have to get supper ready for daddy. Now put your
  
doll down this minute. I want to get your
  sweater off."
  As her mother was taking off the sweater, Sybil  bubbled, "I like Pearl. She's fun."
  "I don't have time," her mother replied as she  hung the sweater on a hook in the kitchen.
  Sybil had followed her mother out of the sunroom  and

into the kitchen, still trying to talk about the afternoon's  events. Her mother began preparing supper. As she  took some pots and pans out of the cupboard, the  blue sweater, placed hastily on the hook,  fell to the floor. "When I turn my back  to you," her mother said, "see what happens. Why  did you pull that sweater down? Why can't you  behave yourself? Why must you always be bad, you bad,  bad girl?"
  Her mother picked up the sweater, turned it over  in her hand, scrutinizing it. "It's dirty," she  finally announced in the tone of a doctor making an  important diagnosis. "Mother always keeps you  clean. You're a dirty girl."
  Sybil felt her mother's knuckles hitting  her hard on the side of her head over and over  again. Then her mother shoved her onto a little  red chair. It was the chair on which she  had been sitting the time her grandmother had come  downstairs, wanting to talk to her and her mother, and  her mother had said, "Grandma, please don't go  near Sybil. She's being punished." And her  grandmother had not come near.
  The little red chair was in front of a mantel  clock. Sybil was not big enough to tell time, but she  could see where the big hand was and where the little hand was.  At this moment the big hand was on 12 and the little hand  on 5.
  "It's just five o'clock," her mother said.  It was such a wonderful afternoon, Sybil thought as  she sat in the little red chair, not daring to move, and  she had to go and spoil it. I had so much fun that  I was sorry Alvin couldn't play on the floor  with the girls and me because we were playing with dolls and  he is a boy. He was left out. It is awful  to be left out.
  Her mother had been so kind to the Floods. She  gave them all kinds of things: food for Mrs.  Flood, mittens for Pearl, leggings for Alvin.  Her mother also gave them two games that Sybil  had never really used, never really had a chance
  
to play with. That was all right because she liked the  Floods.
  Sybil looked at the mantel clock. The  little hand was now on 6. She called to tell her  mother.

  "I didn't ask you," her mother answered  sharply. "For that you sit there five minutes more, you  dirty girl. You made the sweater dirty, and you  have a dirty mouth."
  "What did I do?" Sybil asked.
  "You know perfectly well what you did," her  mother replied. "I have to punish you to make you good."
  Sybil didn't want to think of herself, sitting  on that little red chair, watching the clock. But she  often thought about it. Whenever she did, she managed  to turn right away from it.
  "Why must you always be bad, you bad, bad  girl?" her mother asked.
  The "y" confused Sybil. The "bad" made  her wonder. She didn't think anything she did  that day was bad.
  Sybil told no one about the day of the blue  sweater, but thoughts of that day, lodging in her  throat, always made her throat hurt.
  Nor did Sybil tell about the  glass beads of many colors that hung  like a rainbow on a cotton string. The beads, which  were made in Holland and were very old, were given  to Hattie by her mother. Hattie had given them  to Sybil, who enjoyed pulling on them, sticking  them in her mouth, and licking them. One afternoon while  she was doing this, the string snapped, and the beads were  sprinkled over the living room rug. Sybil,  who was then three, tried to pick them up as fast as  possible before her mother could see. But before Sybil  could get them all up, Hattie had grabbed her  and had shoved one of the beads up her nose.  Sybil thought that she was going to smother. Hattie  tried to remove the bead, but it wouldn't budge.
  Hattie was frightened. "Come on," she said,  "we'll go to Dr. Quinoness."
  Dr. Quinoness got the bead out. But as the mother  and child were about to leave, the doctor asked, "Mrs.  Dorsett, how did the bead get there?"
  "Oh," Hattie Dorsett replied, "you  know how children are. They're always sticking things up  their noses and in their ears."

  That night Hattie told Willard how
  
careless Sybil had been about the bead. "We ought  to teach her to be more careful," the mother  told the father. "Teach her ... impeach her ...  beseech her ... reach her ... what a creature  ... it's time ... let's rhyme."
  Willard agreed that Sybil should learn to be more  careful. Sybil, who had said nothing to Dr.  Quinoness, said nothing to her father.
  Another incident Sybil kept to herself was the  one that took place in the wheat crib one rainy  afternoon when she was four and a half. Hattie had  taken Sybil there for an afternoon's play.
  After Sybil and her mother had climbed up the  retractable stairs from Willard's carpentry  shop to the wheat crib above it, Hattie said, "I  love you, Peggy." Then the mother placed the child in the  wheat and left, pulling the stairs up into the  ceiling.
  Encircled by wheat, Sybil felt herself smothering  and thought that she was going to die. Then for a time she  knew nothing.
  "Are you in there, Sybil?" She recognized  her father's voice. Then Willard was standing beside her  in the wheat crib. He bent over, lifted her  gently, and took her downstairs to where her mother was  waiting in the shop.
  "How did Sybil get up in that  wheat crib?" Willard asked his wife. "She  could have smothered in that wheat."
  "Floyd must have done it," her mother  improvised. "He's such a mean child. This town  would be better off without him. The church would be  better off. We ought to get rid of that bully."
  Willard went right down the street to speak with  Floyd while Sybil and Hattie went back  to the house. When Willard came home, he  told his wife and daughter that Floyd had said,  "No, I didn't do it. What do you think I  am?"
  "Floyd's a liar," her mother declared  haughtily.
  Willard, not knowing whom to believe, asked  Sybil how she had gotten into the wheat crib.  Sybil's eye caught her mother's eye, and she  remained silent.
  "I don't want you in that wheat crib again,"  Willard

lectured his daughter. "It's a good thing I  came home early because of the rain. It's a good thing
  
I went into the shop. The stairs didn't look  right to me, so I went up to look."
  Just as Sybil had said nothing about the  buttonhook and the beads, she said nothing about the  wheat.
  Nothing was also what Sybil said one night when  she was only two and her father asked, "How did you  get that swollen black eye?" Sybil refused  to tell. She didn't let the father know that her mother  had kicked the blocks with which the child had been  playing, had hit the child in the eye, and, with hard  knuckles, had smacked the child on the mouth, where a  new tooth grew.

  These were the things, not separate but indivisible,  forming an unending sequence of captivity on which the  torture chamber of Sybil's childhood was  built. Their memory returned to torture  Sybil on the day that had begun felicitously with  her drugstore dreams.
  Torture reawakened, however, could also sometimes  be put aside. In the first grade now, Sybil  enjoyed school, made friends, and a few days after the  return of the Willow Corners mother visited the  home of her classmate and friend, Laurie  Thompson, after school.
  Laurie's mother, who was a warm,  outgoing, rotund woman, greeted Laurie and  Sybil as they came up the porch steps. After  giving Laurie a big hug and smiling a  greeting to Sybil, Mrs. Thompson ushered the  two children into the house. Milk and a fresh apple  pie were waiting.
  Everything was so peaceful in the Thompson home,  but Sybil--then seven--was certain that as soon  as she left, Mrs. Thompson would do terrible  things to Laurie, the way all mothers did.
  The supposition that hers was the normal way of  life didn't really make it better, nor did  it lessen the unexpressed, impotent rage  buried in Sybil from infancy. Rage there had  been when the hated hard rubber nipple had  replaced the breast and when the cries of the  eleven-month-old prisoner in the high-chair had  been ignored

by the jailer. But the most terrible rage of all--  cumulative but repressed--came with the growing  sense that there was no exit, no way out of the  torture chamber. The more intense the rage
  
became, the more repressed it also became. The more  repressed it became, the greater were her  feelings of impotence; the greater the feelings of  impotence, the greater the rage. It was an endless  cycle of anger without an outlet.
  Her mother tortured and frightened Sybil, and  Sybil could do nothing about it. What was perhaps even  worse, Sybil did not dare to get anybody  else to do anything.
  Sybil loved her grandmother, but she hadn't  intervened when her mother said, "Now, Grandma,  don't go near Sybil. She's being punished."  Her grandmother hadn't intervened when her mother tripped  Sybil as she was going down the stairs. Her  grandmother had asked what had happened, and her mother  had replied, "You know how clumsy children are. She  fell downstairs." The rage Sybil felt at  her grandmother was repressed.
  Her father hadn't intervened, either. Couldn't he  see what the buttonhook, the dislocated shoulder,  the fractured larynx, the burned hand, the bead in  the nose, the wheat crib, the black eyes, the  swollen lips meant? But her father had refused  to see.
  When Sybil cried or the shade was up, her  mother always said, "What if somebody  comes?" There was repressed rage,  too, at the neighbors who never came, at  Grandfather Dorsett, who was upstairs and didn't  seem to know what was happening below, at Dr.  Quinoness, who again and again saw that the Dorsett child  had been hurt but didn't try to discover why. And  later Sybil repressed rage at her teachers,  who from time to time asked her what was wrong but never  actually bothered to find out. Sybil especially  loved Martha Brecht, her seventh-grade  teacher, because she could talk to her. But Sybil was  disappointed in this teacher too because, even though she  seemed to recognize that Sybil's mother was  strange--perhaps even crazy--she, too, did not  intervene. That saga had a sequel in college,    where even Miss Updyke, who seemed

to understand, was a party to sending Sybil home  to torture.
  Distressed by those who didn't come to her  rescue, Sybil nevertheless invested the  perpetrator of the tortures with immunity from  blame. The buttonhook was at fault, or the  enema tip, or the other instruments of torture.
  
The perpetrator, however, by virtue of being her  mother, whom one had not only to obey but  also to love and honor, was not to blame. Almost two  decades later, when Hattie, then on her  deathbed in Kansas City, remarked, "I really  shouldn't have been so cross with you when you were a child," it  seemed sinful to Sybil even to recollect that  euphemistic crossness.
  Sybil's feelings toward her mother had always  been complicated by the fact that Hattie's  behavior was paradoxical. The same mother who  embarrassed, shamed, and tortured her daughter  would cut bright-colored pictures from magazines  and paste them on the lower part of the cupboard door  so that they would be at Sybil's eye level. At  breakfast this same mother would often manage to have a  "surprise" in the bottom of the daughter's cereal  bowl: prunes, figs, dates, all of which the child  especially liked. To encourage Sybil, whose  appetite was slight, to eat, her mother would make  a game of having Sybil guess what was at the  bottom of the bowl. Her mother would insist that the child  eat down to the bottom to discover whether the guess  was correct. Hattie provided children's dishes  decorated with pictures, children's silverware  engraved SID, Sybil's initials,  and a chair that was a little higher than the  regular kitchen chairs. There were playthings all  over the house and lots of good food, which,  Hattie said, the starving children in China would give  anything to have.
  The one time that Sybil, then four, was  audacious enough to reply, "They can have it if you  want to send it over to them," Hattie reminded  her daughter: "You have so much to be thankful for--a  nice home, two parents"--Hattie's  frequent reiteration of the two invariably  irritated Sybil--"and more attention than any  other child in town."
  Again and again, both in her childhood and during

her adolescence, Sybil heard a multitude  of varieties of "You have so much to be thankful for,"  followed by "And after all I do for you, you still  don't appreciate it; you can't come to the table with a  smile on a bet." Then Sybil would say,  "You're the best mother in the whole world and I'll  try to do better."
  The "best mother in the world" would say, "I worry  so when you are late from school for fear you got
  
killed." The "best mother" didn't allow Sybil  to swim, to ride a bicycle, to ice  skate. "If you ride a bicycle, I can see  you lying out in the street with blood all over. If  you ice skate, you might fall through the ice and  drown."
  Hattie Dorsett enunciated solemn  strictures about exemplary child care. Never hit  a child, Hattie Dorsett preached, when it is  possible to avoid it, and under no circumstances  hit a child on the face or head. Hattie, who  had a neat trick of denying reality by twisting it  to conform to her fantasies, meant what she said. It  was a mental sleight of hand that made it possible  for her to dissociate what she actually did with what  she thought she did, to separate action from ideation.
  Hattie liked to dress her daughter up and  show her off to company. In an effort to display the  child's precocity, the mother would get the child to read and  recite for guests. If Sybil made a  mistake, Hattie would regard the error as a  personal affront. Sybil would think: it's like  mother doing it instead of me.
  "My dear Sybil," her mother wrote in the  daughter's elementary school graduation  autograph book, "Live for those who  love you, for those who know you true. For the  heaven that smiles above you and the good that you can do. Your  loving Mother."
  The loving mother of Sybil's life, however, was  not the one who played constructive eating games  with the cereal bowl or who wondered about the daughter's  getting drowned or showed the daughter off to company.  Sybil's loving mother was the one who inhabited a  "pretend" world of Sybil's own creation and in which  Sybil found the rescue she was denied in the real  world.
  The loving mother of the pretend world lived in

Montana. In this state, which Sybil never had  visited but which she fancied was her own, she  imagined that she had many brothers and sisters with whom  she played.
  The Montana mother didn't hide Sybil's  dolls in the cupboard when Sybil wanted  to play with them or stuff Sybil with food and then  force it out of her with enemas and laxatives. The  Montana mother didn't tie Sybil to a piano  leg or beat her or burn her. The Montana  mother didn't say that Sybil was funny and that
  
only blonde children were pretty. The Montana  mother didn't punish Sybil for  crying or tell her not to trust people, not to learn too  much, never to get married and have a lot of kids  around your neck. This good mother of the fantasy allowed  Sybil to cry when there was cause for tears and  didn't laugh when there was no reason for laughter.
  When the Montana mother was there, Sybil could  play anything she wanted to on the piano. The  Montana mother wasn't sensitive to noise, and  Sybil didn't have to blow her nose or clear out  the dripping in the back of her throat without making  a sound. When the Montana mother was there, Sybil  was allowed to sneeze.
  The Montana mother didn't say, "You won't  grow up to be a good girl if you aren't good when  you're little," didn't cause Sybil to have  headaches because what she did was unfair. The  Montana mother never said, "Nobody loves you  except mother," only to prove that love  by inflicting pain.
  Where the Montana mother lived was not just a house;  it was a home, where Sybil could touch things and  didn't have to scrub the sink every time she washed her  hands. Here Sybil didn't have to be searching all  the time for some way to reach her mother,  to change her, to earn if not her  love, at least her liking. The Montana mother was  warm and loving, always kissed Sybil, hugged her.  She made Sybil feel wanted.
  In the Montana mother's home Sybil  wasn't told, "You are above your friends," at the  same time that she was also told, "You can't do  anything; you'll never amount to anything; you'll never  be like my father. My father was a Civil War hero,  the mayor of the town, a gifted musician. He  was everything. No child of mine, no grandchild of  his, should be like you. Lands, how did I get you?"
      Picture: Marcia's drawing of the town  of Willow Corners. Marcia is in the
    lower left corner, separated from the people of the  town. The sketch depicts the bushes and the
    neighbor's garden, the scene of Hattie  Dorsett's embarrassing activities
    during Sybil's early childhood.
    Sybil was nine years old when Marcia  did this sketch.
      Picture: Peggy Lou's pencil  drawing of Hattie Dorsett. The pose
    refers to the "winter on the farm" episode of
  
    Sybil's childhood.
      Picture: Peggy
    Lou's pencil drawing of Hattie's  cut-glass goblet and tumbler. Even as an
    adult Sybil was frightened by the sound of  breaking glass.
      Picture: Peggy Ann's  pre-suicidal city sketch. Her notations
    describe her feelings of fear, pain, and  loneliness.
      Picture: Sid's self-portrait,  drawn when Sybil was ten years old.
      Picture: A pre-suicidal tempera  painting by Marcia. Again she stresses her
    loneliness and separation from others. The  original is done in dull browns and
    blue-grays.
      Picture: Mary's crayon drawing with  her hand-writing, drawn just before she bought a
    house without Sybil's knowledge.  Picture: Peggy Ann's torn
    sketch of the numbers she hoarded for so many  years. It was only after integration that
    Sybil knew the multiplication tables that  Peggy Ann had learned in the third
    grade.
      Picture: Peggy
    Lou's tempera self-portrait shows  "lips like a Negro," a description
    applied to her by Hattie Dorsett.  Picture: Sybil's
    self-portrait, painted in 1957. The  original is done in low-tone blue
    watercolors.
      Picture: A 1959 crayon drawing  by Sybil. Her comments on the back: "The
    world is blue. I'm the purple spot.  I'm not part of the world. ... I do not like it this
    way. ..."
      Picture: A crayon drawing of  Sybil Ann. She shows herself alone in a
    world composed of folded cardboards.  Picture: Pages from Peggy Ann's
    sketch book.
      Picture: Drawings in Peggy Ann's    sketch book record items associated
    with pain, anger, and fear. Each can be traced  to a specific event, usually related to the
    activities of Hattie. Many of the  sketches frightened Sybil, especially the
  
    one of knives; she was unaware that they had
    been done by Peggy Ann.  Picture: Sybil's pastel painting of
    Dr. Cornelia B. Wilbur's  office, the scene of Sybil's eleven
    years of psychoanalysis.  Picture: Peggy's drawing of the
    Willow Corners church attended by the  Dorsett family.
      Picture: Geometrical patterns from  Peggy Ann's sketch book. The
    designs of boxes were often repeated in her  work.
      Picture: Peggy Ann's sketches of  music, always associated with fear and
    anxiety.
      Picture: The pattern of the  superimposed boxes.
      Picture: Multiple Christmas  greetings to Dr. Wilbur from Vicky,
    Vanessa Gail, Mary, Mike, Sybil  Ann, and Peggy. By 1958 no message
    was sent from Clara, Nancy, Marjorie,  Ruthie, Helen, or Sid. Peggy Lou
    and Peggy Ann were represented by a single  Peggy.
      Picture: A 1958
    Christmas message from Sybil to her  doctor.
      Picture: Blue is the Color  Love, by Sybil.

    Hattie's Fury Has a Beginning

  Hattie Dorsett's behavior, as  presented in the analysis of her daughter,  seemed to Dr. Wilbur clearly  schizophrenic. The doctor, moreover, was  convinced that this schizophrenic mother was the taproot of  Sybil's dissociation into multiple selves. It  therefore seemed essential to probe into what had  caused the schizophrenia and to unravel what had  made Hattie what she was.
  In the account of Sybil's visits, for two  weeks every summer until she was nine, to the large  white house in Elderville, Illinois, that was  Hattie Anderson Dorsett's birthplace and  girlhood home, the doctor was able to find some  clues.
  
  The Andersons' sprawling home  housed a family of thirteen children (four boys and  nine girls). Winston Anderson, the father, who was  well respected in town and an autocrat at  home, demanded from his brood not only general  deference and obeisance but also precise  individual attention. Aileen, the mother, having  to divide herself among many children, had little time for any  of them. The children clearly lacked nurturing.
  Hattie, a tall, slender girl with wavy,  auburn hair and blue-gray eyes, whose  elementary school report cards revealed a  solid phalanx of A's, who wrote poetry

and whose music teachers had such high regard for her  ability that they supported her dream of going to a  music conservatory and of becoming a concert  pianist, saw the collapse of her ambitions when  she was twelve years old. At that time her father  yanked her out of the seventh grade to work in his  music store. She was to replace in the store an  elder sister, who had left to get married. There  was no economic justification for making Hattie  give up her studies, no plausible argument for  requiring her to renounce her dreams.
  "The smartest child in the class. One  of the best students I've ever had," said the  seventh-grade teacher. "It's a crime to take  her out of school."
  "Extraordinary musical talent," said the  nun who was Hattie's piano teacher. "She could  go far if given the chance."
  The chance, however, was not given, and the scene in which  it was denied lived on in Hattie's memory.  The scene began one evening when Winston, in his  quilted smoking jacket, was seated in his  special chair smoking his special cigar.  "You're not going back to school tomorrow," he  announced to Hattie bluntly. His coal  black eyes were riveted on her. "You're going  to work in the store."
  No one talked back to her father, and Hattie  knew better than to try. She just started to laugh.  The cacophonous laugh continued to echo through the  house even after she had gone to her room and closed  her door. After the family was asleep, she  strode down to the living room and, finding the  purple quilted smoking jacket in an adjoining  hall closet, cut off its sleeves. When
  
questions were asked the next day, she feigned innocence  and left the house to walk the four  blocks to the music store. Winston bought a new  smoking jacket identical to the old one.
  One of Hattie's jobs at the store was  to demonstrate pianos. Improvising music that  wasn't actually on the sheet, she increased the  marketability of her father's merchandise. When a  rare customer, astute enough to detect the difference,  came back to complain, Hattie, her face a  complete deadpan, would protest, "I played  what

was there." When the store was empty, she just played  and played. On Thursdays after work she would walk  to the convent for her music lesson.
  Hattie's dream had crumbled, and Hattie  herself became ill with chorea, a physical  illness that made her jerk and twitch. There were  nervous components. The neurosis became so  virulent that members of the family had to take their  shoes off before coming up the stairs so as not to disturb  Hattie, and the family's dishes had to be  placed on flannel because Hattie couldn't stand the  rattle. Although the concessions were out of keeping both  with the lack of nurturing and the educational  deprivation, the concessions were daily as  long as the acute part of the illness lasted.
  Striking back for the lost dream not by open  rebellion or outright confrontation but through little  acts of mischief and practical jokes,
Hattie became a family enfant terrible.
A recurrent joke was connected with Hattie's  task of bringing the cows home from the cow pasture,  which was at the edge of Elderville. Dallying on the  way home, she would stop to visit friends en route  while both the cows and the Anderson family waited.
  Another joke was specifically directed at  Winston, who led the Methodist choir and who had  assigned Hattie the task of pumping the  bellows of the church's pipe organ. One  Sunday Hattie ran off before the last song,  leaving the bellows and her father flat. Resplendent  in his Prince Albert coat, Winston Anderson  raised his baton as the chorus readied itself for  song. His coal black eyes flashed fire when  the only sound issuing from the organ was silence.
  Hattie struck back again when her father was in his  early fifties and began to show signs of the  effects of a wound he had suffered during the war.
  
A pellet that had entered his shoulder when he was  shot during his service in the Civil
War had never been removed, and it affected his  circulation, causing his legs to swell and to become  so heavy that it took two persons to lift him.  When he began drinking to ease the pain, his wife  and children raised such a row that liquor was no longer  kept in the house. When, however, Winston  managed

to get the liquor on his own, the family elected  Hattie to find out how. Discovering a row of  bottles on the shelves in back of the piano, the  detective, asking triumphantly, "Where  else would a musician put a bottle?"  succeeded in thwarting the father who had thwarted her.
  The paradox of Hattie's anger was that during  her father's lifetime and after his death she buried her  resentment against him, transmuting it  into idealization, idolatry, and pathological  attachment, which was evident when she fondled his  surviving smoking jacket.
  Occasionally slipping through the protective armor  of the overcompensating memory, however, was the fact  that Hattie sometimes said that she blamed her  "trouble" on her father. Even though she  never defined what that trouble was,  everybody who knew her knew also that she had a  problem. The trouble was epitomized by a  McCall's magazine photograph Hattie  clipped and saved with the other mementos in her  overstocked array of keepsakes. The  photograph was of an attractive woman standing  at a fence. The caption read: No, she was not  particularly loved. She sensed it.
  Unloved, Hattie Anderson Dorsett was  incapable of loving. Unnurtured herself, she  became a nonnurturing person. A lonely  isolate in a large brood, she later  isolated emotionally her only child. The anger, a  result of the frustrated dream of a music career,  was the environmental heritage that, transmitted from  generation to generation, eventually made Sybil its  target.
  Sybil's emotional heritage from Winston  Anderson, who died before she was born but who was  represented to her as a mythological figure,  was thus threefold. The recipient of  Hattie's repressed fury against Winston,  Sybil, who could not measure up to Hattie's  idealized image of him, was also the victim of  Hattie's father idolatry and of the  repressed conflict that resulted from Hattie's  idealizing and blaming her father. It was because of this  conflict that Hattie counseled her daughter that  all men were worthless.
  Other ingredients in the Anderson family  syndrome also were instrumental; the  Winston-Hattie interaction was a dependent  fragment of the larger family neurosis.

               Part II
                Becoming

    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.

  Henry would often suddenly leave home,  disappear, and be unable to return because of amnesia,  which kept him from knowing his address or his name. On  one occasion he contracted pneumonia. He was  delirious when a Salvation Army worker found him.  Then, by means of the identification card uncovered  during a routine search, the army volunteer was able  to return him to Elderville.
  Lillian, who married and had three children, often  absented herself from her family without warning. After a  number of these episodes her husband hired a  detective to follow her and to bring her home.
  Harry and Lillian provided some evidence for  ascribing Sybil's malady to a genetic  predisposition, but Dr. Wilbur  remained convinced that the taproot,  induced by her mother, lay not in the genes but in the  childhood environment.

  The Anderson home in Elderville seemed far  from being the incubator of neurosis. For in  Elderville, which Sybil visited every summer,  there was a break as clean as surgical gauze, with  Hattie's angry tyrannies and persistent  perversions. Here it seemed that the borders of  Sybil's pretend world spread to include reality  itself; reality became so transformed that it  paralleled some of the aspects of the pretend world.
  Here aunts and uncles hugged and kissed  Sybil, held her high in the air, listened  intently when she sang or recited for them, and said  that everything she did was wonderful.
  No visit was complete without Sybil's going  to the movie theater, where her aunt Fay played the  piano in this era before talkies. Sitting on the  piano bench beside her aunt in the empty theater,  with the piano shut off and the keys moving without making  sounds, Sybil would pretend that she was playing for the  movies. Staying for the matinee while Fay  played, Sybil would look up at her aunt and
  
pretend that she was her mother.
  Not until it was time to go back to Willow  Corners did Sybil realize quite how much she  wanted to remain

in Elderville. One summer she turned to her  aunt Fay and said, "Will you keep me?" Stroking  Sybil's hair and straightening the child's bangs,  Fay replied: "You're a Dorsett. Your  place is with the Dorsetts. You'll come back  next summer."
  Just twice during nine glorious summer  vacations were there occurrences in Elderville that  made the illusion of the pretend world collapse.
  One Sunday in July, 1927, Sybil and  her cousin Lulu were in the kitchen of the Anderson  home, helping her aunt Fay with the dinner  dishes. Aunt Fay, who saw Lulu all the  time and Sybil only for two weeks in the  summer, was paying more attention to Sybil than  to Lulu. When Aunt Fay left the room  to take some tea up to Grandmother Anderson, Lulu  and Sybil continued their chores in silence. But  Sybil, who was drying silver soup spoons,  couldn't keep her eyes off the beautiful  rainbows in the cut crystal pickle  dish Lulu was drying. Then all at once the  rainbows were moving through the room as the pickle  dish, which Lulu hurled at the French doors between  the kitchen and the dining room, floated in space.  In the panic following the crash of glass  Sybil's head throbbed, and the room seemed  to swirl.
  The shattered door was swung open by the aunts  and uncles, who, drawn to the scene by the crash,  stood staring at the dish. Now the dish lay on the  dining room floor in pieces.
  The adults stared at the children; the children returned  the stare. "Who did it?" was written in those  accusing adult faces, which moved compulsively from  the minuscule glass shavings on the floor to the  frightened faces of the two children. As the heavy silence  was intensified, Lulu announced, "Sybil did  it!"
  "You broke it," came Hattie's accusing  voice, directed at Sybil.
  "Now, Hattie," Fay cautioned, "she's  only a little girl. She didn't mean any  harm."
  "No harm? For land's sakes, Fay, you can
  
see she didn't drop it. She  flung it out of malice. How did I get a child  like that?"

  Sybil stood dry-eyed, but Lulu began  to cry. "Sybil did it," Lulu intoned between  tears. "Sybil did it."
  Then Hattie's daughter headed for the dining  room window, pounded against the window with her fists,  pleading, "Let me out. Oh, please let me  out. I didn't do it. She did. She's a  liar. Let me out. Please. Please!"
Sybil had become Peggy Lou.
  "Go to your room," Hattie ordered. "Sit  on the chair in the corner until I call you."
  (sybil forgot the incident of the pickle dish,  but it was a scene that Peggy Lou not only  remembered but relived and reenacted many times. In  New York between October, 1954, and  October, 1955, the first year of the analysis,  Peggy Lou, who had broken a window in Dr.  Wilbur's office during that period, had also  smashed $2,000 worth of old-fashioned  crystal in Fifth Avenue shops. With each  crash, Sybil would reappear and would  say to the clerk, "I'm terribly  sorry. I'll pay for it.")
  The other disquieting Elderville episode  took place during this same July, 1927.  Hattie was out in the yard, laughing in her  special way. Hearing the familiar sound,  Sybil rose from the kitchen table, took a large  stride forward to look through the kitchen window, and  saw that her mother was off by herself near the stable. The  laughter came again.
  Sybil saw that her cousin Joey and her  uncle Jerry were about five feet from her mother.  They were carrying a box, which Sybil had seen on  the kitchen table. Aunt Fay, coming to the window at  that moment, stood near Sybil. Ashamed of her  mother's eerie, unmotivated, haunting laughter,  especially in the presence of relatives from whom  Hattie usually tried to conceal it, Sybil  shuddered and turned away.
  "Let's go inside, Sybil," Fay said  softly. "We'll play a duet."
  "Later," Sybil, who could not move from the  window, answered.
  Then Sybil heard her aunt Fay calling  through the window to Joey and Jerry about saying something
  
to Hattie. Joey's voice came from  the yard: "Leave her

alone, Fay." Sybil knew that Hattie was  Joey's favorite aunt and that he was trying  to protect her.
  A coffin, Sybil thought, as she looked at the  box Joey and Jerry were lifting. It was smaller  than the boxes and caskets she often saw in the  funeral parlor in back of her home in Willow  Corners. ... It was Marcia who completed the  thought: the box is big enough to hold Mama.
  Standing very still, Marcia continued to muse: boxes  grow just as trees grow and people grow. The box will  get bigger and will be big enough for Mama. But  Marcia felt that she should have gone out to stop Joey  and Jerry from putting the box on the dray, that she  should have been worried about her mother, and that she  wasn't worried because she wanted her mother dead!
  Marcia, however, could not have known that the death wish  for a mother frequently occurs in little girls, among  whom the first affection is normally for father. Marcia  didn't know that the wish grows because little girls find  their mothers disturbing rivals for the affection of their  fathers.
  However, when Hattie, who was  usually well behaved in Elderville, laughed as  she did in Willow Corners, her daughter's  wish, propelled by new fury, was accentuated.
  Because of the intense guilt her wish aroused,  Marcia pushed the wish from her thoughts and returned  the body to Sybil, who didn't know about  Marcia's little box grown big.

               Willard

  In her solitary ruminations about the Dorsett  case Dr. Wilbur over and over again reviewed  the evidence in the strange saga of a child's being  violated, abused, deprived of a normal  childhood, and thus driven into psychoneurosis  for the most paradoxical of reasons--in order  to survive. Yet all of the assembled facts had  come from just one source--Sybil and Sybil's  selves. Other testimony, Dr. Wilbur  realized, was needed to substantiate the truth of the  findings.
  The mother was dead. Apart from the patient herself, the  father was clearly the only witness in whom the nearly
  
three years of analysis could find  verification. So in April, 1957, after the  doctor had minutely explored the available  evidence about the mother-daughter relationship, she  decided to bring Willard Dorsett into the case.  Sybil asked him to come to New York.
  Both Dr. Wilbur and Sybil would have been  more sanguine about bringing seventy-four-year-old  Willard Dorsett to New York from
Detroit, where he lived, happily remarried  and still working, if this were a court not of human  emotions but of law. Willard Dorsett, whose  relationship with both his daughter and the doctor had  become strained, might not, they both felt, come of  his own volition.
  Willard had already let it be known that he thought  that at thirty-four Sybil was too old to be  supported by him, despite the fact that, after her  money had run out at the end of two years in  New York, he had agreed to

pay her expenses so that she could continue treatment.  (although she had undertaken analysis without his knowledge,  she had informed him about it at the end of the first year.)
  The doctor was inclined to regard the  support as payment of a debt, the    debt of a father to a daughter who through analysis was  literally struggling to become whole. He was  supporting her grudgingly, erratically. Yet  at this stage of her life she had no bank  account, no permanent job, and her only sources  of income were occasional sales of her paintings,  sporadic work as a tutor, and an intermittent  part-time job as an art therapist in a Westchester  hospital. Willard Dorsett's obligation  to Sybil, the doctor thought, was also the debt of a  father who had squandered his daughter's money. He  had sold Sybil's piano, bedroom set, and  several of her paintings without consulting her and without  giving her the money accruing from the sales. He had  even made her pay half of her mother's funeral  expenses. The doctor's attitude had been  exacerbated when Willard had once failed  to send Sybil her monthly check, a default  that had been the more distressing because it was a repeat  performance of an episode that had taken place in  Sybil's undergraduate days. Her father's  failure to send her money, together with the  prohibitions to borrow under which she had been  raised, had forced her to live for five weeks on
  
oranges and cookies, rationed to two  each a day.
  Both the present and past episodes made  Sybil feel that her father gave her things under  pressure or out of a sense of duty, not because he  cared about her. Noting her depression in the  present instance, Dr. Wilbur wrote  Willard Dorsett that the default had caused  anguish that his daughter was not well enough to withstand. He  replied that he was a busy man and could not always  keep track of details. Nor did the fact  that the doctor was not now being paid for treatment bother  him. Vicky had reported his having said: "Dr.  Wilbur is a rich Park Avenue doctor.  Let her absorb it."
  The Willard Dorsett of 1957, who had  written that

he was too busy to concern himself with his daughter,  moreover, was clearly the same man who in the  analysis had so far emerged as being preoccupied  behind his drafting board, encircled and isolated by the  sound of his drills. That the encirclement was quite  complete seemed evidenced by this exchange within the  analysis:
  "Vicky," the doctor had asked,  "didn't Mr. Dorsett ever see the  atrocities Mrs. Dorsett inflicted on  Sybil?"
  "He would ask Sybil, "What's the matter  with your arm"--or whatever the injured part was,"  Vicky had replied, "and then he'd shrug and just  walk out."
  Before sufficient time had elapsed for Willard  to reply to Sybil's letter, she found a letter from him  in her mailbox. Afraid to read it while she was  alone because several of his letters had caused her  to become somebody else (as the doctor put it)  or "to black out," as she herself still described it,  she waited until Teddy Reeves came  home.
  The letter read:

Dear Sybil,
  Frieda just reminded me that it was time to write  Sybil. Frieda is getting more like the  Dorsetts. She has told me several times that  she is enjoying life. I think she had some  enjoyment coming her way for once if any one should  ask me. I am glad to see her happy. We
  
received your welcome letter yesterday. We  are always glad to hear from you. Hope this semester will  not be too hard or too much work. Hope you got  along okay in your tests. Ha!
  My work is going ahead well. Weather has  been cold. Good to be home for a couple of days  each week. But I am glad I am still well enough  to hold a job and earn my way. Seems to be quite  a lot of jobs ahead for the coming year. Frieda still  likes her work. Social Security went up  7%, so now I have a raise in S.s. I  get $104.00 per month now. Helps a lot.  Glad I went into Social Security. That was  many years ago. Getting old now. I stopped  to watch "Lassie" on TV and now must go to bed.  Have to get

up early. No news. So bye for this time. From  your Dad,
    Willard

  Sybil felt no untoward annoyance, only  a grinning acceptance of her father's preoccupation with  Frieda and himself and a bemused awareness that his  emphasis on Social Security as  the all-bestowing gift that muzzled  poverty was a recondite way of reminding her that  he was not a Rockefeller. He owned his own  house and three other properties, had a  substantial bank account, and was earning a good  income, supplemented by Frieda's salary, but he  wanted Sybil to believe that the Social  Security pittance made a crucial difference.
  There was also a wry amusement at his signing  himself, as he had never done before, "Willard."  Peripheral, aloof, he was suddenly reaching out in  sudden informality, in a hail-fellow-well-met  gesture of inclusion and intimacy.
  In this instance Sybil was able to remain herself. That  she could do so in less than three and a half years  of analysis indicated a growing maturity, an  acceptance of the kind of situation that in the past had  triggered dissociation.

  Her nose leading, like the large horny bill  of a predatory fowl, Frieda Dorsett  fluttered into her husband's shop, in the basement of  their spacious, comfortable home in suburban  Detroit. Wordlessly the wife handed the husband a  letter and departed on lightly clicking spike
  
heels.
  Ten minutes later the heels clicked back  into the room, and, talking above the noise of the  drills, Frieda chirped staccato: "The letter.  It's from her?" Frieda's narrow lips twitched  ever so slightly, and her torso quivered almost  imperceptibly. "I can tell it disturbs you."
  Willard shrugged, then said, "We'll talk  about it tomorrow."
  "What does she say?" The chirping was  renewed in an ascending scale.

  Frieda Dorsett didn't like women, and her  husband's daughter was no exception, especially  since Sybil posed a threat. The year of  marriage to Willard represented the first real  happiness Frieda, who was fifty-seven, had  known, and she wasn't about to submit to any  interference, real or fancied, from his daughter.
  Frieda's overzealous parents had married her  off at the age of fourteen to a man of  thirty-one. At sixteen she had given birth  to a son. Karl Obermeyer, her first husband, was  a mover and shaker in Willard's church, but Karl  didn't move her, and she had found both  marriage and childbirth bewildering.
After Karl had died of a heart attack when he was  thirty-eight, she had had a series of affairs,  become a bookkeeper, and learned to support  herself and her son. She had always bristled at the  fact that her intelligence outstripped her education,  and after her husband's death she began reading and  studying in a stepped up drive for self-education.
  Self-made, she had also "made" Willard  --some people said for money, others for love. They met  in San Francisco in 1949, but they were not  married until 1956. When he moved  to Detroit, she moved there too, took an  apartment next to his, prepared his meals, took  care of his laundry, and nursed him when he was  indisposed. Willard, who in San
Francisco had told Sybil that he didn't  want to remarry and wouldn't marry Frieda even  though she had been a good companion, wrote  Sybil in New York of his change of heart.  "I guess," he explained, "I'm going to have  to marry Frieda because she is always over in my  apartment, and it looks bad."
  Still persistent, Frieda counseled coyly,  "Willard, Sybil's a sick girl. You're
  
still a vigorous, healthy man. You must  think of yourself first." Frieda let her hand slip  onto Willard's palm, allowing her fingers  to dwell lightly. "Promise me you won't  let her interfere with your happiness."
  "Our happiness," he replied slowly,  thoughtfully. He rose from his chair and paced the  room. "But I love my daughter and have always  tried to be a good father."
  "I sometimes think you try too hard," Frieda  replied

decisively, "and she doesn't try hard enough  to be a good daughter."
  "She's a genius, Frieda--a brilliant,  gifted girl," he replied with conviction, "no  matter what else she is."
  "Then why doesn't she get herself a job like  everybody else? Or why doesn't she get  married? If she could let me get close to her,  I'd get her a man. Why doesn't she wear  high heels? Why does she wear a man's  watch? I'd like to put lipstick on her, shorten  her dresses, put curls in her hair."
  "The doctor, the doctor,"
Willard mumbled. "But it can't be long  now. I expect Sybil will be well soon and  making her own way."
  "What does she write?" Frieda chirped  insistently.
  There was an awkward pause. "I may have to go  to New York. We'll see," Willard, his  resistance slipping, replied slowly. "Well,  I won't be able to get up in the morning if I  don't go to bed now."

  Standing five feet eleven, Willard  Dorsett cut an imposing figure. He was  erect and had an appealing face with well-carved  bones. His hair was a translucent fine-grained  white, and not a jot of it had been sacrificed  to the ravages of aging. His confident face  retained a health-hued youthfulness; his teeth,  unstained, were still intact. Never having partaken of a  morsel of meat or a sip of alcohol, he had  kept his figure and weighed scarcely more than he  had the day he dropped out of college. His  voice, which was soft and low, and his refusal to argue  even when someone argued with him reflected his  conviction that it was sinful to betray feeling. The
  
expressiveness of his long, lean fingers  was inconsonant with his overall aloofness. His  tilted nose was Sybil's nose, the Dorsett  insignia.
  The fingers were the outward mark of a sensitive,  artistic nature, which expressed itself in building  a better building than his competitors and found  an outlet in a variety of aesthetic interests.  At college he had studied elocution and singing.  In Willow Corners he had sung tenor in the  church choir and the town glee club and had  organized an excellent male quartet. He  played the

guitar in the Spanish style and had so avid an  interest in classical music that even though his  church was opposed to worldly things, he had bought one  of the first Edison phonographs. He was interested  also in economics, had a real sense of community  responsibility, and was greatly respected in every  town in which he lived. By the men who worked for him he  was almost literally worshipped.
  A perfectionist in his work, Willard wanted  to perform perfectly not only for the sake of the work itself  but because he believed that when people beheld the  perfection of his craft, that perfection  would glorify God. Beholding his handiwork, people  did hail him with respect, and on the street he  would often hear the deferential, awed "That's  Willard Dorsett," which pleased yet faintly  amused him. Ha, he would think. Being a  Dorsett, I have a mind of my own and could have  done more with it if over fifty years of my life  had not been spent in Willow Corners. Wanting  to use this mind of his own, he was in his glory when  he met highly educated, gifted, and  well-traveled people.
  The compulsiveness that made Willard a  perfectionist in his work also made him a stickler for  details, and this preoccupation with details often  blocked communication. "You can't say the bigger  half," he would counsel Sybil. "If it's  half, it's half. How can it be half and bigger  at the same time?" The compulsiveness also made  him a slave to habit. His standard lunch for  twenty years was two fried-egg sandwiches and a  slice of apple pie.
  Of more than average intelligence, Willard was  also of greater than average restriction and  naivet`e. He was an intelligent man in a
  
primitive setting, a man who was  appalled because Hattie's nephew Joey dared  to smoke in the Dorsett home, a man who bowed  sufficiently to the conventional wisdom to write in  his daughter's autograph book: "Truthfulness,  honesty, kindness, purity, and temperance are the  greatest virtues of the best man." His mind, in  fact, was a curious compound of humanistic  interests and puritanical rigidities. His  puritanism was an amalgam of Willow
Corners, the

church, the Victorian age, and his overreaction  to the Roaring Twenties, which he considered an  indication of the moral decay of civilization, a  sign of the end of the world.
  An intensely religious man, he rigidly  adhered to the doctrines of his fundamentalist faith  and was so literal in his readings of the Scriptures  that, unlike more sophisticated members of his  faith--unlike Pastor Weber, for instance, his  mentor in Omaha--he took the church's  preachings about the end of the world so literally that his  entire life was spent on the precipice of the  world's impending end. The church itself and the  benighted Willow Corners congregation  to which he belonged became so disquieting that, while still  observing its doctrines to the letter, he left the  church for fourteen years.
  Perhaps the flight from the church was also a flight from  his father--a belligerent and boorish six-footer with  large features and a goatee who, a wrestler in  his youth, found in the church a tailor-made  outlet for aggression and hostility. Aubrey  Dorsett, Willard's father, was the son of  Arnold and Theresa, who came to Willow  Corners as homesteaders and whose children, in addition  to Aubrey, included Thomas, Emmanuel,  Frederick, and Theresa II.
  Aubrey, an avid churchgoer, found in  evangelical rantings, uncontrolled  bellowings, and hallelujahs intoned with ecstatic  passion the substitute for the swearing denied him as a  pious man. The evangelical rantings from the first  row of the church had their counterpart at the front of the  Willow Corners post office, where Aubrey  inveighed against the "Romans" and the "horn of  Rome" (the Pope), denouncing the hated  Catholics to a gathering crowd. Aubrey  Dorsett predicted the country's doom if a
  
Catholic ever came to power. Hostile  not only to the hated Romans but also to members of  his own faith, indeed to everybody, including his own  family, Aubrey sought the Achilles' heel in  everyone around him, often exploiting it in public  with a verbal vigor that matched the physical powers  of his wrestling days. Then having spotted and  descended

upon the weak spot, he proceeded to save his  victim's soul.
  A particular target was Mary, whom Aubrey  had married on the rebound and whom forever after he  taunted with Val, the love of his life, who had  rejected him. At various times in the course of  his marriage he would turn the saw mill he owned  and operated over to a subordinate and silently  fade away to take up with Val in New
York. Thence he would return to parade his  infidelity to Mary.
  As a father, Aubrey demanded unquestioning obedience  and required his three children--Theresa III, the  eldest; Willard, the middle child; and Roger,  eighteen months younger than Willard--to smile  at all times, as becomes a
Christian, and never to laugh, which was  sinful. Although all three siblings were musical,  Aubrey never asked them to play or sing. He  feared that if they did so, they would feed on the sin  of pride. He didn't want his children to have  "swelled heads."
  Ashamed of his father's belligerence, Willard  resorted to passivity. Embarrassed by his  father's haranguing hallelujahs, aggression, and  gruffness, Willard retreated into a shell of  silence. Unable to see himself in the image of a father  who embarrassed him and of whom he was ashamed, the  father with whom his own sensitive, artistic nature  was in conflict, Willard made identification  instead with his gentle, artistic, but passive mother.  And the identification with his mother was responsible for the  paradoxical nature of the peripheral Willard  Dorsett.
  Indisputably male, sexually vital  despite his professed puritanical  rigidities, attractive to women and lustily  pursued by them during the nine years of being a  widower, a man who worked and thought in brick and  mortar, Willard also had a distinctly feminine  side. As a boy and young man he often helped his
  
mother with the housework. He canned fruit  and vegetables and later taught Hattie these  skills. He sewed and supported himself in  college by working as a tailor, just as later he  sewed all of Sybil's baby clothes. He had  superb taste

in interior decoration, and, respecting his taste,  Hattie had trusted him to decorate their first  home.
  Willard's identification with his mother,  moreover, not only helped mold his  personality; it also affected his choice of a  mate. Like Aubrey Dorsett, Hattie
Anderson Dorsett was overly aggressive,  constantly conspicuous and downright cruel.  Willard married his father in female form.
  In fact, both Willard and his brother Roger  appear to have married their father. The two brothers  somehow managed to find strong-minded and strange  women, both named Henrietta. Too, Roger,  like Willard, married outside his faith.  Roger's wife was a Roman Catholic  nurse, whom he married probably in  rebellion against the hysterical  anti-Catholic feeling of the people of his  own church, especially of his father. Roger's  Hattie smoked when no other woman in Willow  Corners dared, and she used rouge and lipstick,  which affronted her fundamentalist in-laws. But  her real eccentricity lay in the originality of  her moonlighting. In her spare time this Hattie  Dorsett ran a gambling joint and a house of  assignation for nuns in the basement of her red  brick home in Rochester, Minnesota. She  even provided the nuns with a change of costume  to speed them on their worldly way. Roger remained  aloof from both enterprises, but it was said that he  managed to have a few assignations of his own.
  This Hattie had two sons, but she didn't  like having boys, and she wanted to take Sybil  away from her mother. The motivation, which has never  been made clear, probably revolved around the  fact that she always wanted a daughter, but it could  also have been spurred by insight into Sybil's  predicament. As a psychiatric nurse this  Hattie could conceivably have realized that her  sister-in-law was unfit to raise a child.
  Willard's sister, Theresa III, didn't  marry her father; she reacted against him and the total
  
milieu by becoming a neurotic loner  and eccentric. As a girl Theresa loved and  lost; then she blamed her loss on her brothers.  At the age of forty she married a wealthy old  man and moved to his farm, in another state. She  returned to

Willow Corners only twice after that, once  when her mother had a stroke and again when her mother died.  At home on her farm she scandalized the  neighbors by wearing men's clothing and the church, which  hounded her for money, by giving none. The money, which  neither Theresa nor her husband trusted to the  banks, was scattered in assorted nooks and  crannies in the spacious farmhouse. At the time  of the 1929 crash these homespun banks did not  fail.
  When Willard and Roger lost the timberland in  which Theresa had invested with them, she demanded her  money. Because of the old wounds occasioned by her thwarted  young romance, the brothers mortgaged their homes so  that Theresa could have her pound of flesh. Then when she  owned the mortgage to Willard's house, Theresa  decided that her parents should occupy it. She had  no compunction about ordering Willard and his  family to move.
  Surrounded by wealth, Theresa acted like a  pauper after the death of her husband. Boarding up  all the rooms of the farmhouse except one, she  retreated into that room, which was heated in winter only  by a small kerosene stove. In the last years of  Theresa's life there was a reconciliation with  Willard. After Hattie's death Willard and  Sybil visited Theresa. Sybil, who had  seen her aunt Theresa only twice before, now  understood why people mistook her for Theresa and why  her father often called her Theresa.
  Willard was always even more quiet and low-voiced  than usual, almost reverent, when he talked about his  mother. He would become louder and almost dogmatic  about his father and his father's brother Tom, then quiet  again about Roger and Theresa. Willard always had  disquieting feelings about both his sister and his brother  --Roger died at the age of fifty-six--and it  was never easy for Willard either to remember them or  to forget them.
  Willard, who had a stronger ego than did  either Roger or Theresa, erected a  protective shell against domestic disturbance, but  he did not otherwise appear meek. Silent but
  
strong, he could not infrequently make

his will prevail. Faced with the fact that both his  wife and his daughter had emotional problems,  Willard acquitted himself in terms of hereditary  responsibility for his daughter's illness. His  father was a boor and Theresa an eccentric, but neither  was actually emotionally disturbed, Willard convinced  himself. Observing the descendants of his father's four  brothers, he had to admit some oddities in the  clan, but he was swift to attribute the  oddities to the families into which his uncles had  married.
  His uncle Thomas, for example, who had  all kinds of land and money, had five wives,  three of whom he buried and one of whom deserted  him. It was the wives, Willard thought, who were at  fault, not Uncle Tom. Tom's first wife  went crazy, lost her hair and her fingernails,  turned an alabaster white, and died of general  paresis. Bernard, the son of this marriage, was  willful as a child, and although largely indolent as an  adult, he had become an inventor. The first  sentence that his son, Bernard, Jr., spoke  to his mother was: "I will kill you." And  gossip had it that his behavior did  kill her. Bernard, Jr., was later  hospitalized as a schizophrenic.
  Frances Dorsett, the wife of Willard's  uncle Frederick, and Carol, a daughter of that  marriage, were subject to elations and depressions  as part of a manic-depressive psychosis. But  because this illness has a very strong familial trend,  Willard was on solid ground in maintaining that  Carol had inherited the gene from her mother, not from the  Dorsetts. Because Frances and Carol were in and out  of state hospitals and frequently visited  Willard's family when they were out, Willard  often asked Sybil if she was worried that she was  like her aunt Frances and cousin Carol. Then, as  if the damage were not already done, he would remind  her: "No need to worry. They're not  Dorsetts."

  All of this family history was known  to Sybil, of course. Even more important, she  was aware of her father's needs and fears. Thus, as  she waited in New York for his letter from  Detroit, she had two fears--that he would not come  and that he would come. Night
  
after night, over and over again, during this  period of watchful waiting, she dreamed:

  She was walking through a tremendous house,  looking for her father, or in the same house he was  looking for her, or they were searching for each other.  She would go through room after room in a frustrated  quest, knowing that her father was there some place, but  knowing, too, that she couldn't find him.

  "You ought to tell your father in your dream," Dr.  Wilbur said in analysis, "that you are looking for  him. The dream expresses a sexual yearning for  him because he was seductive toward you but also a  denial of the desire." Sybil had admitted that  she had been aware of sexual feelings toward  her father when he talked to her about sex. "There are    some things about sex for which I don't have the answers  yet," he would say, for instance, while he was  dating Frieda. "You young people know a lot more about  sex than we ever did."
  It was clear to the doctor, indeed, that Willard  had stimulated Sybil sexually not only when she  was an adult but also as a child, both in the long-run  primal scene and by his denials of  physical closeness after she had  become what he had called "too big."
  In another dream:

  Men were pursuing her sexually. Her father was not  there to rescue her. The pursuit continued and,  too, the lack of rescue.

  Long having waited for her father to intervene on  her behalf, to come to her rescue, Sybil was  waiting again. And, as the days followed without an  answer to her letter, she was caught in a web of  ambivalent feelings. The feelings would have been  simpler if Willard had been a typically  rejecting father. However, she did have a relationship  with him, one in which he habitually failed her, out of  passivity, but which was quickened by accentuated  Oedipal desires and by a close affinity of  similar tastes.

  When an art critic in St. Paul,
Minnesota, had assured Willard that
Sybil's talent for painting was genuine, he had  been proud of her work. He had even made it a  point to mount and frame her paintings. When father and
  
daughter looked at a painting  together, it was like two eyes looking at the same  work. Between them there was a mutuality, an  attunement, made all the stronger as a result  of two childhood happenstances.
  First, when Sybil was only six weeks old,  she had developed a disease of the middle ear. No  one had been able to tell what was the matter with her,  and she was comforted only when her father held her.  By chance, when he held her, he always sat next  to the kitchen stove. The warmth, which she associated  with her father, had soothed her: the attachment to her father  was begun.
  Second, because she was unable to make  identification with her mother, who abused her and made  her feel ashamed, Sybil had more and more been  compelled to make identification with her father. She  had to have someone, and she persuaded herself that her father  was the figure on whom she could depend,  especially since she looked not like the Andersons but  like the Dorsetts.
  Thus on a conscious level Sybil had always  protected her father's image, yet there were times  when that image was not an invincible fortress. "In  college," Sybil wrote in her  diary as an undergraduate, "I  had roommates, classmates, a big sister,  an adviser. My adviser, Dr. Termine, was  fat and jolly. He had a moustache. He was  warm. He was like a father I never had. He'd always  take time to talk to me. It was so different."
  And when Dr. Wilbur had asked Sybil  directly, "Does your father love you?" Sybil  had given a qualified reply: "I suppose  he does."
  So the wait for Willard Dorsett's reply  was long.
  
              Part III 265-267
              Unbecoming

        Confrontation and Verification

  At 4:00 P.m. on May 4, 1957,
Willard Dorsett entered Dr. Wilbur's  anteroom--an assured, complacent,  well-defended, passive, and unreachable figure  who took his responsibilities lightly.
  Some ten minutes later, his defensive armor  had begun to crack and he felt himself faltering.  He wiped his forehead gingerly with a freshly starched  handkerchief, as, sitting on the little green desk  chair in the consulting room, he realized that the  questions Dr. Wilbur was asking were not what he had  anticipated. He had expected questions about  Sybil's status as a thirty-four-year-old  woman, alone in New York, trying to get  well. Instead, the doctor was taking him back  to Willow Corners and the years of his marriage  to Hattie. The year with Frieda had been a good  year, a veil across the face not only of Willow  Corners but also of Omaha and Kansas  City. But now the doctor was  mercilessly ripping the veil, inch by dreadful inch.
  Willard's anxiety was intensified by the  awkwardness of being in Dr. Wilbur's presence  after the voluminous correspondence that in recent  months had passed between them about Sybil's  finances. He had had to force himself to come. Now that  he was here, he was constantly reminded that the  doctor was not the same woman he had known in  Omaha.
  He was not aware, however, of the reasons for the  change. In Omaha she had not been a  psychoanalyst, and the psychoanalytic approach  placed strong emphasis on the deterministic  power of childhood. In

Omaha the doctor did not know that Sybil was a  multiple personality and did not have the wealth of  information that Sybil and the other selves had since  revealed--information indicting Hattie and pointing  an accusing finger at Willard for the genesis of  Sybil's illness. It was chiefly to ascertain the  truth of Hattie's and Willard's role in  spawning the illness that the doctor had urged this  meeting.
  
  Yet there was also another purpose.
The increasingly unsatisfactory and evasive  tone of Willard's letters and his omissions in  supporting Sybil financially and  psychologically were shocking to his daughter's  analyst. Whatever his role in the past, Dr.  Wilbur firmly believed that in the present he  had condemned himself.
  As an analyst, Dr. Wilbur withheld  judgment about the past, but as Sybil's friend, she was  determined to provoke Willard into assuming greater  responsibility as a father. She therefore viewed the  interview as both a search for verification of the  initial parental guilt and as a confrontation with a  father who was currently failing his daughter. The  doctor was determined to mince no words, nor  to repress the accusatory tone in her manner that  under the circumstances came naturally. Taking  Willard Dorsett's measure, it was clear that  the only way she could get the verification she was  seeking was by taking the offensive and waging a  direct attack.
  "Why, Mr. Dorsett," the doctor asked,  "did you always entrust the full care and upbringing of  Sybil to your wife?"
  Willard Dorsett was not a man  who studied himself or looked at those around him  to weigh or measure their moods. In Willow  Corners he had been a busy man, away from  home from dawn to sundown. He hadn't known all  the details of his domestic life and had felt that  he couldn't have been expected to know them. How, he  asked himself, could he possibly answer the  doctor's questions about these details, so far off, so  forgotten?
  Why had he always entrusted to Hattie the full  care and upbringing of Sybil? He merely shrugged  in reply. The question obviously seemed to him  irrelevant. It was like asking a butcher why he  sells meat or a

farmer why he plants corn. A mother should take  care of a child.
  Had he been aware that Hattie's behavior  was peculiar? He moved jerkily in his chair and  became defensive. When he finally spoke, it was  to say, "The first Mrs. Dorsett was a  wonderful woman, bright, talented." He  hesitated.
  "And?" the doctor asked.
  
  He became flustered. "Well,"  he said, "we had a lot of trouble. Financial  and otherwise. It was hard on Hattie. At  times she was difficult."
  "Just difficult?" the doctor asked.  "Well, she was nervous."
  "Just nervous?"
  He mopped his forehead, changed his position.  "She had some bad spells."
  "Is it true that she was in a bad state at the  farm when Sybil was six?"
  He averted his eyes and finally said yes.  "Was it true that when she came out of her  depression, she tore down the hill on  Sybil's sled?"
  He squirmed while saying, "Yes. Sybil  must have told you it was a big hill. A child's  imagination, you know. But the hill wasn't really very  high." (he had an almost comic way of wriggling  out of facing the real issue.)
  "But your wife came down that hill, large or  small, on a child's sled, laughing? What did you  make of her behavior in that instance?" The doctor  was trapping him into an admission. "Was it  safe, Mr. Dorsett, to allow this  strange, nervous woman, who had what  you call spells, to have the sole responsibility  for raising your child?"
  Instead of answering directly, he murmured  nonresponsively, "Hattie was odd."
  "It was more than odd, Mr. Dorsett. She  was more than nervous if what I've been told is  true." The bombardment of recollections made  the room gyrate. Each recollection, rising from  the buried past, reawakened the dull, sad ache  in his hands, the after-image of the neuritis from which he  had suffered after he had lost his money.
  "Well," Willard explained, "Hattie and  Sybil never

got along. I thought a mother and daughter should be  close, and I was disturbed by their arguments. When  they were at each other, I used to say,  "Hattie, why don't you rest a while or  crack some nuts?"' I used to hope Hattie  and Sybil would get over it in time."
  "That was when Sybil was a teenager," the  doctor reminded the father. "But weren't there certain  things that occurred when she was a very young child--even an  infant--that couldn't be settled by cracking nuts?"
  
  "You must know something I don't know,"  he replied defensively, fiddling with his  fingernails.
  Was he aware that as a child Sybil sustained an  unusual number of injuries, the doctor  wanted to know. With annoyance he answered quickly,  "She had accidents, of course, like any child."  Did he remember any of these accidents? No,  he couldn't say he remembered. Was he aware that  Sybil had had a dislocated shoulder, a  fractured larynx? "Why yes," he replied,  screwing up his thin lips.
  How had they happened?
  He made no answer, but the involuntary  twitchings in his face betrayed uneasiness.  Flustered, he finally replied, "I never saw  Hattie lay a hand on Sybil."
  Did he remember the burns on his  daughter's hands, her black eyes? "Yes,"  he replied slowly, remotely. "I seem  to recall these things now that you take me back."  He became even more flustered and said, "After all,  I didn't see them happen. They must have taken  place when I was away from home."
  Did he remember the bead in
Sybil's nose? He replied  defensively: "Sybil put the bead in her  nose. You know how children are. Always putting things in  their noses and ears. Mrs. Dorsett had  to take Sybil to Dr. Quinoness. He got the  bead out."
  And now, the doctor was asking pointedly, "Is  that what your wife told you?"
  Willard Dorsett clasped his hands together  to reaffirm his own solidity and put up some  resistance, saying, "Yes, Hattie told me  that. I had no reason to question her."
  Dr. Wilbur insisted, "What did your  wife tell you about the larynx and the shoulder? Did  she say that

Sybil had fractured her own larynx,  dislocated her own shoulder?"
  He knew an answer was expected of him, but  he took time to think about the doctor's question.  "Well," he said at last, "I can't remember  exactly what Hattie said. But she was always  telling me that Sybil had many falls. I  suppose I never really thought about how these things  happened, now that you ask me. Ignorance is one
  
of my failings."
  The wheat crib over his carpenter's shop? He  shut his eyes as if by doing so he could hide from the  horrors that had been evoked. He opened his  eyes and plucked up courage to listen. Yes,  he remembered that incident well. "How did you  imagine that Sybil had gotten in there and then put  the stairs up?" He knew that such a thing could not have  happened, but what Hattie had told him came  to his rescue. He told the doctor: "The  town bully did it."
  "But did he?" the doctor asked.
  "Well," Willard replied slowly, "the  boy said he didn't know anything about it."
  "Who was guilty?" the doctor insisted.  The edifice of Willard Dorsett's  complacency was crumbling, and he sank back in his  chair. His voice was normally soft and low. Now,  scarcely audible, he mumbled, "Not Hattie?"
  It was an important moment. Like a  mollusk, Willard Dorsett had always stayed  within his shell, insulated in the private sea of his  own concerns. He had been resolute in pursuing  a path of conformity, refusing to look in any other  direction. Now the mollusk, out of the  sea, was steaming in hot water, its  shell cracking. The many years of aloof  nonseeing, of refusing to know, converged in a moment  of sudden realization in which, by instinct, by powerful  recollection, Willard Dorsett came  to believe that Hattie had placed Sybil in the  wheat crib; that Hattie had been responsible  for his daughter's fractured larynx, dislocated  shoulder, assorted burns, the bead in the nose.  "Not Hattie?" Willard repeated in a frightened  monotone. This time, however, it was to convince himself.  "Oh, merciful

Father, not Hattie!" His head was bowed. He was  praying.
  "Hattie," Dr. Wilbur replied.
"If what Sybil has told me is true."  Willard wondered what to say next. He  stared at the green draperies and then at the  doctor. Once again he shut his eyes, but only  momentarily, for the doctor was saying, "Mr.  Dorsett, there are some things that Sybil says  happened in the early morning ..." He had been  caught in a confrontation that was shattering the peace  he had belatedly secured for himself with Frieda after
  
the memories of Willow Corners,
Omaha, and Kansas City had been put  to rest. "In the early morning," the doctor was  saying, and as she recounted the morning ritualistic  tortures, he felt himself inwardly writhing.  When she referred to the buttonhook, he again bowed  his head. It was a moment of revelation.
  "That's why Sybil screamed so on the  Sabbath," he murmured, "when we tried  to button her white kid shoes." Then, still thinking  about his daughter's screams of anguish at the  buttonhook's evocation of a hideous pain, he  said that what had been described was quite beyond his  comprehension. He added also that he had been away  from home and couldn't know what was going on. Why these  things should have taken place, he said, he could not  fathom.
  The atmosphere was like melted rock issuing from  a volcano as Willard Dorsett iterated and  reiterated: "I don't know. How could I know  when nobody told me? I believed Hattie."  Then he added what was partly self-defense,  partly confession, "I was so overwhelmed by Hattie  that I didn't think."
  "Think, Mr. Dorsett," the  doctor enjoined. "Can you tell me  whether these things Sybil reported to me actually  took place? There are internal scars and  injuries that lend credence to her account."
  What a dreadful moment for me to live through,  Willard thought, as he removed his handkerchief from  the vest pocket of his gray-flannel suit and  wiped the beads of gathering perspiration from his  forehead. The wheat bin and the buttonhook were the  undeniable evidence in the chain of his  recollections. He could

hear his daughter's piercing scream at the sight  of that harmless buttonhook. And the scars and  injuries also constituted proof. He folded his  handkerchief neatly and returned it to his vest  pocket. He then looked steadily at the  doctor, seeing the past whole for the first time.
  "Doctor," he finally said in a low voice,  "I'm sure that Sybil's recollections are quite  accurate in every respect. I didn't know about  these things, but now that I look back I recall  most of the physical injuries. There were times after  they must have occurred when Sybil would be in bed, and  her grandmother--my mother--would care for her. With her
  
grandmother Sybil was fine." He stopped  short as he realized what he had said. Then  resuming, he explained, "I didn't know about  these things, but, knowing Hattie, I do know that she was  entirely capable of them." He added, with a  strange, emotionless objectivity, "I'm sure  not only that they were possible but that they happened."
  It was a pivotal moment, the kind that the  classic Greek dramatists describe as a  peripety--the moment in which the action of a drama  assumes a quick catastrophic new turn, a  reversal. As a witness, corroborating the  truth of Sybil's testimony about the  atrocities, which Dr. Wilbur already regarded  as the taproot of the multiplicity of  personality, Willard Dorsett had also  incriminated himself. His admission that Hattie was  entirely capable of the atrocities attributed  to her was tantamount to a confession that by failing  to protect his daughter against a perilously  destructive mother he had been partner to the mother's  deeds. This was precisely what Dr. Wilbur  suspected.
  Indisputable now was the fact that the violent  tyrannies of this nonneurotic father (the  doctor was convinced that he was free of  neurosis), consisting of bland evasions, the shrug  that withheld concern, the lifelong retreat into his  shell, had augmented the mother's violent  tyrannies in driving Sybil to search for a  psychoneurotic solution to the intolerable reality  of her childhood. The mother was the taproot of  Sybil's having become a multiple  personality, but the father, Dr. Wilbur was

now sure, through the guilt not of commission but of  omission, was an important associated root.  The mother had trapped Sybil, but the father, even  though Sybil herself had never quite admitted it, had  made her feel that from that trap there was no exit.
  The doctor simply said, "Mr. Dorsett,  you have just told me that you consider Sybil's mother  entirely capable of the atrocities we've  discussed. Then, to repeat an earlier question, may  I ask why you allowed your daughter to be brought  up by her?"
  He wondered whether to answer or to withhold the  self-incrimination that an answer would inevitably  imply. "Well," he replied while measuring  his words, "it is a mother's place to raise a child."
  
Once again the shell closed around him.
  "Even, Mr. Dorsett, when that mother is  clearly schizophrenic? Even, Mr.
Dorsett, when this schizophrenic mother came very  close on at least three occasions I can think of  to killing her child?"
  Flustered, defensive, he replied, "I  did what I could." Then he told Dr.
Wilbur about his having taken Hattie to see a  psychiatrist at the Mayo Clinic in  Rochester. The doctor there had diagnosed  Hattie as a schizophrenic and had said that, although  she didn't have to be hospitalized, she should be  treated on an out-patient basis. "Hattie  saw the doctor only once," Willard  remarked. "She wouldn't go back because she said that  all he did was stare at her."
  Dr. Wilbur was both pleased and troubled by this  new intelligence. The other psychiatrist's  diagnosis confirmed Dr. Wilbur's own. It  was the confirmation that made the atrocities doubly  believable as part of a schizophrenic's mode of  behavior. This, together with Willard Dorsett's  observations, meant that the verification for which the  doctor had been searching had been found.  No longer did she have to ponder that even  though the various selves of Sybil had told  identical stories about Hattie's  atrocities, that that in itself did not constitute  confirmation. Again and again the doctor had rejected  the evidence on the grounds that all the selves  belonged to Sybil's unconscious and that although the  conscious mind often doesn't know what the

unconscious mind is doing, the unconscious  absorbs what takes place consciously. What  the other personalities had said could, therefore, have  been but an echo of Sybil, an echo of  Sybil's fantasy of torture, her delusion  of cruelty, or even a perverse screen  memory. The internal scars and injuries were,  of course, objective data, but there was at least  a remote possibility that they had been  self-inflicted. But now there was no need to question  further. The veracity of the reporting could not be  doubted.
  Hattie Dorsett's visit to the Mayo
Clinic psychiatrist was disturbing, moreover,  because it seemed to affirm the fact that Willard  Dorsett had knowingly allowed his daughter to be
  
cared for by a diagnosed schizophrenic.
In explanation, Willard Dorsett said only:
"She was her mother. I never dreamed a mother would  hurt a child." It was an echo of a perennial  stereotype. Or perhaps, more grimly, it was the  same voice of denial in which the Germans,  watching the mass slaughter of Jews in Nazi  concentration camps, also claimed not to know.
  The analogy was the more apt because Sybil had  made identification with the Jews in German  concentration camps. She thought of her mother as  Hitler, the torturer, and of herself as a tortured  Jew. Frequently, Sybil dreamed that she was  a prisoner in a camp and her guard was a woman  with white hair--the dreaming image of her mother. The  thoughts and the dreams were given cogency by the fact that  Sybil belonged to a religious group that thought of  itself as a minority and that denounced dictators from  the pulpit as the incarnation of the prophetic words  to be found in the books of Daniel and Revelation  in the Bible--that an evil man would rise and conquer  the world. Indeed, when finally Sybil had resumed  her existence after the two years of Peggy Lou's  rule, it was to discover that an evil man was denying  freedom to millions of people, just as her  mother denied freedom to one.
  The distaste Dr. Wilbur had felt for
Willard Dorsett because of his financial    derelictions to Sybil turned to outright anger.  Willard Dorsett hadn't known, Dr.
Wilbur was convinced, because he had refused to know.  At first she had thought him like fathers she had dealt

with in other cases, aloof, passive, committed  to not knowing facts that might distress them, too  gentle to cope with the women they married, effectual  in their business but ineffectual at home. It was  a common complaint of many American males--the  syndrome of the overpowering mother and the recessive father  that had frequently been revealed as the root of  family disturbance.
  Now, however, the doctor believed that while these  things continued to be true of Willard Dorsett,  the cardinal fact about him was that he had not taken  any action whatsoever against the most destructive  mother of whom the doctor had ever had any knowledge.
  From her knowledge of Willard's behavior as already  revealed in the analysis, the doctor knew,  too, that he had failed Sybil in accessory    ways. It was to these failures to which the doctor
  
unrelentingly addressed herself next.
  Noting that Sybil was emotionally disturbed,  Willard--the doctor told him--had reacted as  if he hadn't wanted to know. He had evaded the  issue by never asking her what the trouble was when they  were alone and Sybil was free to communicate with  him. Instead, he had asked her in front of  Hattie or when there obviously wasn't time  to talk. He had asked Sybil during the few  moments he was alone with her while she did  bookkeeping for him or between customers in the  hardware store.
  Instead of getting at the heart of his daughter's  problem, he had embellished and smothered it with  concerns of his own. He was worried about the imminent  end of the world, a concern so real to him that he had  dropped out of college because he wanted  to utilize the time left to him (he never was  precise about how much) not on the campus but in the  "real" world. And so, when Sybil had shown  symptoms of depression, he had evaded the real  issue by asking, "Are you worried about the end of the  world?" He was worried that Sybil was like his cousin  who had been in and out of state hospitals;  therefore, when Sybil was anxious, he  projected his own worry upon her  by asking whether she was worried that she was like this  cousin.

  He had resorted to instant solutions and pat  panaceas--a guitar, for instance, to cure the  emotional illness for which Dr. Quinoness had  recommended a psychiatrist. When Sybil had  complained that things felt unreal, he had laughed  off the complaint in a grimacing sort of way or  had said, "Dr. Quinoness will give you some shots,  and you'll be all right." Willard Dorsett had  also often dismissed Sybil's worries as  imaginary. In short, through a variety of  strategies of denial, the father had overlooked,  ignored, refused to face the underlying problem that was  his daughter's real worry.
  The real worry? Had Sybil's behavior  ever seemed strange? the doctor asked the father.
  Yes, Willard recalled that there were times in which  Sybil hadn't seemed to be herself, that, in fact,  it had often been hard to say just what that self was  because Sybil was seldom the same. She was very  moody, and she seemed to be many different kinds of  people. Sybil had not seemed like herself, the father
  
recollected, after her grandmother died or  in the fifth grade (when Sybil forgot all the  multiplication that she had known) or in the sixth  grade (when Willard had been called to school  because, having wandered out of her classroom, Sybil  was found in the cloakroom talking in a way that was  not like her). There were also times, the father remembered,  when Sybil and he gave guitar concerts or  sang in the glee club, and she would forget the  music she had previously known very well.
  According to Willard, Sybil also had not seemed like  herself in Omaha when she walked on the  furniture after she had been sent home from  college and had said, "You get out of my way.  I might hurt you." Her behavior, he said,  had been so strange at that time that Hattie and he  had had to lock all the doors and hide the keys.  Nor had he known what to make of it when sometimes  Sybil would disappear.
  "I don't know what I did wrong," he    said, "but I'm sure there were things. I tried to be  a good father."
  Dr. Wilbur's list of the things he had done  wrong was extensive. In addition to what had already  been mentioned, the doctor claimed, he  had been doubtful about everything, and his  doubts had created false fears

in Sybil. He had made decisions involving  her without consulting her and had betrayed her many  times. A childhood example of betrayal was that  at the time of her tonsillectomy he had not  told her what was going to happen but had lured her  to Dr. Quinoness's home (the upper floor of which  served as his hospital) by telling her she would  spend the day playing with the Quinoness children. This  bare-faced lie produced such intense fear that  Sybil began to struggle the moment the ether mask  approached her face. Her father held her legs  down. She continued to struggle throughout the operation and  forever after when any association with this betrayal  entered her consciousness.
  The father, who himself was not a rejecting father in all  respects and who did have a relationship with his  daughter, often made Sybil feel rejected,  notably when he had not allowed her to be present  at her grandmother's funeral service.
  "I only did it to spare Sybil the agony  it would have caused her," Willard explained.
  "But," the doctor countered, "there was greater
  
agony for Sybil in feeling that you had  rejected her--greater agony in not being allowed  to express her grief."
  Agony and rejection there had been, too, when  Sybil was thirteen and Willard, weary of  Hattie's complaints about having to live under the  same roof with his father, talked of renting a place  for Hattie and Sybil to live in while
Willard continued to stay with his father in their old  home. "Girls should be with their mother," Willard  explained.
  Willard Dorsett, the doctor claimed,  had let his daughter down by not permitting her    to skip a grade (even though her I.q. was
170 and she was held back by slower children), for fear  she would get what he called a "swelled head."
  When Dr. Wilbur accused Willard of  having wanted to break up Sybil's friendship with  Danny Martin, which had had a healing effect on  Sybil and which could have developed into a marriage,  for religious reasons, the father took umbrage.  "I didn't want Sybil to be with that boy for  her own good," Willard said. "I did only  what I knew to be right. I didn't  want her to marry out of our faith, and if she had  been older, she would have agreed with me." He  added, "She did, in fact, agree with that  philosophy later. When a man she dated  differed with her religious philosophy, she would  immediately withdraw. Sybil was devout."
  There were reasons for what Willard Dorsett  had "done wrong" that the doctor suppressed because  they were the answers that would have alienated him forever.  In the instance of Danny Martin the doctor would have  liked to have told Willard that he had sacrificed  his daughter's happiness on the altar of a narrow  religious concern. The doctor would have liked to have  asked: what do you suppose your daughter was trying  to say to you when she climbed into your bed and got between  you and your wife when you were having intercourse? Why,  the doctor would also have liked to have put to the father, are  you such a hypocrite, preaching "decency" and yet  thinking it moral and right to have sex for nine years in  your daughter's presence? And why, while making  too much of your daughter's being too big at two  and a half to sit on your lap, too big for all  the little intimacies that would have made her feel that  she had a living, breathing father, did you later
  
seduce her with words? The verbal  seduction was an oblique reference to the fact that,  while courting Frieda, Willard often had made  remarks to Sybil such as, "You young people know so much  more about sex than we do that I'm sure you can tell  me a few things."
  And, just as Dr. Wilbur refrained from smoking  or swearing in the presence of this modest,  puritanical man, she had also inhibited the  questions that would have challenged his puritanism.
  "I tried to be a good father," Willard  Dorsett repeated as he shook hands with the  doctor at the end of a session that had run two  hours. His words, however, had lost the old  cadences of assurance, and his invincible armor had  crumbled. The door closed on a man who had  been visibly shaken.
  Still self-protective, eager to get hold of  himself and to obliterate the past that had caught up with  him, he returned to Butler Hall and  telephoned Frieda, with

whom he could make connection with the present. In that  conversation, of course, he did not mention the harrowing  encounter, though the confrontation was  to produce immediate results. Never again,  as long as he lived, did the first of the month roll  around without Sybil's receiving a check from her father.
  Shortly after Willard concluded his conversation with  Frieda, the house phone rang and he was told,  "Your daughter and her friend are waiting for you."
  "Yes, yes, I'm expecting them," he  replied. "Tell them I'll be right down."
  In the lobby, Sybil, wearing a blue  gabardine suit and a red blouse, was waiting with  Teddy Reeves. Suddenly she thrust out her  chest, began whistling a tune, and strutted  jauntily away from Teddy. Approaching  Willard who had been walking toward her,  Sybil said in a firm, clear voice, "Why  didn't you ever take me to a football game?"
  It was an uncanny moment, and Willard was  taken back to a night when there had been a pounding    of nails in his carpentry shop in Willow  Corners. Wondering who could be there at that hour,  he decided to investigate. In the carpenter's  shop was a lean figure clad in blue denim  coveralls with a belt in the center; the figure's  arms were covered by a red woolen sweater. Willard  did not see the face, for the figure's back was
  
turned toward him. However, when he  called out, the figure turned. Sybil in the  Butler Hall lobby looked now as she had  looked then. "Dad," she repeated as they flagged  a taxi to take them to Carnegie Hall, "why  didn't you ever take me to a football game?"
  Teddy Reeves knew that Sybil had changed  into somebody else, but she didn't know into whom.  And the harassed father didn't know that, by not taking his  daughter to a football game, he had  frustrated a son.

               The Boys

  At the very moment that Willard Dorsett was  walking into Dr. Wilbur's office that May  4, 1957, Sybil Dorsett was placing her  key into the lock of her Morningside apartment. As  the door swung open, she gazed in astonishment  at the thirty- by eighteen-foot room that was the  apartment's main thoroughfare. Between 8:00 A.m.  and the present moment, a space of eight hours, the  room had been transformed by what seemed like a  great wall.
  The smell of fresh paint that  assailed Sybil's nostrils affirmed not only  the recency but also the reality of the wall. The red  paint that adhered to her fingers when she reached out  to touch this inexplicable wall was further testament  to its reality. But it was not quite what it at first  seemed. Upon closer scrutiny, Sybil  realized that the wall--really a partition--was  only eight feet high.
  The apartment, which originally had been the dining  room of an old mansion, provided an ersatz  elegance and the redundancy of two kitchens but no  privacy. Teddy Reeves slept in the  smaller of the two kitchens; Sybil slept in the  part of the long room that had an old woodburning  fireplace. In the Dorsett-Reeves  household the area was known as the living room.  To get to her room, Teddy always had to pass  Sybil's bed. It had been an odd,  unsatisfactory arrangement, for which neither  Sybil nor Teddy had ever quite gotten around  to finding a solution.
  The partition, which divided the room in half and
  
masked the area in which Sybil slept,  rendered Sybil's bed inviolable against intrusion.  Teddy could walk directly to her own room. But  although Sybil was greatly pleased at finding the  solution presented as a fait accompli, she  was anxious about the mysterious existence of this  protector of her privacy.
  The anxiety was the greater because her discovery had  occurred at the end of a fragmented day with long  stretches of lost time. Even as she took her  key out of the lock, closed the door, and walked  toward the end of the partition, she could feel strong  internal movement--"the interference of the others," as  she had learned to call it. There was a clamoring  without sound.
  Still, the partition was sturdy, and, although hastily  assembled, it had been skillfully wrought--  worthy, she thought, of two generations of Dorsett  carpenters--her father and her grandfather. She would have  to show it to her father before he returned to Detroit.
  She could hear Teddy's key in the lock. "I  smell paint," Teddy called. She stopped  short, staring at the wall. "The partition's  marvelous. Why didn't you tell me you were going  to build it?" she asked.
  "I didn't," Sybil said. But  even as she spoke, she knew that she couldn't be  sure of the "I." Not inconceivably the nails,  which her nervously wandering fingers had discovered in the  pockets of the blue slacks that she had been  wearing all day, belonged to the partition's carpenter.  Dorsett carpenters?

  The next morning Dr. Wilbur's office,  a virtual tribunal the day before, became a  confessional. A personality strutted jauntily  toward the couch, sat down, and confessed, "I did  it."
  "Did what?" the doctor asked.
  "Built the partition, of course. I let  Mike drive in the nails, but I did all the  heavy work myself. Vicky and Peggy Lou did  most of the planning and measuring and some of the painting.  You have to give girls credit where credit is  due."
  For the nonce Dr. Wilbur did not make  too much of the name "Mike" or of the patronizing  compliment to girls. What most greatly impressed  the doctor was
  
that alternating selves had translated  Sybil's wish and need for privacy into a  constructive solution, which the waking self hadn't  found. While the conscious mind had vacillated,  the unconscious had acted.
  The doctor's attention quickly was brought back  to the immediate situation, however, as she became aware that  the patient--a self whom the doctor hadn't  met before--was looking at her very intently.  "I'm Mike," the voice announced. "I  want to ask you something." This voice was different from  the one that had talked about the partition.
  "What would you like to know?" the doctor asked.  "How come?"
  "How come what?"
  "We're different?"
  "Different?" the doctor repeated.  "Well," Mike explained, "the others are  girls. But I'm a boy, and so is Sid."
  "You live in a woman's body," the doctor  reminded Mike.
  "Not really," Mike countered with certainty.  "It just looks like it," Sid added with equal  assurance.
  The moment passed. The boys, having  asserted confidence in their maleness,  rattled on about who and what they were. By their own  description, Sid had light skin, dark hair,  and blue eyes; Mike, olive skin, dark  hair, and brown eyes. Sid had derived his name  from Sybil's initials--So-ybil
I-sabel Do-orsett. Mike attributed  his name to two sources--father and grandfather. The name of  Mike, which had originated in Willard's having  called his daughter, "Mike" whenever she was  dressed in coveralls, had been reinforced by a  favorite expression of grandfather Dorsett:  "For the love of Mike."
  Mike and Sid talked of the concert they had  attended last night with Dad, of helping Sybil  with her woodcarving and sculpture. They talked of  their stamp collection and of life in the  Dorsett-Reeves apartment.
  Sid, who was the partition's carpenter, was also  Sybil's repairman. "I fix what's  broken, mend what needs mending," Sid told  Dr. Wilbur. "Sybil never knows who did  it." A broad smile illuminated his face.
  
"You know what," he said, "I'm going  to get six apple crates and build Sybil a  bookcase."
  New York, the boys complained, offered them  almost no opportunity for the sports they had  enjoyed in Willow Corners, where, dressed in  their blue denim coveralls and a red sweater, they  had spent long hours roller skating or hitting  a ball against the side of the Dorsett home. In  Willow Corners they had watched, they said, the  miracle of construction performed by their father's crew.  What Mike and Sid enjoyed most of all was  to climb into the long rope swing and to get that swing  up high enough so that they could touch their own home when  swinging forward and the neighbor's house when swinging  backward. "Boy, it was fun," said Mike.
  "You should have seen us," said Sid.  Life in Willow Corners was, of course,  not without frustration. Symbolic of that frustration was  the megaphone other kids at school used for the  amplification of sound at sports events.  "Sid and I never used the megaphone," Mike  told the doctor wi/lly, "because we never went  to a ballgame. Our Dad wouldn't take us."
  Even in the first session with Dr.  Wilbur there had been clues that  illuminated Mike's initial "How come?"
  "I look like my Dad," Sid had  volunteered. "He's a builder. I'm a  builder. As good as he is anytime."
  Mike had remarked, "Grandpa was strong, and  I'm strong. He could pound nails, and I can  pound nails just as hard as he can. He was big, and  I can be just as big. I'm not crippled."
  Saying that, Mike had thrust out his chest with a  flourish of masculine pride. With this bit of  pantomime Dr. Wilbur realized that even  though at the beginning of the hour Sid had spoken  first, it had been Mike who had entered the room.  The doctor knew, too, that the clues that had  been dropped, like pebbles in a stream, were  producing ripples in answer to Mike's  initial question. She hypothesized that Sid was an  identification with father; Mike, with grandfather  Dorsett.
  Boys in the 1920's and 1930's in Willow  Corners, Mike and Sid were still boys in the  1950's in New York.
  
Theirs was the eternal youth of an  alternating self, a youth with the constant although  unfulfilled promise of growing up.
  As they walked to the door, the doctor was  struck by the fact that they were wearing blue slacks,  the New York counterpart of the Willow Corners  blue denim coveralls.

  Growing up for Mike and Sid, who had  remained boys for more than twenty years, had a  special meaning: becoming a man. Over a  period of weeks they revealed the intensity of their  yearning to Dr. Wilbur.
  "It was so dark in the garage," Mike told  Dr. Wilbur. "You could smell the shavings and the  lumber, and it smelled good. It's clean, that  smell. There was a long bench in there, with a box under  it, with books that kids aren't supposed to look  at. Know what else was in that box? Woman's  switches." (the switches were auburn  tresses, the remnants of Hattie's youth.)
  "It's sin in that box," Mike declared.  "Sin."
  There was a mischievous glimmer in his eyes as  he turned them up at the doctor.
"Wanna know something?" he asked. "I  put those switches on for fun. I looked like a  girl. I didn't like that." His eyes flickered  elusively. "Would you believe it? When I  wore those switches, I looked like a girl!"
  Mike waited for the doctor to share his consternation,  but, noting that she made no answer, he confided:  "I didn't like looking like a girl. I don't  want to be a sissy and do dirty things like our  mother. I took those switches right off."
  "Your mother was not a nice girl," the doctor  replied. "She was a dirty girl, that's true.  But, Mike, very few girls are like your mother. You  can be a girl without being what you call a dirty  girl."
  "I'm glad," he replied with conviction.  "I'm not a girl at all."
  "What do you have against girls?"  "Nobody likes girls. Not anybody."
  "I like girls."
  "Oh, some girls are all right." Mike  grinned broadly.

"I like Vicky and Peggy Lou okay. But I'm  glad I'm a boy."
  
  "You say you're a boy, but you're not  built like your father, are you?"
  There was silence--a silence that was finally broken  not by Mike but by Sid.
  "Almost," Sid replied.
  "How almost?" the doctor asked.
  "Arms and legs and everything," Sid explained.  "Yes, arms and legs, Sid, but what is  different from your father?"
  "I don't know," Sid replied.
  "Is there anything different from your father?"  "I don't know."
  "Is there?"
  "I said I didn't know," Sid repeated  angrily.
  "What do you think? Do you think there is something  different from your father?"
  "Well," Sid admitted after an awkward  pause, "I never got it, but I will. When I'm  bigger, it'll grow."
  "Sid, you didn't have it at birth like other little  boys. There will always be something different."
  Sid became thoughtful. "Well," he finally  said, "I sometimes used to pretend I was a girl.  When I did that, a woman with gray  hair laughed. Nobody laughs when
I'm a boy, and that's what I really am."  "What you pretended was real, Sid," the  doctor said slowly. "You look like your father and can  be like him in thought and feeling, in the way you  approach things. The differences in the sexes are  fewer than people, even experts, used to think. But you  are never going to be like your father sexually. Your father  has a penis, and you don't. He doesn't have a  vagina, and you do. Now how do you suppose that you  came to think you're built like him when you're not?"
  "But I am."
  "Your father was a boy who became a man."  "That's what Mike and I will be when we're  older. We will have everything our Dad has. Dad  has to shave. We'll have to shave. Dad. ..."
  "But this is a woman's body. ..."  "Doctor, I want to tell you something." It  was

Mike, speaking in a firm clear voice in which  he seemed to be pushing Sid aside to assume  control of the situation. "If I pushed hard, I  could push it out."
  "But you have tried," the doctor pointed out,
  
enunciating each word with care, "and you  haven't pushed it out."
  "I could, though." The certainty of Mike's  tone was matched by the confident look in his eyes.
  "If you could, you would have," the doctor insisted.  "You're just saying that," Mike replied with a  broad, infectious grin.
  "No, I'm not just saying that. This is the truth  for both you and Sid," the doctor reminded her  patients. "Boys in a girl's body don't  grow up to be men."
  Unconvinced, Mike asked, "If I give  a girl a baby, will it be mine?"
  "Mike," the doctor replied firmly, "I  cannot say yes to the impossible. In this body in which  you reside there is a uterus, ovaries, a  vagina. Each of these is just as special, just as  precious as a penis in a man's body. Without  the woman's organs as well as the man's, the  perpetuation of the human race would be impossible.  It takes a woman's organs as well as a  man's to produce a baby. Now, in this body--  your body, Mike--there is a pair of ovaries,  where the eggs are. ..."
  "I don't want those sissy girl  organs," Mike interrupted, "and I  don't have them. Not me--I'm a boy."
  "Mike, you only have half of what it takes  to create a baby, and it is not the half you think you  have. All of these parts of the body--the woman's  organs and the man's--are important for both the  woman and the man. But no one of them is more  important than the other. None of them is  dirty. You understand that?"
  "I'm built like my Dad, like Grandpa  was," Mike protested. "I can give a girl  a baby if I want to. How many times do I  have to tell you that if I pushed hard enough, I could  push it out?"
  "Why don't you try?"
  "I will when I'm older."
  "Mike, you do not have a penis or the two little  sacks, the testicles, that hang down below the  penis and

contain the male cells. Without these you cannot give a  girl a baby."
  "Not ever?" Mike asked. "Not ever?" His  tone, for the first time since he had presented himself  to the doctor, was somber, subdued.
  
  "No, not ever."
  He replied with wi/l urgency: "But I  want to I want to. I have to!"
  Mike Dorsett could not accept the special  facts of his life.

  Of the two, Mike proved in analysis to be  the more aggressive; Sid was the more thoughtful. This was  quite appropriate in terms of their identification--  Mike with his grandfather, Sid with his father.
  Sybil had made identification not with her mother,  of whom she was terrified and ashamed, but with the males  in her family. Her father had let Sybil down  but, except for the one instance when he and Hattie  had been having intercourse, had not hit her or  hurt her physically. Because she had to have someone,  she had made her father the figure on whom she  depended. The identification was the more natural because  she looked like her father.
  Her father was a builder and carpenter. She  became a builder and carpenter by dissociating into a  male personality. And that was the genesis of  Sid, who had built the partition.
  Grandpa Dorsett was aggressive and  fanatical. He aroused Sybil's  fear, anger, and hatred. Sybil had  found the means of dealing with this grandfather and these  emotions by dissociating into a male personality whose  name was Mike. In Mike Sybil found an  aggressor to deal with her grandfather's aggression.  Sybil was terrified and ashamed of her grandfather.  Mike reflected Sybil's feelings but at the  same time made identification with the aggressor--  in fact, became the aggressor.
  "How could Sybil get along with her grandfather?"  Mike had asked the doctor in late May,
1957. "He was always there and always right. The only  way to get along with him was either to lick him or  join him. I joined him."

  Sid and Mike emerged strong and  nonneurotic. As far as the doctor had been  able to determine, neither was subject to fear,  anxiety, depression, or even undue sadness.  Sid, however, more contemplative than Mike, was  often subject to the intermingling of love, fear, and  hate in his feelings toward his father and his father's father.  Mike maintained a strong silence about his mother.    Even though he talked freely of grandfather and father,  of the "girls," as he called Vicky, the
  
Peggys, Marcia, Vanessa, Mary,
Ruthie, and the others who had not yet emerged in  analysis, he was always reluctant to talk of  Sybil herself.
  Both Mike and Sid were capable of anger, but  it was an anger that was more controlled, less furious  than that of Peggy Lou, though it turned out to be  linked with Peggy Lou. Mike and Sid, Dr.  Wilbur discovered, were Peggy Lou's progeny,  a part of a family tree unconnected with  genetic inheritance, an offshoot of emotional  functioning, of the defensive maneuvers to which the  alternating selves owed their existence.
  As the mastermind behind Mike and Sid, Peggy  Lou delegated her feelings to them. By a curious  phenomenon, Sybil had lost the emotions,  attitudes, and acquisitions she bequeathed to the  personalities into whom she had dissociated whereas  Peggy Lou, in proliferating into subselves,  among whom were Mike and Sid, lost nothing of  what she delegated to them. That Mike was the  product of Peggy Lou's wish became clear in  a conversation between Dr. Wilbur and Vicky.
  "Peggy Lou," Vicky said, "is angry about  sex because of her mother's refusal  to explain the facts of life. Sometimes  Peggy Lou used to say that she was a boy and that her  name was Mike. Whenever she thought she was a boy,  she wore blue coveralls and a red sweater and  did things with tools. She played like the boys and  tried to do everything that boys do. But then she would  get mad because she knew she wasn't. Even today  it makes her mad to know she's a girl. It  makes her simply furious because she wants children  and wants to get married when she's old enough.  She wants

to be the man. She wants to be the man she  marries when she's old enough."
  Identified with Willard and Aubrey  Dorsett, emotional descendants of Peggy  Lou, Mike and Sid, these boys in a woman's  body, were also mythological figures, the  compensatory answer to the myth of woman's  inferiority, particularly as enunciated in the  benighted world of Willow Corners.
  Although Mike and Sid epitomized the  antifeminist view that women slink through life with  secret masculine yearnings, a penis envy so  strong that it becomes penis identification, and a
  
woman's capacity for self-derogation  so virulent as utterly to repudiate femininity,  their feelings were rooted in the environmental  influences of a milieu and were rejected by genetic,  medical, and psychological evidence. These  boys without penises were perhaps the objectification  of a woman's rebellion not so much at being  female as at the connotations of femaleness evoked  by the retarded culture of Willow Corners. That  rebellion, moreover, as Mike had made  clear in saying, "I don't want to be a  dirty girl like our mother," was a revulsion against the  distortions about sex a mother had created. Loathing the  femaleness that was her mother, a loathing intensified  by her father's puritanism, Sybil extended that  loathing to the femaleness that was self, to the body that  her mother had violated.
  "Now, in this body--your body, Mike,"
Dr. Wilbur had said, "there is a pair of  ovaries, where the eggs are."
  And Mike had replied, "I don't want  them."
  Mike and Sid were also autonomous beings, with  emotions of their own. Mike's wi/lly urgent  need "to give a girl a baby" was an  expression of that autonomy. But though  both, denying that the body in which they lived was alien  to their desires, thought and acted as free agents,  it was a limited, uncertain freedom.  Moreover, analysis threatened their freedom,  for regarding the boys' presentation of themselves as a  serious complication in a case already overloaded with  complications and already following a halting course,  Dr. Wilbur was determined to fuse Mike and

Sid into the feminine whole they so resolutely  rejected as soon as possible.
  Mike's initial question, "How come?" had  produced an answer rooted in multiple  origins. Perhaps there was also a subtle answer in  the fact that the unconscious, to which Mike and  Sid, like the other alternating selves, belonged,  doesn't draw the sexual distinctions that a  stratified society imposes.
  The uniqueness, which, before, was based on  Sybil's having developed more alternating  selves than had any other known multiple  personality, was now founded as well on her being the  only multiple personality to have crossed the  borders of sexual difference to develop
  
personalities of the opposite sex.
* No known male multiple personality had  developed female selves. Sybil
Dorsett was the only known woman multiple  personality whose entourage of alternating selves  included males.
      * Since 1957, other multiple  personalities who have developed selves
    of the opposite sex have been recorded.

        The Voice of Orthodoxy

  After the appearance of Mike and Sid the  analysis suddenly began to veer into the terrifying  pathways of religious conflict. The serpent had  caught up with the couch. "I want you to be free,"  Dr. Wilbur told Sybil in September,
1957. "Free not only of your mother and your  ambivalent feelings about your father but also of the  religious conflicts and distortions that divide  you."

  Sybil wanted to be free, but she was  terrified that analysis would take her  religion away. The terror was  greatly intensified, moreover, by the realization that  the help that she had always thought would come from God was  now coming from Freud. Unready to accept this  conclusion even though it was her own, she pondered  whether both Freud and the Church could be right at the  same time. The pondering in turn heightened the  feeling of being simultaneously frantic,  anxious, and trapped.
  Wanting freedom from the religious distortions  that hounded and divided her yet wanting to hold on  to her fundamental beliefs, she realized that the  problem was one of salvaging God while  surrendering the appurtenances with which He had been  enshrouded. This meant breaking free from an  environmental bondage to a childhood in which  religion was omnipresent. Armageddon was table  talk, and the end of the world was a threatening reality.  There had been menace, too, in grandfather  Dorsett's prattle about the seven last  plagues and the inevitable war with China and about how in  the wake of the Catholics' assumption of power would  come the doom of mankind, a doom that had also been  prepared, her grandfather averred, by the perfidious,  sacrilegious theory of evolution that Darwin had
  
promulgated.
  The crypt in the cathedral of Sybil's  religious torment was occupied, too, by a  variety of symbolic figures from the past,  exerting in the present their throttling grip. One  of these was no less a personage than Satan--  the serpent who had stalked through Sybil's  childhood, a living, breathing presence. Fearing  that he would creep in at night, she had also feared  that nothing she could do would or could keep him from  "getting her."
  In the crypt of torment, too, was an angel  with sword and fire, who, having driven Adam and  Eve out of the Garden of Eden because they were "bad,"  threatened to drive Sybil out of her home because  she, too, was "bad."
  The more, therefore, that the analysis led Sybil  to dip into the accretive religious heritage of  an overstrict observance of rigid faith, the more  hounded, divided she

became. Yet while inwardly rebelling, she  outwardly conformed to the letter of the orthodoxy.

  The voice of that orthodoxy was heard  in the consulting room that brisk  September day. Sybil was seated on the couch,  close to the doctor. The discussion moved from the  need for freedom in the present to the lack of  freedom imposed by the past.
  "I understood the reasons for not smoking, not  dancing, not going to birthday parties on Sabbath,"  Sybil explained. "But I rebelled inside.  Then after a while I didn't rebel. Then I  did again. And now I'm trying not to."
  "Why," the doctor asked in dismay, "are you  trying not to now?"
  Sybil was silent.
  "Okay," the doctor prodded. "Now what  makes sense about not going to a birthday party on  Sabbath?"
  "Because it says in the Bible you should not do your own  pleasure on the Sabbath day. You are supposed  to think about God. Not do secular things." She had  spoken unhesitatingly, but now she added  defensively, "I don't want to talk about  it."
  "Doesn't the Bible say," the doctor  reminded her, "on six days work and rest on the  seventh? Isn't going to a party part of the seventh
  
day's leisure of which the Bible  talks?"
  "You could go to a party on another day," Sybil  replied non-responsively. "But not on  Sabbath because observance was from sundown to sundown.  That's what God told us to do."
  The doctor offered a correction: "That's what  the prophets in the Bible said God told us to do.  Let's not confuse the issue."
  "God talked through them," Sybil replied with  conviction.
  "Perhaps," said the doctor.
  "The Bible is written by the inspiration of  God," Sybil affirmed. "It isn't just something  somebody has written down."
  "The prophets were human beings and we cannot

be absolutely, positively, totally sure  they got things exactly correct."
  "God," Sybil replied, "would not permit  them to make mistakes."
  "Oh, He permits people to make mistakes!"  There was a tinge of irony in the doctor's  voice.
  "Yes," Sybil conceded. Then her  facial expression became taut as  she added, "But not in something as important as His  law, the guide for generations to come."
  "Is loving your fellow man part of worshiping  God?" the doctor asked.
  "It's part of it," Sybil replied  authoritatively. "Not all of it. God said:  "Love thy neighbor as thyself.""
  "And if a neighbor should have a birthday on the  Sabbath," the doctor argued, "should he be  deprived of the celebration of that day?"
  "Yes," Sybil insisted, "God said He  should come first."
  "Aren't we worshiping God when we  celebrate our birthday?"
  "We are not," said Sybil.
  "All right," the doctor persisted, "you  celebrate Christmas--Christ's birthday?"
  "Not in our Church. It's all right to realize  and remember that He was born, but you must keep in  mind it wasn't that particular day--December  25."
  "Isn't it proper to honor the days on which we  were born if we are children of God?"
  Sybil replied sternly: "But you don't have
  
to have birthday parties and go around tooting  and yelling and that sort of thing on the Sabbath. There  are many things you have to forgo if you are going to follow  God. It doesn't have to be easy. St. John  the Baptist said, "I have fought the good fight.""
  There was momentary silence. Then, with a directness  calculated to quicken Sybil's own repressed  doubts--as expressed by some of the other selves--  Dr. Wilbur said: "Well, there is one thing
I really don't comprehend about your religion:  one thing for which man has struggled through the centuries  is his freedom."

  "That may be. But no one wants freedom from  God." An unwavering Sybil had had the last  word.
  A few days later Peggy Lou and Peggy
Ann displayed combined anger and terror when Dr.  Wilbur began to talk about religion. "It's  all mixed up," said Peggy Lou, speaking for  both Peggy Ann and herself. "It's futile  to talk about it. It goes round and round." Pacing  the consulting room, Peggy Lou came to a sudden  halt. "It's supposed to do more than not upset  you. It's supposed to help you. But it  never helped me. It never helped
Peggy Ann or any of the rest of us." The fire  of rebellion had been unleashed, yet the Church  still stood. With a swift sharp movement, however, as  Peggy Lou continued to pace the floor, she reached  metaphorically for the edifice without exit, serving  notice, "I'd like to tear the Church down!"
  Vanessa breezed into the consulting room a few  days after Peggy Lou's diatribe. Although  Vanessa was not quite ready to tear the Church down, she  expressed contempt for both the Church's  prohibitions and its congregation. "I'm not  devout," Vanessa said with an attractive toss  of the head, "but even if I were, the people in the  Willow Corners Church would have turned me off.  They were bigoted, unjust, irrational, and  hypocritical. I can't see how they dared  to call themselves Christians." Vanessa's lips  formed a satiric smile. "All the things you had  to do to be right," she jeered. "The irony was that the  things you wanted to do weren't wrong. On Sabbath  they wanted you just to sit. That, of course, my dear  Watson, was a waste of time."
  She stopped talking and met the doctor's  gaze. "And, Doctor, I must confess that I
  
didn't understand the meaning of God's  love. Mother was always trying to tell me that God was  love, and I couldn't understand what love was. But  I did know I didn't want God to be like my  mother."
  "I see," the doctor replied.
  "Mother said she loved me, but if that was love  ..."
  "Then you didn't want love ..."
  "And I'm supposed to want God ..."  "You were afraid ..."

  "Because," Vanessa explained, "I didn't know  what God and His love were going to do to me."
  "Yes," agreed the doctor. "So you were  afraid."
  Even before Vanessa left the room, Marcia  entered the scene to add a few variations on the  theme. Religious yet resentful of the  religion's prohibitions, which had created in her  a sense of alienation and deprived her of the  opportunity to grow up freely, she looked at  the doctor pensively.
  "Things that were right for everybody else were wrong for  me. The worst of it was I knew I  couldn't do these things--dancing, going to the  movies, wearing jewelry--even when I grew  up.
  "Would you believe it, Dr. Wilbur, I  didn't see my first movie until I came  to live in New York?" she confided with a  derisive but almost comic shrug.
  Marcia smiled wanly. "Looking back,"  she said, "I realize how trapped I was by all  the talk of the end of the world. It was something to look  forward to, and there would be a better life after that.  I had to believe that. But underneath I wished it  weren't that way because there were so many things I wanted  to do, and it was as if the end would come before I had a  chance. But it seemed wrong to think that way, and I  had a mixed up feeling--the same sort of  feeling I have now when I realize things can't be    different."
  Mike and Sid, who also made their way into the  era of analytic religious debate, voiced a  belief in God but a contempt for religious  rituals and histrionics. They were not  religious, but they were concerned with religion.  What they especially resented was grandfather's  prattle about Armageddon and evolution. They--
  
especially Mike--were more interested in  doing battle with their grandfather and in defending  Sybil as well as themselves against him than in the  truth or falsity of his utterances.
  Ruthie, who was only a baby and whom Dr.  Wilbur had met only in connection with the primal  scene, talked of rebellion in the church's  sandbox. "Our hands were in the sandbox," Ruthie  said. "The sand felt all smooth. We let it  run through our fingers. We liked the sand, stood  things in the sand. Then we were big

enough to hear about that angel we didn't trust at  all. We'd get up Sabbath morning and play.  We thought they'd forgotten, but then they'd  remember. We'd say, "Don't wanna go!
Don't wanna go!" Daddy would look. Mama  said we hadda grow up. If Daddy had a white  shirt and Mama was fixing pancakes, then we  knew there'd be the sandbox. So when we saw the  white shirt and the pancakes we got sick, had  to go to bed, and Daddy and Mama went to church without  us."
  Of all the selves of Sybil it was Mary, the  homebody, to whom religion meant  most. Mary, who had rejected the  doctrines, the rituals, the florid  symbolism of the faith, had incorporated within  herself the unpretentious religion of grandmother  Dorsett. "I pray to God," Mary told the  doctor, "but I don't go to church. I try  to be honest, truthful, and patient and to lead a good  Christian life. I believe in "live and  let live." This brings me solace."
  Yet as the discussions of religion  progressed, Dr. Wilbur could see that Mary  was losing her serenity. While Sybil was concerned  that analysis would deprive her of her  religion, Mary was troubled that analysis would  make her religion sound inconsistent. And in  time the feelings of entrapment that the religion  wrought in all the selves, but most especially in  the Peggys, reached and overwhelmed Mary. Becoming  subdued and depressed, Mary told Dr.  Wilbur, "I'm caught in here, inside of these  walls. Peggy Lou brought me a picture of the  church, and there was no exit. I'm caught in this  building with no doors. It seems to be  dome-shaped and to be built of blocks of packed  snow."
  
  As the analysis proceeded, the  religious conflicts surfaced more and more. It would  be easy but untrue to say that while Sybil, the  waking self, representing the conscious mind,  conformed, the others, whose domain was the unconscious,  rebelled. The truth was that even though most  markedly conformity was apparent in Sybil and  rebellion in the Peggys, both conformity and  rebellion were expressed in a variety of ways  in all the selves, many of whom were further  divided within the autonomy of their individual  identities.
  All of the selves had independent religious  convic-

ns and attitudes. All, with the exception of the  Peggys, believed in God; all felt trapped  by the Church. Under the pressure of confrontation with  religion in analysis, Mary wanted to die,  and the Peggys wanted to run away. Marcia and  Vanessa broke away from some of the old restraints  and began, in keeping with Dr. Wilbur's urging,  to separate God from the Church, the congregation, and the  Church's prohibitions. Feeling freer,  Vanessa bought a pair of red earrings  to match her hair and Marcia went to the  movies on Sabbath. Marcia also dared,  experimentally at any rate, to light a  cigarette and take a sip of sherry.
  Vicky, who had played the role of observer  without declaring her own convictions--since after all she  had only been a visitor in the Dorsett  church--became troubled about Marcia and Vanessa.
  "No harm in what they've done so far,"  Vicky told Dr. Wilbur, "but they're showing  off their new freedom. By pulling away from the  others they are going to make integration more  difficult."
  "Yes, I know, Vicky," Dr. Wilbur  agreed. "But maybe integration will involve bringing  the others to where Marcia and Vanessa are."
  Vicky shrugged. Then she looked fixedly at  the doctor and expressed perturbation at the  change in Sybil herself. "Sybil," Vicky  informed the doctor, "hasn't known what her  relationship to God is ever since she found out about  the rest of us. You see, Dr. Wilbur, she  always felt that this condition of hers was evil. As a  little girl she thought it was a form of punishment, the  handiwork of Satan. When you told her about us, that
  
old feeling about evil came back,  even though she was no longer so sure about Satan.
  "Sybil often wonders," Vicky continued,  "whether she has displeased God. She is also  unsure of whether her motives are always right.  She gets scared about words--all this talk here--  making things better and then having the whole world  to face." Vicky leaned her head on her hand  thoughtfully. "Sybil's afraid that if she gets  better, something terrible will happen. It's as if the  serpent is about to get her once again even though the  serpent is losing his name."

  Toward Christmas Sybil became perturbed  by the courses in zoology and evolution that she was  taking at Columbia. Together Dr. Wilbur and  Sybil read passages from Darwin's Origin  of Species and The Descent of Man.
It was difficult for Sybil to accept that the  bodily structure of man shows traces of  descent from some lower form. "We are children of  God," Sybil insisted defensively.  "Evolution, after all, is only a  hypothesis."
  The subject of evolution stirred
Mike to say, "You see--grandpa was  wrong," and Mary to remark, "It doesn't  matter where we come from but what we do with our  lives." Peggy Lou fumed, "Animals have the  freedom we never had in our church," and a newly  skeptical Vanessa quipped, "What a  relief not to have to be a creature of God!"

  The analysis veered from religion in Willow  Corners to religion in Omaha, where the serpent  of childhood became less menacing. The Omaha  congregation was better educated, less rigid, more  humanistic than that in Willow Corners.  Pastor Weber, a preacher who was also an  evangelist, considered Sybil an artist and was  aware of the subduing impact that a too-literal  interpretation of the faith had had on her as an  isolated only child in a family that had not  experienced the mediating influences of young people.  Pastor Weber swept Sybil out of isolation and  into the limelight.
  "And four great beasts came up from the sea,  diverse one from another ..."
  Pastor Weber's voice, resonant and  full, rang through the Omaha church during the
  
special Sunday night service.
  "... the first was like a lion and had eagle's  wings."
  The audience of five hundred looked from the  evangelist to the scaffold nine feet above him,  at an easel covered with drawing paper and  spanning the entire width of the church. Following the  beam of the heavy spotlights that illuminated the  scaffold, the audience focused on the slight  figure of a woman in a light blue chiffon  dress with a small white apron: Sybil.
  Sybil, delicate, ethereal in the enveloping  light--

"angelic," as one observer described her--  brought to life, with rapid strokes, the lion with  eagle's wings on the drawing paper. The audience  was spellbound, transfixed.
  As the evangelist then spoke of a second  beast, "like to a bear" with three ribs between its  teeth, and of a third beast after that, like a leopard but  with four heads, and on whose back were four wings of a  fowl, these beasts, too, appeared in swift  succession upon the paper.
  Portraying the message of the
Scripture, translating the  evangelist's words into pictures, Sybil  drew the fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and    exceedingly strong, with iron teeth and ten horns.  "I considered the horns, and behold, there came  up among them another little horn, before whom there were  three of the first horns plucked up by the roots,"  the evangelist's voice boomed, "and behold in  this horn were eyes like the eyes of men, and a mouth  speaking great things." From the paper, compellingly  real, glared the eyes that stared into the captivated  audience and the mouth that, though mute, spoke.
  "Daniel takes the position," the  evangelist told the audience, "that we started out  all right, man being created perfect, and then came  the degeneracy. Instead of coming from the zoo, we are  heading for the zoo. We are becoming like animals."  The figures, no longer representational, had  become abstract, an instant translation of the  evangelist's message.
  "Man became so sinful," the evangelist's  voice warned, "that God had to create a  special animal to describe the sinful  generation."
  On the paper, nine feet above the evangelist
  
and created by lightning strokes of black  chalk, was an abstraction of the divine fury that had  been evoked.
  For three successive Sundays Sybil  stood, a slight figure with a mighty stroke,  on the scaffold. The audience was spellbound.  Sybil's parents were unreservedly proud of their  daughter. Pastor Weber was jubilant that  Sybil Dorsett had put his philosophy  into pictures.
  Sybil herself, however, looked at the drawings  at the close of each of the three Sunday night  performances

and wondered how it had come to pass that on that paper  was more, much more, than she had drawn.

           The Wine of Wrath

  The real importance of the great spectacle in the  Omaha church, withheld at that time but revealed in  the analysis, was that on the scaffold Sybil had  not been alone. The beasts that rose from the sea to the  paper had been put there more by the other  selves than by Sybil herself. The  greatest part of the drawing had been done by Mike and  Sid. Even more significant was the fact that  among the selves on that scaffold were five Dr.  Wilbur had not yet met: Marjorie, Helen,  Sybil Ann, Clara, and Nancy Lou Ann.

  Marjorie was a small and willowy brunette  with fair skin and a pug nose. Helen had  light-brown hair, hazel eyes, a straight  nose, and thin lips. Sybil Ann was a pale,  stringy girl with ash-blonde hair, gray eyes,  an oval face, and a straight nose.
  Of the three, Marjorie alone was serene.  Helen was intensely fearful; Sybil Ann,  listless to the point of neurasthenia.
  Marjorie was vivacious and quick to laugh. She  enjoyed many things--parties and the theater, fairs and  travel, most especially games of  intellectual competition, from which Sybil almost  invariably withdrew. Marjorie had no hesitation  in expressing annoyance or impatience, but she  never showed anger. Most remarkably, Marjorie  Dorsett neither was depressed in the present nor  gave evidence of having been depressed in the
  
past. Through some special immunity she  had

emerged unscathed from the battering in Willow  Corners.
  Marjorie enjoyed making wry little jokes and was  also something of a tease. Asked, for instance, whether  she knew any of the other selves, she raised her  eyebrows, rolled her eyes coyly, and  bantered, "I'll never tell!" A moment later  she grinned. "But maybe the answer is yes,"  she said. Then she added cryptically, "I like  helping these other people."
  "They laugh or cry," Marjorie reported,  "and I often hear them mumbling beside me, heads  close together. It's quite a hum, and it always was--  ever since I came."
  Marjorie Dorsett never spoke Sybil's  name. When referring to the person who bore that name,  Marjorie resorted to "you know who."
  Dr. Wilbur couldn't understand why Marjorie,  who didn't paint and who was interested in neither art  nor religion, had been on the scaffold of the  Omaha church with Sybil.
  Helen, who seemed unassertive in  manner, was nevertheless ambitious,  determined "to be somebody, to do things in my own  way, and to make you, Dr. Wilbur, proud of  me."
  At the mention of Hattie, Helen broke  away from the couch, where she had been seated  quietly, to clamber on all fours toward and then  under the desk. Her arms folded over her breasts,    her head bent over her neck, her eyes wide with  terror, Helen sat huddled in a heap. Her  teeth were chattering noisily.
  "Helen?" the doctor, placing a hand on the  patient's shoulder, asked gently.
  "She's in this room," Helen screamed,  beginning to tremble even more violently than before.  "Behind the curtains."
  "Who?"
  "Mother."
  "There's nobody here, Helen, but you and me."  "I never want to see my mother again."
  "You never will."
  "Never?" Her teeth ceased to chatter, and the  terror departed from her eyes. As the doctor  helped the patient
  
from under the desk and on to her feet,  Helen remarked in a suddenly realistic tone that  broke the reenacted terror of childhood: "My  muscles are cramped."
  As in the instance of Marjorie, Helen, who  neither painted nor had any special religious  concern, seemed to have occupied an anachronistic  place on the scaffold.

  Sybil Ann shrank into the consulting room.  She didn't speak to the doctor but whispered.  After the introductions were over, Sybil Ann  sat silently, staring into vacancy. It was as if  she were erasing herself from the scene, almost as if,  by implication, she were saying, "I'm not fit  to occupy space. Excuse me for living."
  When Sybil Ann was in command, moreover, the  body itself underwent a marked change. It seemed  literally to grow smaller. That first time she  appeared, as the body seemed to shrink, the trim  gray suit Sybil Ann was wearing seemed  to stretch. On the other selves the suit fit  perfectly. On Sybil Ann, it assumed the  proportions of a sack. Within the recesses of the  expanding gray suit Sybil Ann  seemed to be hiding.
  Out of the awkward enveloping silence there did  finally come words with measured tread. Sybil Ann  told Dr. Wilbur: "I have to force myself even  to move my eyeballs. It's so easy just  to stare."
  This fragile personality, Dr. Wilbur  learned later, seldom ate, slept little, and  generally evinced only slight interest in her  surroundings. Often she would say: "I don't  feel anything." When she was in one of her better  moods, she enjoyed libraries and museums,  preferred music to painting. On the very rare  occasions when she herself painted, she invariably  produced a dreary picture of solitary characters  with faces either covered or turned away. On the  Omaha scaffold she had brought a measure of  gloom to the faces of the beasts.
  Characteristically, Sybil Ann assumed command of the  body when "everything was too much." The  "takeover," however, was a response to, rather  than the means of coping with, the given situation; of  all the
  
selves the most profoundly depressed  was Sybil Ann, who could sit for hours as mute  and unmoving as the pelican on the piano in the  Dorsett home in Willow Corners.
  When, at the end of the first visit to Dr.  Wilbur's consulting room, Sybil Ann  finally rose to leave, she walked at a slow,  dragging pace. "It's an effort," she said  wearily, "to put one foot ahead of the other, and  I have to keep thinking about it--or I stop."
  Noting Sybil Ann's great lassitude and  weakness, Dr. Wilbur diagnosed her as  suffering from neurasthenia, a type of neurosis  resulting from emotional conflicts that usually are  characterized by fatigue, depression, worry, and  often, localized pains without apparent  objective causes. Sybil Ann, Dr.
Wilbur also felt certain, was an identification  with Hattie Dorsett in her catatonic  phase on the farm.

  Clara, who had been in the consulting room  during the reliving of the episode on the Omaha  church scaffold during the Christmas holidays of  1957, continued silently to follow the  running dialogue about religion, which  extended through the rest of December and the early  months of 1958. In March she presented herself  to Dr. Wilbur with terse autobiographical  information. "I'm twenty-three. I never had a  mother. I just exist." She proceeded to explicate  her religious role in the Dorsett  conglomerate of selves.
  "I know more about religion than the others do,"  Clara Dorsett said. "I was in the sandbox with  Ruthie, at church school with Sybil and the  others. Religion is as important to me as it  is to Mary, even more important, I sometimes  think. I believe in God without reservation, in the  Bible as the revelation of His Truth, in Satan,  who is His antithesis."
  Suddenly the room was like a chalice in which the  wine of wrath is contained. Clara was pacing the  floor, uttering a vehement indictment:  "Sybil's such a deplorable character. Honest, it's  disgusting. The thing about it is that she gets the idea  that she's going to try. She can't do anything!"

  "You sound as if you don't like Sybil," the  doctor said.
  
  "I don't," Clara replied  bluntly.
  Self against self in a woman divided.  "Why not?" the doctor asked.
  "Why should I?" Clara replied resentfully.  "The only thing I want to do, she keeps me from  doing."
  "What do you want to do?" the doctor asked.  "Oh, it isn't anything spectacular,"  Clara explained. "I like to study and learn. She  stands in my way."
  "What do you like to study?"  "Music and English. Especially history,  medical things--chemistry, zoology," Clara  replied.
  "So does Sybil," the doctor was quick    to point out.
  "No, she doesn't," Clara said  contemptuously. "A big steel wall goes  up, and she just can't study. Can't do anything, in  fact. It wasn't always that way. But that's how it  is now."
  "Why, Clara?" the doctor asked,  to ascertain how much this newcomer really knew about  Sybil.
  "Anger," Clara replied  authoritatively.
  "I have some good drills for hacking that wall of  anger down," the doctor asserted. "Clara, will  you help me?"
  "Why should I?" Clara's pique had become  even more pronounced. "What has she ever done for  me?"
  "Then," the doctor suggested artfully, "help  me take a whack at that wall--not for Sybil but  for yourself."
  "For me?" Clara drew up her shoulders in  dismay. "I'm afraid, Doctor, I don't  see the connection."
  "Clara, can't you see that if you help me  help Sybil to get well, she will no longer stand  in the way of your doing the things you want to do?" The  doctor's tone was urgently insistent. "Can't you  see that in helping Sybil you will be helping yourself?"
  "Well," Clara hesitated, "Sybil's still  so far away from everything. I couldn't reach her if  I tried."
  "Try, Clara!" The doctor's urging had  become an entreaty. "For your own sake,  Clara," the doctor said softly. "Tomorrow morning
  
when Sybil wakes up, I'd like all  you girls to do something."
  "The boys, too?" Clara asked.

  "Yes, all of you," the doctor replied.  "What?" Clara wanted to know. "Go to church?  It's Sabbath tomorrow."
  "No, I don't want you to go to church," the  doctor replied firmly. "Just sleep late and  then tell Sybil that the reason she can't do all  the things she'd like to do is that the complications of the  illness are holding her back."
  Clara, who had been pacing as she talked,  came to an abrupt stop. "But, Doctor," she  protested, "you told Sybil that she could manage  school in spite of the illness, even though the  analysis was consuming much of her time."
  "Yes," the doctor explained, "I did  tell her that. But that was before I knew how much pain  had to be dealt with. At that time I thought that the  basic trauma was the grief over the grandmother's  death--that it was because of that that Sybil dissociated  into other selves. I also thought that grief was kept  alive because Sybil, who had been absent for two  years, had never had the opportunity  to get it out of her system. I didn't  know then how much pain there had been or how  complicated the roots were of Sybil's case."
  "You know," Clara replied confidentially,  "Sybil's worried because she lost several years  of things, and she's afraid that you'll find out."
  "That's ridiculous," the doctor averred.  "Sybil knows I know about those lost years."
  "She keeps reliving the past," Clara  reported. "She keeps thinking her mother is going  to hurt her." Clara paused. Then she added,  "I'm glad I never had a mother."
  The doctor allowed the comment to go unnoticed, as  she replied, "We're going to free Sybil of the  past."
  "Yes, she wants to be free," Clara  replied edgily. "Wants to forget everything and not  face anything."
  "She'll have to face it all before she can be free  of it," the doctor replied. "But she can do it.  She has great stamina, great courage. All of  you have."
  "Courage?" Clara asked with a sarcastic  overtone. "She can't do anything. Can't face  anything. You call that courage?"
  
  "She has great ability and is  gifted in many things," the doctor replied with  conviction. "When we hack that wall of anger  down, she'll be free to realize herself."
  Clara shook her head gravely. "There never  was a drill that could do that," she said.
  "My drill," the doctor maintained, "will do  that--on one condition."
  "Condition?" Clara seemed puzzled.  "We can tear the wall down, Clara," the  doctor replied firmly, "if you and the others will  work with me." Clara looked even more perplexed.  "Tomorrow," the doctor continued, "when you tell  Sybil about the analysis, also begin telling her  the various things you know."
  "Things? What things?" Clara asked  uncertainly.
  "What you have learned, feel, remember. ..."  the doctor coaxed.
  "I remember a great many things about the  Church," Clara reminisced. "The incidents in  the Willow Corners church are vivid."
  "Tell Sybil."
  "What's the use?" Clara shrugged.  "Sybil's not a good listener. That big  wall, you know."
  "We're going to demolish that wall," the  doctor replied. "All of us working together." The  doctor looked at Clara unflinchingly. "Then  Sybil will be able to do the things you want her to do.  She won't interfere with your studies anymore."
  "Well, I don't want to help her," an  uncompromising Clara replied. "Why should  I?"
  "Then, why don't you get together with the others?"  Dr. Wilbur persevered. "You can all do the  things you enjoy. You can do them together."
  Clara rose to her feet, began to pace once  again. Then with a wry smile, she turned to the  doctor. "You never saw such a pack of  individualists," Clara said. "They all want  to have things their own way."
  "Try!" The doctor renewed her entreaty.  Clara laughed. "You should hear us squabble. I  can feel them now. The Peggys are just simmering."
  "Clara, listen." The doctor was now standing  close to the patient. "What I'm asking of you  is for your own good, for the good of all of you. I've  already mentioned
  
it to some of the others. All of you must work  together. All of you must try to reach Sybil. That,  Clara, is the only way you're going to be able  to persuade Sybil to do the things that don't  interfere with your own self-realization. Don't you  see what's at stake? Won't you try to see?"
  The room reverberated with menace as Clara  replied: "Sybil doesn't have to live!"

  Standing in Dr. Wilbur's consulting room the  next day was Nancy Lou Ann Baldwin. The  traffic noises emanating from the street below that  made their way into the room were to Nancy the dread  sounds of explosion; for she lived on the outer rim  of terror.
  "I don't like things to blow up," Nancy  remarked now. "Exploding, always exploding.  It's just as bad as a bomb when you're little and your  mother throws blocks at you, things hit you, you get  all tied up, and you get dizzy and you see little  spots running around. And there is noise, an  awful banging, as bad as a bomb when you're little.  The worst of it is mother is not dead."
  "Your mother is buried in Kansas City. There  are no explosions that will injure you now."  The doctor's words of assurance were an  incantation.
  "I don't see how you know that," Nancy  protested. "Mother can be buried in Kansas City  and exploding in my mind at the same time. Besides,  there are many other kinds of explosions I can name,  and I can't see how you can prevent them. You can't  keep the gas main or a furnace from blowing  up."
  "Your house doesn't have a gas furnace."  The doctor struck a realistic, practical  note to allay the terror.
  Nancy's fey reply as her lips briefly  curled in amusement was, "Well, I  suppose it has to be a big poof to be an  explosion." Terror returned as she added: "But  you can't keep the world itself from blowing up. And that will be  a big poof."
  "The world is not going to blow up, Nancy," said  Dr. Wilbur.
  "Why, then, have they built civil defense  shelters?" Nancy replied promptly. "Why  do we see signs of the end everywhere? Satan will  destroy the world and
  
God will make it perfect, so there will be  no more sin. In the final war, in Armageddon,  everything will be destroyed, according to prophecy."
  "The time has not come." Dr. Wilbur was  determined to free Nancy of her obsession.
  "Before the end, prophecy tells us," Nancy  continued, heedless of the interruption, ""The rivers  will dry up, and they will be as blood." Before the  end, prophecy also tells us, the Catholics will  come into power and control the government and men's  minds. We're seeing both things happening.  Everywhere we read about rivers that have been  polluted. Pollution is the blood of which  prophecy speaks. And since you can't live very  long without water, we all shall die as prophecy  predicts. The prophecy about the Catholics  is also being fulfilled. The Catholics started a  long time ago by building schools and colleges.  But they couldn't do much until 1936 or 1939,  I'm not sure which. Anyway, they couldn't do much  before the Vatican was recognized as a free  state, with a right to speak out. And the Catholics have  become more powerful since that time.
  "The time will come, Dr. Wilbur, when, if you  don't worship the Catholic priests,  popes and cardinals, it'll be for you the  way it was for the Jews under the Nazis. The  Catholics are going to get more and more powerful, and  if we're smart, we won't let any
Catholic run for president. If they get  in, they will assume control of education. They  want a Catholic commissioner of education even more  than they want a president. By controlling the  children, they know they can also control the parents. They  won't lose a single chance to enslave us all."
  Nancy moved restlessly and apprehensively  around the room. She turned to the doctor, saying:  "I never will be a Catholic. I will never, never  do what they order me to do, and I'm afraid of  what they'll do. I don't want to be shut up  in a prison. But I won't do what they will  demand of me."
  The hidden pathways of hysteria were no longer  hidden. The crescendo of powerful feeling filled  the small room with the mounting sweep of a full  orches-

tra. Nancy collapsed onto the couch.  "Doctor"--the words were being wrung out slowly--  "sometimes I'm so frightened by all this that I'd rather
  
die right now."
  Dr. Wilbur answered quietly, softly,  "Why should you want to die? There would be too much  to give up. Loving people. Making things. Enjoying  music, art, nature." Then the doctor added  pointedly, meaningfully: "Getting together with  Sybil and finding yourself."
  The mood was broken. Terror was replaced  by anger and defensiveness. "Why are you cornering  me?" Nancy asked.
  "My dear, I'm not cornering you," the doctor  replied reassuringly. "I'm just trying to make  you see that there is no reason for you to die."
  "No reason?" Nancy replied thoughtfully.  "There are private reasons, public  reasons."
  "What are the private reasons?" the doctor  asked quietly, fully aware that, despite the  turbulence of the outcry, this was her first encounter with  Nancy.
  "Oh," Nancy replied, "all of us are  trying to get Sybil to do things, and it doesn't  work. Being linked with Sybil is a constant  frustration. It makes me angry, frightened. And  sometimes I feel as if I'd like to curl  up like a baby, free of  responsibility. But then I'm very close to the  Peggys, and you know how they feel about Sybil.  Sybil makes Peggy Lou just simmer all the  time."
  Suddenly shifting into a relaxed, casual  mood Nancy explained, "I'm so close to the  Peggys I took both their middle names. But they  use the name Dorsett. I don't. I'm  Nancy Lou Ann Baldwin. Miss Baldwin  was a teacher Sybil pretended to be at the time I  came."
  "What are the other private things that worry  you, Nancy?" the doctor wanted to know. "What  do you want to do that you can't?"
  "Walk on legs that are not weak," was the  surprising reply. "I want to go places and do  things. One can't, you know, with Sybil."
  "We can fix it so you can," the doctor  promised.
  "I'm afraid we can't," Nancy replied  bluntly. "But just now I'm even more troubled  by public concerns." The terror had returned  to her eyes. "The Catholics,"
  
she warned, "will sneak in when we least  suspect. They'll catch us."
  "They won't catch me because I'm not afraid  of them, and I don't believe as you do. I  believe ..."
  "There isn't that much time left," Nancy  interrupted hysterically. Then, quieter, she  repeated, "I'd like to die. But God doesn't  let me. You see I'd have to do it to me, and  suicide is just as wrong as if I followed the  Catholics' orders. It would give my soul to the  devil either way."
  "Now, Nancy ..." The doctor tried  to break the mood by injecting another point of  view.
  But Nancy cut her short. "And I don't  want the devil to win!"
  "Nancy," the doctor replied, changing the  subject completely, "if you and Clara and some  of the others--especially Marcia--would join  Sybil ..."
  "Clara has the same trouble about religion that  I do," Nancy interrupted again. "Her  worry's the same as mine. I'm sure when she  talked to you yesterday, she must have told you  the same things that ..."
  This time it was the doctor who interrupted. "If  you and Clara help Sybil to be strong and do the  things Sybil wants to do," the doctor remarked  pointedly, "then there will be another person to help  maintain the democracy you're afraid the  Catholics will take away." Absorbed in her  own thoughts, Nancy replied in a different vein,  "you're always supposed to be prepared for the day the  Catholics destroy our democracy. You have  to look out for it!"
  "Nancy," the doctor insisted in a firm,  strong voice, "God gives us our brains  to use ..."
  "Sure." Again Nancy had broken into the  doctor's words. "And He gave us the  prophecies to know how to use our brains to get  ready for the struggle against Catholic assumption of  power."
  "Now Nancy ..." the doctor began.  "He did!" Nancy insisted vehemently.
  "God gave us our brains to use," Dr.  Wilbur explained. "You should not waste them in  unfounded worry."
  Nancy protested: "But He said to turn from the
  
powers of darkness unto the powers of  light, and that means to follow Him."
  "Now in this country we have consistently had  freedom of religion and freedom of  worship," Dr. Wilbur reminded Nancy.
  "It has failed," Nancy replied.
  "Because our government is a government of the people,"  the doctor continued, "you and I are just as much a part  of our government as anyone else and ..."
  "I know those things," Nancy interrupted  sharply.
  "Now that means," the doctor affirmed, "that if  you're so afraid of our losing our democracy,  you and Clara should join Sybil so that Sybil can do  all of the things that she is capable of doing to help  other people to turn from the powers of darkness."
  "Excuse me, Dr. Wilbur," a voice  that was not Nancy's interrupted. "I think I should  say something here."
  "Yes, Vicky?" The doctor knew the  voice well.
  "Well, you'll excuse me for saying it because you  know I don't say anything anymore except  when it is absolutely necessary. But I think you're  making a mistake in telling Nancy  that. You see, Sybil has the same  fears and worries that Nancy and Clara have. As  a matter of fact, even though Marcia thinks  she's breaking away from religion, she has those  same fears too."
  "Yes?"
  "And I've been trying to help Nancy,  Clara, Marcia, and Sybil. It's been  better. You said to me one time, "Vicky, why  don't you help Sybil?"' and I've been doing  that. But if Nancy and Clara join Sybil now,  with this great fear that they have, it would add that fear to those  Sybil already has. I'm afraid it will be too  much fear in one place. That's one reason that  I've stopped encouraging Nancy and Clara to come  closer. Why bring them closer when they aren't  bringing us more strength? They have hold of the wrong  things: not only extreme worries about  religion but also depression and suicide ideas  --more than they'd ever tell you and much more than  they've said here. I don't want them to bring these  things to Sybil because I'm not sure that even I

am strong enough to fight all of that. I won't say  anymore. I just don't think it is sensible
  
to try to bring Nancy and Clara closer  to Sybil at this time."
  "It would be a mistake, Vicky," Dr.  Wilbur informed her co-analysand, "if I  weren't going to do anything to change the worries of  Nancy and Clara. Right? But I have every intention of  doing so. Now if Nancy will let me talk for a  little while longer, I think I can straighten out a  few things."
  "All right," Vicky replied, "I'll let  Nancy come back. But please, Dr.
Wilbur, remember my caution. It's more than  a caution. It's a warning."

  As Dr. Wilbur realized that five new  selves had been revealed, she looked back to the  time when, after first meeting Vicky, she had pored  over the literature of multiple personality.  She had then speculated that Sybil's case was  more complex than that of either Miss Beauchamp or of  Doris Fisher. Now she knew that the case of  Sybil Dorsett, precipitated not by one  trauma but by a multiplicity of traumas, was the  most complex ever reported.
  The multiple roots of Sybil's  complexity--the schizophrenic mother aided  and abetted by the peripheral, passive father, the  naive and hypocritical environment, and the  hysteria engendered by the fundamentalist faith,  particularly as exemplified by Grandpa  Dorsett--had been dissected and interpreted. But  the doctor still did not know when the first dissociation had  taken place, though she did know that not all the  selves had emerged during the first dissociation and that  all who so far had presented themselves had been in  existence by the time Sybil was twelve years old.  Whether, with fourteen alternating selves in  evidence, there were still selves to come, the doctor could  not determine.
  Even though evidence of mental illness on both  sides of the family suggested a possible genetic  factor, Dr. Wilbur was certain that the illness  had been environmentally induced. Dr. Wilbur  knew that the analysis must continue to uproot  specific incidents of environmental abuse in  order to alleviate the illness.
  The selves, the doctor was now convinced, were not

conflicting parts of the total self, struggling for  identity, but rather defenses against the intolerable
  
environment that had produced the  childhood traumas. Sybil's mind and body  were possessed by these others--not invading spirits, not  dybbuks from without, but proliferating parts of the  original child. Each self was younger than Sybil,  with their ages shifting according to the time of the particular  trauma that each had emerged to battle.
  With the revelation of the five new selves, the  strategy of treatment remained what it had been  before--to uproot and analyze the traumas, thus  rendering unnecessary the defense against each particular  trauma and the self who did the defending.  Integration would be accomplished by getting the various  selves to return to Sybil, the depleted,  waking self, the acquisitions and modes of  behavior that they had stolen from the original  Sybil. They had to return the knowledge, the  experiences, and the memories that had become theirs in  the third of the total Sybil's life that they and  not Sybil had lived.
  A stepped-up onslaught on the underlying  traumas was now clearly indicated, an  onslaught during which each self would have to be  analyzed as a "person" in her and his own right.  Ultimately, of course, all would have  to be integrated with waking Sybil.  Integration, however, was still a distant goal, the more  distant because of the complicating emergence of new  selves. The glimmers of integration that had already  occurred had been short-lived.
  Dr. Wilbur also realized soberly that there were  risks to be faced. The very act of facing an  uprooted trauma, by intensifying the pain, often  functioned as a setback. There was no assurance  that uprooting the trauma would lead to partial  integration of the self who defended against it.  Sybil might be torn further apart by the very  therapy intended to cure her. But the illness was so  severe, the need for integration so great, that all  possible risks were warranted in a newly  intensified struggle.

         The Clock Comprehensible

  Peggy Lou and Peggy Ann, Vicky and
Mary, Marcia and Vanessa, Mike and Sid,  Marjorie and Ruthie, Helen and Sybil
Ann, Clara and Nancy. These fourteen  alternating selves had drifted in and out of Dr.
  
Wilbur's office, each with her or his  own emotions, attitudes, tastes, talents,  ambitions, desires, modes of behavior,  speech patterns, thought processes, and body  images. Twelve of the selves were female;  two, male. All were younger than Sybil.
  Each was different from the others and from Sybil;  each knew of Sybil's existence and of the existence  of the other selves. Sybil, however--and this was the  great irony of her predicament--had not known about  the others, until Dr. Wilbur had told her  about them. The irony was compounded by the fact that even  after the doctor had alerted Sybil to the truth,  Sybil had refused to meet the others on tape,  had refused to come closer to them, to accept them. In  late 1957 and early 1958, the names Peggy  Lou, Peggy Ann, Vicky, Marcia,
Vanessa, Mary, Mike, Sid, Marjorie,
Ruthie, Helen, Sybil Ann, Clara and
Nancy were still, as far as Sybil was concerned,  merely the products of Dr. Wilbur's  intellectual presentation. Dr. Wilbur had  met them, but Sybil had not. Sybil believed the  doctor, but empirically the others were still unreal.
  What continued to be real to Sybil, as  it had been before the label multiple  personality had been attached to her condition, was  the fact that she lost time. In late 1957 and  early 1958 Sybil was still promising herself

that she would not lose time, and the promise in  adulthood as in childhood still carried the  overtone of "I will be good, not evil." When,  despite her promise she again lost time, she  simply resolved anew that it would not happen again.  Only when time passed that was not lost did she  feel that she was getting better.
  November and December, 1957, had been  such a time. Not once during this period had  Sybil suffered the anguish of finding herself in a  strange situation without knowing how she had gotten  there. Both Sybil and Dr. Wilbur had dared  to hope that they were entering the promised land of  integration.

  The promised land disappeared, however, on the  morning of January 3, 1958, when Dr.
Wilbur opened the door to her waiting room at  the time of the Dorsett appointment. Nobody was  there. And it wasn't until five days later that
  
the morning mail brought a clue  to Sybil's possible whereabouts.
  The letter, addressed to Dr. Wilbur at her  former office--607 Medical Arts Building,  17th and Dodge Streets, Omaha,  Nebraska--and forwarded from there held a clue.  Written in a childish scrawl and dated  January 2, 1946, the letter, which was on the  stationery of the Broadwood Hotel in  Philadelphia, read:

Dear Dr. Wilbur,
  You said you would help me. You said you liked me.  You said I was good. Why don't you help me?
                  Peggy Ann Dorsett.

  It had been fourteen years since Dr.  Wilbur had left Omaha, and Peggy Ann's  writing there indicated serious confusion. The tone  of the letter was petulant, the mood one of  disappointment and dissatisfaction with the way the  analysis was going. The Philadelphia  postmark contributed further to the doctor's  disappointment. The hope she had shared with Sybil  in November and December was shattered.
  Inaction on the doctor's part was no  longer possible even though that had been the course  she had chosen when neither Sybil nor any of the  others had kept the

January 3 appointment, the course that the  doctor had followed during similar episodes.  Action, the doctor always feared, might trigger a  chain of events that would make Sybil Dorsett  a name in police records and could land Sybil in  a mental hospital. Determined to protect her  patient against both eventualities, the doctor  had again not called the police.
  Despite the fact that five days had elapsed  since Peggy Ann had written her letter from  Philadelphia, the doctor decided to try  calling the Broadwood Hotel. She  hesitated only because of not knowing for whom to ask.  The name in the hotel registry could be Peggy  Ann Dorsett or Peggy Ann Baldwin,  since Peggy Ann used both names. It could also  be Sybil Dorsett, a name that, following  Vicky's lead, the other personalities often  used. Indeed, Sybil could have registered under any  of her fifteen selves' names. Perhaps it was a
  
newcomer. Dr. Wilbur didn't  presume to know whether there were other selves yet  to come.
  "The Broadwood. Good morning." The  Broadwood reservation desk was on the line.
  "Good morning," said the doctor. "Do you have a  Miss Dorsett registered?"
  "Room 1113," the reservation clerk  replied. "One moment, please."
  "Don't bother with 1113," the doctor said with  sudden caution. Not knowing which Miss Dorsett she  would find, she made a swift decision. "Will you  please give me the hotel matron?" It was  better, the doctor reasoned, not to speak to Peggy  Ann in her confused state.
  "I'm a physician," Dr. Wilbur  told the matron a moment later. "One of my  patients--a Miss Dorsett in room 1113  --is not well. I wonder whether you would be good enough  to look in on her and let me know how she is.  I'd appreciate your not telling her that I've  talked with you." The doctor gave her phone  number to the matron, asked the woman to reverse  the charges when calling back, and sat down  to wait.
  Fifteen minutes later the  matron's call came. "Dr. Wilbur?"
  "Yes."

  "This is Mrs. Trout at the Broadwood in  Philadelphia."
  "Yes. How is she?"
  "Fine, Doctor, fine. She looked pale  and thin but fine. Looked very pretty in her  pajamas with their orange and green stripes. She  was sitting at the bedside table, doing a pencil  sketch on our letterhead."
  "Did Miss Dorsett say anything?"  Dr. Wilbur asked.
  "Not much. She just said that she was going out soon  to walk around and do some sketching. "Don't go  out," I begged her. "This is no weather  to monkey around with. The weather man predicted a  terrible storm." She said she'd see. She was  pale, but she didn't seem sick to me,  Doctor. Really she didn't."
  Dr. Wilbur thanked Mrs. Trout,  waited a few minutes, and then decided  to telephone the Broadwood to persuade Peggy  Lou to come home; for although Peggy Ann had
  
written the letter, Mrs. Trout had  evidently spoken to Peggy Lou. It was Peggy  Lou who drew in black and white, Peggy Lou  who would buy the pajamas Mrs. Trout had  described. What seemed probable was that Peggy  Lou and Peggy Ann had taken the trip together, as  they often did--Peggy Lou as Sybil's  defense against anger and Peggy Ann as the  defense against fear.
  There was nobody in room 1113, however, when  the doctor put in her call. Later, when she  succeeded in reaching Mrs. Trout, who was then doing  desk duty because the night desk clerk had been  delayed in the storm, Mrs. Trout said,  "Miss Dorsett's out in that storm. I begged  her not to go out because a storm was coming. But she said she  could take care of herself." At 10:15 P.m.  the doctor, again trying to reach room 1113, was  told that Miss Dorsett had checked out.
  The doctor could only hope that Sybil would  "come to" as herself and return safely or that the  alternating personality who took over would  return, or even that Vicky, as she had done  during some of the many other blackouts Sybil had  experienced in the course of the analysis,  would somehow manage to telephone the  doctor. But no call came.
  The next morning the doctor, stepping into the  wait-

+ room to place some magazines on an end  table, found the slender form of Sybil Dorsett  waiting. Not knowing which personality it was, the  doctor, using no name, simply said, "Come  in."
  There was an awkward silence.
  "I've done it again," the patient said sadly.  "It is going to be even harder to tell you than I  had thought."
  "Sybil?" the doctor asked.
  "Sybil. I "came to" in a
Philadelphia street in a hideous warehouse    district. This was even worse than some of the other  blackouts. A real nightmare. And after we thought  it would never happen again. Oh, Doctor, I'm  so ashamed."
  "Relax before you talk about it," the doctor said  reassuringly.
  "I always promise myself it won't happen  again, that I'll start over again. But this time I
  
really hoped. How many times have I  started over again?"
  "I don't know how many times," the doctor  replied. "Will you please quit trying? It  won't do any good at all. Why start over?  Why not go on from where you are?"
  "I don't know what was done in my name,"  Sybil blurted. "Maybe mayhem.  Murder."
  "Sybil," the doctor replied firmly,  "I've told you again and again that none of the others go  against your ethical code."
  "You've told me," Sybil replied  anxiously. "But do you really know? We can't be  sure."
  "Sybil," the doctor ventured for what in the  course of over three years was easily the  hundredth time, "I should like you to hear the other  selves on tape."
  "No." Sybil shook her head  decisively. "The only thing I want to hear  about these others, as you call them, is that they no  longer exist."
  "It will reassure you," the doctor persisted.  "When the Peggys tell me their story of  Philadelphia, why don't I  tape it? Then you can hear for yourself."
  "The Peggys?" Sybil asked in consternation.  "You know they were the ones? How can you possibly know  that?"

  "Peggy Ann wrote me from the  Broadwood," the doctor replied in a  direct, factual manner.
  "The Broadwood?" Sybil answered in  shocked surprise. "You know I was there?"
  "You found yourself in Philadelphia because the  Peggys took you there. They are part of you, a part  over which you have no control. But we're going  to change that when we bring you girls together."
  "Philadelphia proves I'm not getting  any better," Sybil replied brokenly.  "I'll never be well."
  "You know that I want to help you," the doctor  said gently. "You know that I have known about these  problems for more than three years now, and you know that  they are part of your illness."
  "Yes, yes," Sybil replied anxiously.  "You've told me that many times."
  "And when you feel otherwise," the doctor said
  
pointedly, "you are needlessly  suspicious and frightened."
  "Not strange?" Sybil blurted.
  "No, not strange," the doctor replied  emphatically.
  "Likable?"
  "Yes, Sybil. Very likable. I like you. I  don't know if you realize how much." The doctor  had responded to the bid for approval with the genuine  emotion of her growing fondness for her patient.
  There was a suggestion of tears in Sybil's  eyes--the tears that in the first year and a half of the  analysis she had not been able to shed. Sybil  asked quietly, "You still think I can get  well?"
  "With all my heart I think it, Sybil. With  all my mind. And with all my experience as a  psychoanalyst."
  Sybil's slender hand moved into Dr.  Wilbur's hand, as doctor and patient sat  together on the couch. "Then," Sybil asked in a  low, stilted voice, "why am I getting  worse?"
  "In analysis," the doctor replied  objectively, "the further you go, the  closer you get to the core conflicts.  The closer you get to the core conflicts, the more you  have to face in terms of resistance and in terms of the  conflicts themselves."

  "But I'm not facing anything," Sybil pointed  out bitterly. "I'm running away."
  "It's not you--waking Sybil, representing the  conscious mind--but the others, who belong to the  unconscious, who are running away," the  doctor explained.
  "You call them the unconscious and say they are  part of me," Sybil replied thoughtfully. "But you  also say they can take me where they please. Oh,  Doctor, I'm afraid, terribly afraid.  It's a predicament to which I've never become  accustomed. These others drive me, possess  me, destroy me."
  "It's not possession, Sybil," the doctor  declared emphatically. "Not some invasion from without.  It comes from within, and it can be explained not by the  supernatural but in very natural terms."
  "It doesn't seem very natural to me,"  Sybil was quick to answer.
  "Not natural in the sense of being common to lots
  
of people," the doctor conceded. "But  natural because it can be explained in terms of your  own environment. All the personalities are  younger than you. There is a reason for that. When your  mother told you, "You have so much," she was creating a  distortion because you didn't have the things that you needed for  growing up. Consequently, you couldn't grow up and  be all one person. You had to leave bits and parts  behind. You didn't know you were doing it. You didn't  know about these other selves. You still haven't met  them, still refuse to meet them on tape, so you are  not directly aware of them. You still don't really  accept them except as a sort of intellectual  exercise."
  Sybil's mouth twitched uneasily.
  "I have not yet been able to determine the  precise ages of the selves, but some of them are  little girls," Dr. Wilbur continued, "walking  around in your woman's body. When the Peggys  fled to Philadelphia, they were running away from  your mother. They deny that your mother was theirs, but it is a  surface denial. Deeply etched within them are  fear and anger against your mother. Fear and anger make  them take flight, break loose from the feeling of  entrapment your mother created for them. And because  the Peggys and some

of the others are little girls, in a sense they keep  you a little girl."
  "Not only crazy," Sybil replied with  bitter irony, "but immature?"
  The doctor put her arm around Sybil and  spoke with intensity: "Nobody ever said you were  crazy, except you yourself, and I want you  to banish that word from your vocabulary in relationship  to yourself. Your mother interfered with your growing up. You  didn't succumb totally to your mother because you had a  core of strength that made your life different from  hers. And when you found out that your mother was wrong, you  began to be able to do the things with yourself that you wanted  to do--even though there were bits and pieces from the  past, forming other selves, that made you unlike  other people and afraid of what you were."
  The doctor's eyes held Sybil's as she  said, "Sick, yes, but not schizophrenic. Your  mother was schizophrenic. Her perception was totally  different from yours. You told me once that she could  not see the whole of a building but only a part; that  when you heard the opera Hansel and Gretel,  she could only see the candy canes on the door,
  
not the door itself or the set as a whole.  You see wholes. Yes, you are fragmented, but  yours is not the fragmentation of a schizophrenic.  Your kind of fragmentation is the result not of  perception but of dissociation. Don't ever call  yourself crazy again. You are sane, sane enough to have  survived the torture chamber in which your mother  trapped you and to have made so much of yourself with the terrible  childhood you had to hold you back. Now tell  me about your experiences in Philadelphia.  Talking will help."
  When Sybil told the January 2 to 7,
1958, Philadelphia story from her point of  view, the doctor wished she could also talk  to Peggy Ann and Peggy Lou to get their side  of the story. There was at this stage of the analysis  no way, however, of summoning the Peggys. The  doctor just had to wait for them to appear  spontaneously. That did not occur until a  month later.

  Meantime, Sybil returned to school. But she  con-  tinued to live in terror about what might  have or perhaps actually had happened in  Philadelphia. She did not and could not accept  Dr. Wilbur's assurance that these creatures  within her were incapable of evil. Since the inception  of the analysis, they had taken her, not only  to Philadelphia but also to Elizabeth,  Trenton, Altoona, and even San
Francisco. Where they had taken her before the  analysis began she often did not know. These  others controlled her purse, transported her  body, acted without her will. She always learned    only after the event what the others had wrought. And  always there was the fear that what had been wrought was  worse, far worse, than what Dr. Wilbur  had told her.
  Even if these others did nothing wrong in a  legal or criminal sense, the chiaroscuro of  their actions was causing experience to be so constantly  changing and recomposing that--whatever the apparent  intention of any action she herself initiated or  proposed to take--these others were the victors,  acting in the limelight of her despair.
  Then came the day, a month after the return from  Philadelphia, when the doctor said, "I have
  
Peggy Lou and Peggy Ann on  tape. When you hear what they did in  Philadelphia, you will be greatly relieved."  The doctor was deliberately casual but had  grave doubts that, after the persistent, intense  refusal to listen, Sybil would now agree. Just  getting her to listen was the prime problem.
  Sybil's irises became dilated with fear.  "Well?" the doctor asked.
  Sybil did not reply.
  "Sybil, this can be a turning point in the  analysis."
  "I don't see how," Sybil replied.  Her words were muted, her throat obviously  constricted.
  "It is only by getting to know the others that you can  make them part of you--that you can make their experiences  your experiences, their memories, your  memories."
  "I don't want any part of it. Doctor,  why are you torturing me?"
  "If this were a physical illness," the doctor  ex-  plained, "you would not tear up the  prescription for a medicine that could tide you over a  crisis, help to make you well."
  "I don't really think the analogy is  apt," Sybil replied doggedly.
  "It is more apt than you realize," the doctor  insisted. "These other selves are not your illness but  the symptoms of your illness. They possess you,  overwhelm you, subvert your intentions and desires.  It is only by coming closer to these others that you can  move toward a more normal life."
  Sybil's lips curled in an ironic  smile. "It sounds so easy," she said. "But,  Doctor, you and I know that easy is just what it  is not."
  "Nobody ever said it was easy," the doctor  replied. "But I can assure you that getting well  will be infinitely more difficult if you don't get  to know--and accept--these others."
  "Philadelphia proved to me that I'll  never get well," Sybil answered darkly.  She rose from her chair and went to look out the  window, abstracted.
  "Sybil," the doctor called, "resistance  is doing you no good."
  
  "That nasty word again," Sybil  replied as she turned to face the doctor.
  "All patients put up resistance," the  doctor assured her.
  "But," Sybil replied, with a twisted curve  of her lip, "I'm not just a patient. I'm  patients." The stress on the s carried a  terrifying overtone. "At least that's what you  tell me. And I'm supposed to listen and face  the fact that I'm a freak."
  "Sybil, Sybil," the doctor urged,  "you're distorting the truth. The others are part of  you. We all have different parts of our  personalities. The abnormality lies not in the  division, but in the dissociation, the amnesia, and the  terrible traumas that gave rise to the others."
  "A euphemism," Sybil answered sadly.  "By others you mean other people. I don't want  to meet them. Why should I?"
  "I've already told you why," the doctor  asserted.

"I'll tell you again. Because listening will really do  some good. It is a crucial step in getting  well."
  Sybil was silent, and the doctor  realized that it was going to be even harder than she  had anticipated. "It's going to have to take  place eventually," the doctor urged. "Why not  now? After all, you gave me permission to do the  taping. It's not just for me."
  "I'm afraid," Sybil said. A chill  ran through her body.
  "Listening will lessen the fear."
  "But will my listening stop the blackouts?"  Sybil asked desperately.
  "Ultimately, yes," the doctor replied  decisively. "The better you get to know the other  selves, the closer we will come to making you one."
  Sybil slumped into a chair and looked at the  doctor warily. The irises of her eyes were  even more dilated than before. She clutched the chair  and, fully aware of the possible consequences,  murmured, "All right."
  The doctor rose from the chair at the head of the  couch, reached into a desk drawer, and, with a tape in  one hand and the other hand on the recorder, looked  directly at Sybil. "Shall I start the  tape?" the doctor asked. There was momentary  silence. Then Sybil nodded.
  
  The doctor's hands were on the  recorder. The wheels turned. Sybil, who was  now huddled in a corner of the couch, thought: The  wheels that turn against me.
  The voice on tape was saying, "I heard the  crash of glass in the chemistry lab. It  reminded me of Lulu and the pickle dish. I  jist had to run to the door with Sybil ..."
  "My mother's voice," Sybil screamed.  "How did you get my mother's voice?" Sybil  rushed to the window. For a moment the doctor thought  Sybil had become Peggy Lou, but as the voice  on the tape was saying, "I rushed to the door with  Sybil, walked with her to the elevator,"  Sybil, in a voice clearly hers and without the  physical changes accompanying Peggy Lou's  presence, repeated, "It's my mother's voice.  Turn it off, I can't stand it. You'll drive  me crazy. I'm not ready."
  The doctor snapped off the recorder.  Sybil turned

from the window, seated herself on the chair, and stared  into space.
  "It's not your mother's voice," the  doctor said quietly. "It's the  voice of Peggy Lou. Shall I play more  to reassure you?" And even though Sybil did not  reply, the doctor once again set the tape in  motion.
  Peggy Lou's voice was saying, "I could  feel Sybil clutching our zipper folder. She  was mad because the elevator didn't come. I took  over. I was the one who stepped into the elevator.  Yes, I was!"
  "What does this mean?" Sybil asked  frantically. "Turn that thing off." The doctor  did as she had been instructed. "Our zipper  folder," Sybil murmured as she began to pace  the room. "She thinks she has joint possession  with me. Oh, Dr. Wilbur, Dr. Wilbur,  what shall I do?"
  "Let's just listen," the doctor urged as the  wheels again began to move, now assuming the frightening  motion of revelation as Peggy Lou's words  flooded the room.
  "I left the lab," Peggy Lou was saying,  "because I didn't want to be scolded for breaking  the glass. I hadn't broken it. No I  hadn't. But I didn't break it when Lulu said
  
I did neither. That time I was punished.  Yes, I was. It wasn't fair."
  "Turn it off, turn that thing off," Sybil  pleaded. Then in the silence that followed, Sybil,  who was overwhelmed by feelings of uncanniness,  began to reminisce softly. "I haven't thought of  that pickle dish in years and years. But I  remember now. Mother did punish me even though  Lulu broke it. But how does this Peggy Lou  know about it?"
  "Peggy Lou is part of you. She defended you  against the anger you felt at being unjustly  punished," the doctor replied.
  "I don't want her to defend me. I  don't want to have anything to do with her," Sybil  replied bitterly.
  "Sybil," the doctor cautioned, "you're  setting up all sorts of resistances that will do you  no good."
  "That nasty word again." Sybil made an effort  to smile, but the attempt froze.
  "It's because of the pickle dish," Dr.  Wilbur ex-  plained, "that Peggy Lou goes around  breaking glass."
  "Well, I wish she'd stop," Sybil  replied with irritation. "I have to pay for the glass  Peggy Lou breaks. I can't afford Peggy  Lou."
  "As we remove the trauma connected with the  pickle dish," the doctor insisted, "Peggy  Lou will stop. When you are able to get angry in your  own right, Peggy Lou will become one with you. Ready  for more?" The doctor turned on the recorder.  Peggy Lou's voice resumed.
  "The chemistry lab smelled funny. It  made me think of the old drugstore in Willow  Corners, where I live. That's where Sybil's  mother found us just after we came home from the farm. I  was awful mad. I jist had to get away."
  "Stop it. Please, please." The entreaty was  frantic.
  The doctor did as she was bidden, and in the  silence that ensued Sybil murmured, "The old  drugstore. I remember it. Old Dr.  Taylor. Music. Wonderful music."  Momentarily lost in recollection, Sybil  grew calmer.
  
  Seizing the moment of calm, the  doctor explained, "You see, Peggy Lou  shares your memories. She also has memories  about which you know nothing, for which you are amnesic. When  all of these memories return, we shall have made  progress toward making you one."
  The doctor turned on the recorder, and  Peggy Lou resumed, "When I was in the subway  and on the train to Philadelphia, I kept  thinkin' that Sybil wouldn't do the things I wanted  her to do. I wanted money for art supplies.  She said we needed it for laboratory fees. I  like the chemistry all right, but it makes me mad  because Sybil works so hard on the formulas. She  wouldn't have to work so hard if I helped with the  multiplication. I learned it in school, but she  didn't. I could help her if I felt like it.  But I don't. I want to do the things I enjoy.  That's what I thought on the way  to Philadelphia. We hadn't been any  place in quite a while. And I'm mad about that.  Real mad. You see, I love to travel, but that  Sybil will never go anyplace. So I went  to Philadelphia to get even."
                                  
  This time the doctor herself brought the  tape to a halt.
  "Is that all?" Sybil asked.
  "No, but let's rest a minute," the doctor  replied.
  Sybil seemed calmer, capable for the first time  during this session of responding not with her emotions  but with her mind.
  "There's so much to absorb," she said quietly.  "What was that about the formulas?"
  "You know, Sybil," the doctor explained,  "that it was Peggy Lou who took over from the third  to the fifth grade. I've told you that she learned  the multiplication tables. When you have trouble with them,  that's the reason. If we can get Peggy Lou and  you to the point where she will let you have the knowledge that she has  and you don't, you'll no longer have difficulty.  We must break down the wall between you. That is what  I mean by moving toward integration."
  "Yes, I see," Sybil agreed. "This  brings what you've been saying into sharper focus."
  Once again the recorder was turned on, and  Sybil was listening to Peggy Lou's voice,  saying, "So I thought I'd go to the Broadwood  and draw and sketch and enjoy myself. But when I
  
got there, I looked at what I had  with me and all I had was our zipper folder. I  told them at the desk that my luggage would be coming  along the next day, and they believed me. So I  went with the bellboy up to room 1113. I liked  the room because it had real high ceilings and  cream-colored walls and there was a wonderful  view out the window, and the room was very warm and very  quiet. I locked the door after the bellboy  left, put the zipper folder, my mittens, and  my scarf on the dresser. But I didn't take  off my coat. I stood by the window a long time.  Then I realized that I didn't have any  pajamas. That was great because I could go out and shop and  have lots of fun. I wanted to get the wildest  pair of pajamas I could find--the kind that would  keep Sybil awake at night and that would make  her mother say, "You have no taste. Cultured,  refined people dress quietly."

  "Well, I got into the subway and went to a  department store I like real well, got pajamas  with bold stripes, and that was really great. Peggy  Ann went with me."
  "The pajamas. The mittens. The red  scarf. The zipper folder," Sybil  echoed, her expression growing taut with the terrifying  recollection.
  Peggy Lou's voice continued. "I went  back to the hotel and up to my room," Peggy  Lou was saying, "washed my clothes, took a  bath, washed my hair, got into my beautiful  pajamas, turned on TV and sang along with the  TV set. Television is company. Then I  went to bed. Later in the night the people in the next  room turned on the radio so loud I woke up  and couldn't sleep no more. Boy was I mad! So  I got up and looked out the window. Across the  street was the Roman Catholic High School  for Boys and an old building that used to be the  Philadelphia Morning Record. The  subway station was outside the hotel. In the distance  I could see the red and green lights on the  bridge. I looked out the window a long time and  finally didn't hear the radio going anymore, so  I went back to bed.
  "When I awoke, the fog of the night before was  gone from the air, and the sun was shining. I was awful  glad to see the sun, and I stood by the windows a  long time looking at the reflections on the
  
buildings and on the bridge. Near the  bridge was a large church with a very tall, slender  steeple. It stood out darkly against the hazy  buildings across the river behind it. I liked this  scene and returned to look at it several times  while I was dressing. I called room service  and ordered a big breakfast because Sybil never  gives us enough to eat. The waiter was very nice, and  we got friendly. While I was eating, I sat in  the big chair near the window and put crumbs on  the windowsill. Pigeons and other birds came  and ate the crumbs. I shared my cocoa and toast  with the birds. I decided that I would do that every day as  long as I was in this room.
  "Then I went out and walked along the streets.  I hadn't gone very far when I saw an old,  dark-red

brick building. I walked up the steps and into the  Academy of Fine Arts. I saw some  lithograph prints on exhibit. They were  black and white like my drawings, so I looked  at them. Then I went up the stairs to see what  was in the galleries above. I spent so much time at  this museum that I got acquainted with one  of the guards. We talked about art, and
I got along very well with him.
  "I also spent half a day at the Betsy  Ross House. I went to the medical school  museum, where I saw a brain of a  forty-eight-year-old man with a bullet wound in his  head and a brain of a thirty-eight-year-old  woman who had had a stroke. And there were a lot  of little babies in glass jars. Those jars were  awful interesting. I had lots of fun in  Philadelphia.
  "In the street and in the hotel room I  spent a lot of time sketching. I loved sketching  on the hotel stationery. The paper was free, so I  didn't have to buy any. My strokes were also  free as I drew the woman standing alone on a  cliff. I did her in black. I was happy.
  "I was happy in Philadelphia. I went  where I pleased, sketched, slept ten hours a  day, spent three or four hours a day eating.  It was the same kind of feeling that I had several  times before and I was sure no one would tell me  what to do ever again. And then there was the day when I was  caught in a snowstorm. The wind was on my  back, and snow was all around me. I had no
  
overshoes or gloves, and my ears  ached with the cold. The coat I was wearing wasn't  warm enough. When I turned around to come back, I  had the wind all the way. The woman who came  into the hotel room and asked me how I was had  warned me not to go out, and I should have listened. But I  didn't. But when the wind whipped me, I  wasn't so sure. I felt like smashing one of the  windows in the ugly building I was passing. I  stopped and put my hand on the glass. It was  smooth and cold. When I touched it, I thought I  heard someone say very quietly, "But you don't  want to break the glass. You said you wouldn't  anymore." I whirled around and expected to see  you, Doctor. You weren't there.

But I didn't want to break the glass whether you  were there or not because I wasn't angry anymore.  I was cold, very cold. I thought: I'll let  Sybil have the body. I was too tired to think about  it then, but I suppose that was another way of  getting even."
  A click signaled the end of the tape. And in  the room there was silence. "Red and green lights  on the bridge," Sybil mused more  to herself than to the doctor. "Large  church with a very tall, slender steeple. I  didn't notice them. The zipper folder, the  mittens, red scarf, the pajamas. The waiter,  the woman at the desk. I guessed right even  though I had not met Peggy Lou."
  Then, turning directly to the doctor,  Sybil said, with composure: "Peggy Lou feeding  the birds is like St. Francis of Assisi."
  "You see," the doctor said. "Peggy Lou is  no monster."
  "Yes, she seems to have quite a lot of aesthetic  feeling," Sybil concurred. "The drawing of the  woman on the cliff is quite good. You told me that  she always paints in black and white."
  "She sees the world in black and white. No  grays for Peggy Lou," said the doctor.
  "Let Sybil have the body?" Sybil asked.  "What an odd thing to say. As if the body were  hers!"
  "You see, Sybil," the doctor explained,  "this account of the Philadelphia trip, revealing  at what point an alternating personality in  command of the body relinquishes it, gives us real  insight into the dynamics of multiple
  
personality. It is evident, you  see, that, exhausted by the storm, Peggy Lou  turned the body over to you because she preferred not  to be."
  "She has the choice?" Sybil asked somewhat  wi/lly.
  "Oh, yes," the doctor replied. "Once  the alternating self has acted out the emotions that  at any given time have triggered her, there is no  longer any reason for her to function.  Philadelphia was Peggy Lou's way of acting  out in the present what you and she had repressed in  the past. By doing exactly as she pleased for five  days, she exhausted the angry, hostile feelings

that had been awakened in the chemistry lab. When you  are unable to handle such feelings, Peggy Lou  does it for you."

  And so in Willow Corners and Elderville  Peggy Lou had been the runaway who didn't  run. Only in Philadelphia, some three  decades later, had flight taken place. Her  mother, whom Peggy Lou refused to acknowledge as  hers but from whom she was forever in flight, was  the key from the past on which the present  action turned.
  When the glass had crashed in the chemistry  class, the sound had evoked two episodes from the  past. In the old drugstore in Willow  Corners Sybil had rested her elbow on the  counter. A bottle of patent medicine crashed  to the floor, and there had come Hattie's accusing  voice: "You broke it." In the Anderson kitchen  in Elderville, cousin Lulu had accused  Sybil of breaking the pickle dish that Lulu had  shattered. Again there had been Sybil's mother's  accusation: "You broke it."
  In the chemistry class, as in the old  drugstore in Willow Corners and in the Anderson  kitchen in Elderville, Sybil's head had  throbbed and the room seemed to swirl. In all  three incidents the physical reactions and the  emotions were the same.
  The next day Sybil listened to the tape of  Peggy Ann. It was interesting that Peggy Ann was  free of Peggy Lou's verbal mannerisms and  grammatical errors. "I was walking toward  Seventeenth and Dodge Streets," Peggy  Ann's voice was saying, "so I could find out where
  
Dr. Wilbur had gone. I walked  several blocks, and none of the signs had numbers  on them, so I turned and started another way  to find streets with numbers. I thought if I could  just find Sixteenth Street, Omaha's main  street, I could then find Seventeenth. I  walked and walked until I was very tired and very  cold, but I could not find the streets with numbers  on them. I began to get cross and agitated and  felt like smashing a window. "But you don't want  to break the glass," I heard. "You said you  wouldn't anymore." I whirled around to see who  had spoken to me. I

wanted to talk to her, so I started down the street  after her, but I could not find her. I felt sad  again and very lonely. I wanted to find the only  person I liked. Then I remembered I liked  Dr. Wilbur best of all, and I was looking for  her. I wanted to tell her about the hands and the  music and the boxes. I didn't know just what about  these, but they are what I thought I wanted to talk  about. And I wanted to ask her why I wasn't  getting better when she said I would. I was  afraid."
  "Dr. Wilbur is right here," the  doctor's voice declared on the tape.
  "Dr. Wilbur went away," Peggy Ann  was insisting.
  "Can't you see that I am Dr. Wilbur?"  "Dr. Wilbur went away and left us  helpless."
  "Where were you when Dr. Wilbur left you?"  "Omaha."
  "Where are you now?"
  "Omaha."
  The tape had come to an end. It seemed  curious to the doctor that Peggy Ann had  assumed the burden of the broken glass, which really  belonged to Peggy Lou. But then the two selves were  so closely allied that they often shared the same  experiences and even adopted as their own the emotions  of the other. Anger and fear, as exemplified by the  Peggys, were not disconnected.
  The doctor then turned to Sybil, who had  been silent during Peggy Ann's recital.  "She has robbed me of my past," Sybil  finally said. "They both have. Peggy Lou as well  as Peggy Ann."
  "The past," the doctor replied with conviction,
  
"as we move toward integration, will no  longer trouble you. Your mother's hands won't frighten  you. We'll resolve the conflicts, and the thieves  will return to you what they have stolen."
  The doctor then explained that Peggy Ann was  the terrified, frightened part of Sybil and that she had  brought that fear home with her from Philadelphia.
  "But Peggy Ann didn't even know she had  been in Philadelphia," Sybil replied  thoughtfully. "What a mix up in the emotions to have  produced anything like this."
  "Well," the doctor replied, "I also have  tapes of the other selves. Shall we start listening  tomorrow?"

  "You've said there are fourteen besides me,"  Sybil replied. "That will take forever." Changing  the subject, Sybil repeated what had been the  source of her terror in the previous session:  "Peggy Lou has my mother's voice."
  "That's interesting," the doctor remarked. "You  know, Peggy Lou insists that your mother was not hers."
  "Peggy Lou," Sybil replied wi/lly,  "had all the advantages. She can deny what I  have to face." Then in a sudden burst of  curiosity long repressed Sybil  asked, "Where did she come from? How was she  created? Questions, questions, questions. But no answers."
  "There are many answers," the doctor averred,  "that I, too, don't have yet."
  Then Sybil, suddenly less conciliatory,  affirmed, "Well, I'm not going to listen to the  others for a long time. They'll only make me  miserable. Why should I?"
  The doctor reminded Sybil: "Knowing is  better than not knowing. It is important, as  I've told you before, for you to remember and to accept  as your own the things that happen to the fourteen other  selves. As your own, Sybil, because they are part  of you. Recognizing this is one of the first steps  toward getting well."

       The Retreating White Coat

  When Sybil awoke the next morning, her  thoughts had not fully been extricated from the dream  that had propelled her into awakening.
  In that dream her parents and she had had to leave
  
town unexpectedly because to stay would have  meant doom. On sudden inspiration she had  decided to take her parents to another town  to inspect a house, in which they could have lived and been  safe. She had been very proud to have been able  to introduce her father to the owners of this house and  prove to him that she really had known these people. It had  been, in fact, the same feeling of satisfaction  that she had experienced when her father had confirmed  what she had told Dr. Wilbur.
  Then she had been standing in the large living room  of the house in the other town, face to face with the children  of these people she had known--seven sets of twins and  one singleton lined up in a row. Four sets of  twins had had dark brown hair; the other three  sets, blonde hair. The one singleton standing  apart from the others had had hair identical  to Sybil's.
  "How about introducing your brothers and sisters  to me?" Sybil had asked one of the older children.
  Suddenly, however, the parents and their fifteen  children had started to move out, and Sybil and her  parents had begun to move in. As Sybil  realized that the introduction to these children, who, all but  one, were standing in a row in twosomes, had not  taken place, she had awakened.
  But that was a dream. In waking life Sybil  continued resolutely to resist meeting the children--  Marcia and Vanessa, Mike and Sid, Ruthie  and Marjorie, Peggy Lou and Peggy Ann--who  were twosomes. So resolute was the resistance that  Dr. Wilbur decided to take the matter up with  her co-analysand.
  "Vicky," the doctor confided the week that  Sybil had heard the Peggys on tape, "I  told Sybil about you and the others. It doesn't  seem to make any difference. I can't get  Sybil to accept your existence. I can't get her  to remember the things that happen to you."
  "I'm afraid," Vicky replied, "I can  offer no solution. But maybe it will help if I  tell you a little about what living with the others is like."
  The doctor nodded.
  "I'm in the center," Vicky explained,  "Sybil is at my right. Sybil has her  back turned to all of us."

  "I see," the doctor replied. "But tell  me, Vicky, is there any connection between Sybil  and the rest of you?"
  
  Vicky paused thoughtfully, then said,  "Yes, way underneath, so far underneath that Sybil  doesn't remember about it. She doesn't want  to remember because it hurts."
  "And," observed the doctor, "she has split  off what hurts, removed herself from it, relegated  it to the others?"
  "I suppose you could say that," Vicky  replied pensively. "You see, I'm a whole  person, Sybil is not. Don't ever tell her.  It's bothering her. It's part of her complex."
  What was Vicky trying to say? Dr.  Wilbur wondered. The manifest content was  obvious: Sybil was a depleted personality;  Vicky, a fuller one. But there was something more than  that.
  "You know, Vicky," the doctor replied  slowly, "you've just made a very important  statement. What you're saying is that Sybil is  not a whole person because parts of her have been  siphoned off to the other selves. Am I  correct?"
  "Correct," Vicky answered.
  "There must have been a multitude of dissociations  occurring over the years that produced these  others in the first place."
  "Correct," said Vicky.
  "The dissociations must have been caused by traumas  --the result of intolerable realities against which  each of the selves had to defend Sybil."
  "So far you have a perfect score," said  Vicky.
  "But," the doctor added, "I've wondered when  it all began. There must have been a time before the first  dissociation, a time when Sybil was a whole  person."
  "How did it happen?" Vicky mused. "Who  was in existence? I was in a way. Would it help  if I told you about the first time I came?"
  "You don't mean the time in the sixth grade after  Danny Martin left Sybil?" the doctor  asked.
  "That," Vicky explained, "was when I  decided to enter the world as an active  personality. It was not the first time I came."

  "Tell me about the very first time," the doctor  urged.
  "I was in existence long before Sybil was in the  sixth grade," Vicky explained. "We were
  
three and a half when I first came."
  Dr. Wilbur listened intently to Vicky's  remarkable narrative:
  "On a day in early September, 1926,  we were driving over rutted roads with Sybil's  parents. We were going from Willow Corners  to Rochester, Minnesota. Minnesota was another  state, and we were pretty excited about going there.
  "The car pulled up in front of a red-brick  building. Mr. Dorsett drove back  to Willow Corners. Mrs. Dorsett took us  into St. Mary's Hospital.
  "The doctor made the diagnosis,  follicular tonsillitis, but that wasn't all.  He couldn't understand why we were malnourished--coming  from a good family as we did. Oh, you should have  seen Mrs. Dorsett's face when the doctor  told her that she should feed her daughter better.  But you and I know that it was the enemas and the  laxatives after meals that caused the  malnutrition.
  "We liked it at St. Mary's. The doctor  was tall and young. When he came into our room, he  always picked us up, hugged us, and said, "How's  my big girl today?"' He looked at  our throat and then let us look at  his.
  "The doctor laughed, and we laughed too.  We liked being with him.
  "As he held us high in the air, we could see  that one of his cufflinks was loose. We told him  that we would fix it.
  ""Do you think you can?"' he asked.  ""I know I can," we replied promptly,  "because I put my Daddy's in for him every  Sabbath."
  ""All right, honey," the doctor said as he  put us back into a sitting position.
  "Nobody had ever called us honey before.  "Then we fixed the cufflink and turned it through that  little hole in his shirt sleeve.
  ""That's wonderful," the doctor said.  "When we left our room, we hoped he would  come

back soon. But when he did come, he didn't  look at our throat. He didn't pick us  up. He just smiled and said, "I have good news for  you. You're going home."
  "Our arms went around his neck. We looked
  
into his face and asked, "Would you like  to have a little girl?"'
  "He had liked the way we fixed his cufflink.  We were sure he would like to have us do it all the time.  We waited for him to say, "Yes, I want a  little girl."
  "He didn't say that. He didn't say  anything. He just turned away from us, and we saw  that white coat moving toward the door. The white  coat faded into nothingness. Again rescue was gone."
  Vicky paused. Fascinated by the narrative,  Dr. Wilbur said nothing. Vicky explained,  "When we came to the hospital, I was part of  Sybil. But at the moment that the doctor left  us, I was no longer part of her. As that white  coat moved through that door, we were no longer one.  I became myself."
  Dr. Wilbur was not surprised that the first  dissociation had occurred this early. There had, in  fact, been a good deal of evidence  to substantiate this possibility. Earlier the  analysis had revealed that during a visit to the  Anderson family home in Elderville when  Sybil was four, she had become Marcia. Long  before talking of the St. Mary's episode,  Vicky had said, "Sybil was just a little  girl when I came." And in reconstructing the  powerful experience of the lost two years between the  third and the fifth grades Sybil had made  clear that this had not been the first dissociation.
  That same week Dr. Wilbur talked  to Sybil about the events Vicky had reported.  At first Sybil had no recollection of them.  Then suddenly she recalled: "I was sitting on  the rug in the sunroom at home in Willow  Corners. I was fourteen. Something about that was  connected with what you just told me." After a pause  she added, "All of a sudden, as I was sitting  there, I began thinking of the doctor's white coat  moving away from me. I realized that I did not  remember anything after that. There was nothing. I  remembered my parents' taking me to the hospital    on a beautiful September day; I couldn't  remember the drive from the hospital back  to Willow Corners. The next thing I  remembered

after the doctor left me was being in the sunroom and  wearing a dress I had never seen before. When I  asked my mother where the dress came from, she
  
replied, "You know perfectly well
Mrs. Engle made it." But I didn't.
  "From then on whenever I was afraid and there was no  one to help me, I saw that white coat moving  away from me."

  Later during the same hour Peggy Lou  talked about being afraid of white because of the "white  coat that left us helpless."
  "Us?" Dr. Wilbur asked. "Were you at  St. Mary's?"
  "I went there as part of Sybil," Peggy Lou  replied. "But when that white coat left us, I  became myself. Well, not exactly. Peggy  Ann and I were one then. We were called Peggy  Louisiana."
  When Vicky returned a few days later, the  analysis again revolved around the first dissociation.  Vicky told Dr. Wilbur: "Sybil left  the hospital in Rochester as the other Sybil--  frightened, timid, withdrawn."
  Smiling, Vicky added, "The Peggys and I  remember leaving St. Mary's and coming home, but  Sybil doesn't remember."
  "Yes, she told me," the doctor  replied quietly.
  Although she who was still called Sybil ostensibly  rode with her parents from Rochester to Willow  Corners, in the car were two other children. Vicky and  Peggy Louisiana became autonomous,  alternating selves, and from that moment forward there was  much that Sybil didn't see, much that was concealed from  her and would remain concealed for thirty-nine years.
  When the doctor denied her hope of rescue from  without, the rescue came from within. The original child,  Sybil, ceased to be.
  These newcomers to existence contained between them  everything that the new Sybil had lost. In Peggy  Louisiana there had been invested all of the  original child's assertiveness and hostility, all  of her rage. To the one who would later be called  Vicky had gone most of the original child's  poise, confidence, capacity

to negotiate the world. In Vicky, too, was  centered the continuity of memory and of seeing life  whole.
  Observing, recording, remembering, Vicky was  nevertheless, at this stage, quiescent. It was  Peggy Louisiana whom Hattie and Willard
  
brought home that September day.
  The original Sybil had been an active  child, able at two to swing on a door, but as a  result of oppression she had become shy and  retiring. Returning from Rochester, Peggy took  over the active behavior that had been subdued and  lost in the original Sybil. Peggy walked on  fences, played "follow the leader," and showed herself  to be a daredevil. "The hospital did her a  lot of good," Hattie told Willard.
"She's better."
  Dr. Wilbur could see that the larger part of  what the original Sybil had been--much of her  libido and many of her acquisitions and modes of  behavior--had been relegated to other selves,  created in this first dissociation. What remained as  Sybil was a depleted personality, whose  initial fear of her mother had expanded to include not  only maternal figures but everybody. Driven  by fear, this depleted personality had resolved  never again to take the risk of involving herself with  human beings. A mere waking self, drained of  feeling, it was a self bereft, but it was also a  self protected by powerful built-in defenses  against the very forces that had divided her. Not  wanting to go home from the hospital, the  original child did not go home. She sent two  internal defenders as her deputies to represent  her.
  For Sybil, the waking self, this was the beginning  of time unremembered, of time stolen by those who came  to defend her.
  The original defenders, Peggy and Vicky,  later produced progeny of their own. It was a very  special family "tree," a genealogy of  psychological functioning, emotional inheritance.  By 1935, she who was known simply as Sybil and  was then twelve had become all of the fourteen  selves who had so far presented themselves in  analysis.
  Dr. Wilbur had established that Vicky's  line consisted of Marcia, who had appeared in  1927, Mary

(1934), Vanessa (1935), and Sybil
Ann, the precise date of whose arrival is not  known; that Peggy's line consisted of Peggy Ann,  into whom the original Peggy had developed;  Peggy Lou, who appeared in 1926; Sid, who  arrived early in 1928; and Mike, who made his
  
entrance later that same year.
  It had also become clear to the doctor that whereas  Sybil lost everything with which Vicky and the original  Peggy were endowed, Vicky and Peggy lost nothing  that their descendants inherited. Vicky and Peggy  retained as their own the emotions, characteristics,  acquisitions, and modes of behavior that had  infused the lives of their progeny.
  Ruthie, Helen, Marjorie, and Clara, the  doctor noted, were descended from neither Vicky  nor Peggy nor directly from the original  Sybil. These four were without antecedents.

  The following day, Dr. Wilbur, alone in  her study, thought of the night some four years earlier  when she had first gone to the Academy of Medicine  library to read about multiple personality.  Since that night she had been searching for the time of the  first dissociation and for the original trauma that had  caused Sybil to proliferate into multiple  selves. Now Dr. Wilbur knew that the first  dissociation had taken place in St. Mary's  Hospital when Sybil was three and a half, and  that it had been spawned not by one trauma but by a  succession of traumas induced  by Hattie Dorsett, the taproot,  aided and abetted by the powerful associated root  of Willard Dorsett's failure to provide  rescue. The trauma had been reinforced  by Sybil's entrapment by religion, particularly  as projected by a religiously hysterical  grandfather.
  Hysterics flourish in a naive social  milieu and even better in an environment  bedecked with the fire and brimstone of a  fundamentalist faith.
  It was now also possible for Dr. Wilbur  to associate with these traumatizing events of  childhood the pervading fears that Sybil and  Peggy Lou had expressed in the early days of the  analysis. The fear of getting close to people,  evident in the first days of the analysis,

was an extension of the fear of getting close to her  mother. The hands the patient feared were her mother's  hands, instruments of torture. The fear of music  had many themes: the tying of Sybil to the piano  leg while Hattie played; Hattie's  obsessive virtuosity that denied Sybil's  presence; Hattie's unrelenting harping when
  
Sybil herself tried to play;
Hattie's and Willard's frustration by music;  Willard's use of the guitar as an ersatz  solution to Sybil's psychological problem,  combined with his insistence that she study the guitar instead  of the violin.
  Also clearly evident was the origin of the seething  rage, repressed in Sybil but unbridled in  Peggy Lou. Clear, too, was why Vicky,  inventing a loving mother of her own by extending the loving  mother of Sybil's pretend world, was a neurotic  solution to the childhood dilemma. Falling  into place as well was the fact that the feeling of  entrapment, manifested from the very beginning of the  analysis, was the heritage from the past: the  reliving of the capture, control, imprisonment,  and torture syndrome and the feeling of entrapment  by religion.
  What was also clear was that the fourteen alternating  selves, who had started out constructively but who  had become highly destructive to one another and  to Sybil, would have to be integrated before the  original child could be restored.
  The doctor reached for one of the essays Sybil  had written for her, a procedure  prescribed as part of the therapy.
Written immediately after the Philadelphia  episode, it revealed a confusion and despair that  made the promised land of integration, which had so  recently beckoned, recede.
  The letter read:

  I have a few things to say, and I'm not sure  I can say them when I get down there, and anyway  I want to get them off my chest first so I  won't talk all hour when what I really need  is your help and some understanding on MY part. I  NEED to know what I am fighting.  Philadelphia really hit hard. I had thought  for the first time with no doubts that the

losing time part was gone forever. I'd had doubts before  because I'd go a while without and then it would happen  again, but after two whole months without losing out,  well--his And you were disappointed in me. Now I'm  as tightly bound as I've ever been. The tension  is so great and the despair. Oh well, I just  can't find any peace, that's all. But nothing  matters as much as the "why" of it. You have said a  number of things that have circled my brain again and
  
again. You have talked of my fears. The  fear CAN'T be any worse than the feelings I  had the last few days. I feel stuck. I have  read in Fenichel and in Alexander's books that this  causes that symptom, and I have come to see quite a  lot. But never do I read WHAT TO DO ABOUT  X. I am ready to fight or accept or  whatever, but how do I make the inside me accept  what the outside me hears? I have gathered from what  you have said that this is what I need to do. I've  tried and tried, but I can't seem to. All I  do is panic. It is just these awful symptoms.  I've had to lie down twice since I started  writing this. I know it is only tension using up  my energy, but knowing it doesn't seem to change  it. The only thing that really helps is when you and  I work out some problem or memory. Then I get  some relief for a while before something else starts in  again. I don't know what to do. I sometimes think  what's the use? There's no way out. Integration?  That's a great mirage. The other sense of the word  is easier to achieve than this. The real trouble is  that I have never been able to convince you of my  inadequacies and worthlessness. Will we even be able  to talk about it? When will I get back  to your office as "me"? When will I  make decisions as "me"? There is NO
WAY OU.

  Was there?

               Suicide

  "Awoke as me," "stayed myself." These were the  triumphs of Sybil's fragmented existence as,  almost four years after the inception of the analysis,  she continued to fall prey to the same archetypical  event, reproduced in the same ritualistic  form. Sybil, it might be said, lived in  parentheses. Outside the brackets was  approximately one third of her waking life.
  When she woke as someone else or turned  into one of the others later, Teddy Reeves, noting  the transfiguration and accepting it as a routine  aspect of life in the Dorsett-Reeves  household, reported the event to Sybil.
  Within a single week, in which the analysis had  uncovered the first dissociation, Teddy had informed  Sybil:
  
  --"Mike was here for fifteen  minutes at breakfast. I asked him what he  liked to draw. He said cars, trains, buses."
  --"Vanessa was here at 3:00 A.m.
"I'm going to dress and go outside," Vanessa  said. "I have a class. It says so on the  schedule I wrote this morning." I made her  go back to bed." (sybil had observed:  "Maybe Vanessa is closest to me of any of  them. She usually continues the concern that I have  begun. I'm the one who wrote the schedule of  classes.")
  --"Mary came at 2:00 A.m. and tried  to talk me into going with her to some other city. When  I said, "Not now," she cried as if her heart  would break." (sybil had remarked, "Mary  cries with the tears I can't shed.")

  What Teddy reported with words, Capri,  Sybil's cat, revealed through action. Upon "coming  to" Sybil became expert in inferring from the  cat's behavior which of the other selves had been  present. With Mary, Capri was quiet,  lovable, wanting to be held and petted. With  Marcia, Capri would rub against her  face as a gesture of comfort.
  But it was with Peggy Lou, in whose presence the  cat became frisky, that Capri underwent the most  complete transformation. Knowing instinctively that it  was Peggy Lou, the cat would race around the apartment  and make its frenetic way to Peggy Lou's lap  or shoulder. "Nice old cat," Peggy Lou  would say, holding the animal a bit too  tightly. But Capri didn't mind. The cat,  who had no hesitancy about scratching any of the  others, wouldn't scratch Peggy Lou.
  "Maybe," Sybil quipped, "Capri is  multiple too."

  The quip, although an accommodation to the facts of  Sybil's grim existence, could not mask the fact  that waking life, which since Philadelphia had  once again become a series of fragmented  vignettes, had become increasingly terrifying.
  In dreams Sybil, who in waking life was  remote from her feelings, came closer to the truth  about herself, for sleeping Sybil was the total  unconscious. In dreams Sybil was more nearly  one than at any other time. "Sleep and forget"  did not apply. To be awake was to forget; to be
  
asleep was to remember. Her dreams  reverted to the original events that had caused her  to become multiple and that in waking life were  reproduced in her other selves.
  During the week in which Sybil had learned that  she had been a multiple personality since the  age of three and a half, for example, she  dreamed that she was on an intercity train on her  way to the end of the line. The train came to a sudden  halt. Dragging herself from her seat, she walked to the  back window of the train to ascertain the reason for the  hiatus.
  Through the window she could see, in process of  construction, a huge platform with prominently  displayed buttresses. Obviously the train would  not be able

to resume its journey until the platform, which her  father was building, had been completed.
  Inexplicably she then found herself outside the  train and in a warehouse. Looking out of the  warehouse window, she noticed a small yellow  and white mass trying to drag itself around a  doorsill into the open space. It was a kitten.
  Sybil watched as the pathetic little  kitten rubbed its nose along the  bottom of the doorway in what seemed like a search  for food. Its movements were circumscribed,  halting. Is it paralyzed? she wondered. Then  she realized it was dying of starvation.
  A few feet away from the kitchen there was a  hideous sight--the decapitated body of the mother  cat. The head lay a few inches away from the  torso.
  Not far from what had been their mother three kittens  huddled together. Sybil hadn't noticed them at  first, but these three seemed even closer to starvation  than the first kitten.
  I'll take them home, Sybil thought, and she  raced out of the warehouse and into the street. Maybe  Capri will grow to like them, and we'll be a happy  family.
  But first, Sybil knew, she had to dispose of the  mother cat. Picking up the head and then the body,  she flung both parts into the river that ran  alongside the warehouse. But the parts fell  close to the shore, where the water was shallow, and  Sybil blamed herself for not having thrown the  dismembered parts of the dead mother cat with greater force,  for it seemed entirely possible that they would float
  
back to the shore.
  Dismissing her fear, Sybil turned her  attention to the group of three kittens. Bending  over to pick them up, she was filled with sudden  wonder at finding that underneath them were three kittens  she had not seen before.
  Out of nowhere she managed to happen on a pink  and white plaid blanket, identical to one on  her own bed. After placing the blanket in the  bottom of a box, murmuring, "Poor little  pussies," she placed the kittens on the  blanket. As she was setting out for home in search  of the person who would know how to make everything all  right, she woke up.

  Shaken by the dream, which showed an unconscious  awareness that had not yet filtered inffconscious  life, Sybil was appalled, guilt-ridden.
To Sybil the meaning of the dream was threatening.  Sybil saw the train as life, moving toward  a destination but stopped by new work (analysis), which  meant reversing its route (retracing childhood  events) to become one. The various degrees of  starvation among the kittens symbolized the years  during which Sybil had tried to live and  work normally only to discover that she had  come to the end of the line (the train again) in maintaining  the ruse of normality.
  The kittens also symbolized Sybil. That they  were plural rather than singular was a recognition that  she was many. The first kitten, attempting to drag  herself into the open spaces, was Sybil herself. The  other kittens, discovered in separate groups, were  the other selves. The first group symbolized the  early appearance in the analysis (and in life) of  Vicky and the Peggys, and the second group, the  later appearance of the other selves, who were more  deeply buried.
  Some of the kittens were weaker than others, as were  some of the selves. "Some, such as Vicky,  Peggy, Marcia, Vanessa, Mary, Mike, and  Sid," Dr. Wilbur had said, "are active;  others like Sybil Ann are passive. All of  them are strong or weak depending upon what emotion  at the time there is to defend." Dr. Wilbur, of  course, was the unnamed figure in the dream who would  know how to make everything all right.
  The act of saving the kittens seemed to Sybil  not an act of personal solicitude on her part  but, like the train, the analogue of the analysis that
  
was attempting to save both her and all  of the "kittens" in her still mysterious "family."
  Sybil rose from the bed, started to dress, and  tried to extricate herself from the realization that having  to get rid of their (her) dead mother before she could  take the kittens safely home meant only one  thing--that only by ridding herself of her mother could she  become well, strong, really a "family."  Family was the euphemism Sybil used for  becoming one.
  As Sybil walked into the kitchen for breakfast,  she

pushed the dream aside, unaware that her  explication had overlooked the fact that the "new  work" that blocked the train's passage--the free  flow of life--which she had interpreted as  "analysis," had in the dream been built by her  father. The starving kittens could be interpreted as  representing sexual starvation. The same events  that had driven Sybil from a normal childhood  had driven her, too, from a normal  womanhood.
  Most importantly, what Sybil didn't  notice about the dream were her own emotions  in disposing of the mother cat. With  businesslike precision but without repugnance she  had flung her mother into the river and had become  disturbed only when there was danger that her mother would  float back to shore.
  Later that morning, during the hour with Dr.  Wilbur, Sybil talked of the selves the  kittens in the dream symbolized.
  "I went to all the trouble of coming to New  York," Sybil remarked resentfully, "and  they have taken over the analysis. They've made  friends with you, go on trips, make friends with people I'd  like to know. And I'm left out."
  Overriding Dr. Wilbur's explanations,  Sybil refused to let the doctor come to the  defense of the personalities, particularly of  Vicky. When the doctor pointed out that by resenting  her other selves, Sybil was avoiding the issue  and that such avoidance in psychoanalytical terms  was known as resistance, Sybil began to make a  joke of it. "I know I'm indulging in that nasty  word," Sybil kept saying. "Don't say it.  But that Vicky you're so fond of is a  blabbermouth. I can't have any secrets. She  rushes to tell you everything. If she doesn't,
  
one of those other midwesterners does.  They give me no peace, no privacy, no  freedom."
  "Vicky is trying to help you," the doctor  protested.
  Sybil summoned enough nerve to reply, "I'd  be better off without her help." Then Sybil  added what she had said many times before: "I can't  afford that Peggy Lou."
  Then, taking stock of her current financial  situation, Sybil explained, "I came to New  York with five

thousand dollars in savings. Three thousand have been  spent on paying for the analysis and buying a few  extras I hadn't been able to manage on what  Dad sent me. But two thousand of the five thousand  have been blown on Peggy Lou's broken  glass."
  The resentment Sybil bore toward Peggy  Lou for the broken glass was deepened by other  evidences of Peggy Lou's destructiveness.  "The other night," Sybil went on, "I found  that my charcoal sketches had been destroyed.  Teddy said that Peggy Lou had done it.  What's the matter with Peggy Lou? You  said she worked in black and white. Doesn't she  like black and white any more? Or is it me she  doesn't like? If so, the feeling is mutual."
  After she left the office, Sybil went  to school. As she was leaving the chemistry lab,  Henry, who sat next to her and whom she also  knew from other classes, followed her to the  elevator.
  There was an affinity between them. Both were from the  Midwest; both loved music and books; both were  premed students (now that she had her Master's  degree in art, Sybil had decided on a  future that included both art and child psychiatry).  Although Henry was eight years younger than Sybil,  she was so youthful in appearance that she actually  looked younger than he.
  Henry walked Sybil home. When they reached  the old brownstone, they stood talking.  Reluctant to leave her, he offered to let her  read his notes covering the classes she had  missed while she was in Philadelphia.  "I'll go over the stuff with you," he  volunteered. She invited him in.
  They worked, student to student, with no surface
  
insinuations of sex. He would have liked  to have had a beer, but he settled for iced tea, which  she presented to him with the cookies Teddy had said  that Mary had baked. Sybil enjoyed a pleasant  two hours of wholeness.
  As Henry was leaving and they were standing at the  half-open door, the mood changed. No longer  only a colleague, Henry put his hand gently  on Sybil's shoulder and looked at her  tenderly. "I want you to give me a

date for the dance Wednesday night," he said  softly.
  Sybil panicked. Replying no, she shrank  from Henry's touch.
  "Don't you like me just a little bit?" he asked.  "Of course, I like you," she replied slowly.
  "Well?" he asked.
  "But I don't want to date anybody," she  replied firmly.
  "You're too nice for that," he protested.  "Lots of people like you, and you shouldn't be like that. You're  good company. It would be fun to go with you."
  Sybil shook her head decisively.  "No," she repeated. "No."
  "Then how about dinner?" he asked.  "No," she replied. "Henry, please  don't press me. We'll see each other in the  lab. I value your friendship, but don't  press."
  "But why? I don't get it," he persevered.  There was an awkward pause. Then he asked:  "What is it?"
  In the silence that followed Sybil could feel  internal pressures, the interference of the others, as  she had come to call it. The pressure was there,  although the meaning was obscure. Sybil did not know  that Vicky was thinking, "He's nice. I can't  see why she doesn't date him," or that Peggy  Lou was fuming, "Just like her. She never does  anything I enjoy doing."
  "Sybil," Henry said as he tried to take  her in his arms, "I like you. I've liked you for a  long time. Why can't we see each other?"
  Extricating herself from the embrace, Sybil  reached for the door knob, hinting that she wanted  Henry to go. "Are you sure?" he said.
  "Very sure," she replied.
  There were footsteps in the hall. Henry turned  to see who it was, and as he did so, Sybil
  
shut the door behind him and bolted the  lock. The feeling she experienced as she did so  was reminiscent of the moment in her dream in which, after  placing the kittens on the blanket, she had  closed the box. In the dream she had created an  improvised perforation to leave room for

air, but now the "box" that she had remorselessly  shut tight was airless.
  Here she was, on the other side of the door that  she herself had closed, thirty-five years old and  an old maid--excluded by the phalanx of the  married, a third plate at their dinner tables.    Isolated, with only Teddy near, she felt  removed from the world. And Teddy's awareness of the  strange circumstances of their joint domesticity  was deeply disquieting.
  When Sybil blacked out in the apartment or  returned to it as one of the other personalities,  almost inevitably Teddy was a witness. It was  even more disturbing to face the fact that Teddy had  built quite separate relationships with Vicky, the  Peggys, Mike and Sid, Marcia and Vanessa,  Mary, Sybil Ann and the other personalities.  This knowledge deepened Sybil's uneasiness and  gave loneliness a terrifyingly new  dimension. What did these others tell Teddy?  Privacy was impossible as long as unknown  voices proclaimed secrets in the apartment.
  Henry. Male companionship. Perhaps the father  of the baby Sybil so urgently wanted but  probably couldn't have. Whenever a man had entered  her life, she had wanted his children even more than she  had wanted him. And the desire for Henry, although  deeply buried, had been there.
  The dance? She couldn't have gone to the dance. Her  religion didn't permit it. She couldn't have  gone even if there were no religion to stand in her  way.
  Why not dinner? One thing would lead to another.  If she allowed herself to become involved with  Henry, he would come to know her well and learn all  about her. Then he would reject her. She knew that  she had to protect herself against such an  eventuality. No man must come close until  she was well. Well? She winced. Would she ever  be well?
  The mantel clock was striking eight. Teddy  wouldn't be home for two hours. Sybil went out.  As she walked, the buildings of the city seemed
  
to stretch endlessly to the east. She kept  on walking west.
  Life had stopped while she had reversed her  route. She still had a whole world to forge. So far the  analysis

was taking her backward, not forward. The ambition  to become a doctor had been consistently  frustrated by her blackouts in science classes,  and the ambition was constantly receding. She couldn't  bear to try and fail.
  She could scarcely even endure just being awake.  Waking, she knew one of the others might take  over. Even when there wasn't an actual  takeover, there was the everlasting internal  pressure, the interference by the others. She felt  alone, useless, futile. Convinced that she was never  going to get better, Sybil was faced with  self-recriminations and complaints.
  Certain that her life had stopped while she  retraced a path that uncovered only anguish,  Sybil felt that she had indeed come to the end of the  line. She didn't want to live this way.
  She reached the Hudson River,  brownish-green and deep. She envisioned  herself in the water, sinking. Death would  bring surcease.
  Sybil walked closer to the river, but before she  could actually reach it, her body turned,  propelled by another's will. The body, controlled  by Vicky, sought and found a phone booth in one of the  apartment houses on Riverside Drive. After  dialing, Vicky said in a firm, clear voice,  "Dr. Wilbur, Sybil was going to throw herself in  the Hudson River, but I didn't let her."
  
               Part IV 353-355
               Reentry

           Beginning to Remember

  At first Sybil had doubted that any mere  medicine could produce any decisive changes,  but when the few electric shock treatments for which  she had asked to make her feel safer after her  suicide attempt had effected no discernible  difference in her feelings, she had agreed  to sodium pentothal because she trusted Dr.  Wilbur.
  The doctor herself had suggested pentothal  reluctantly because she believed that straight  psychoanalysis was the treatment of choice in  Sybil's case. But the intimations of suicide,  the actual near-attempt, made it necessary  to resolve, to some degree and over a short  period of time, the intense anxiety and  depression. From long experience Dr. Wilbur  knew that abreaction--the emotional release or  discharge resulting from recalling to awareness a  painful experience that has been  repressed because it was consciously  intolerable--with pentothal was a markedly useful  tool. By discharging and desensitizing painful  emotions, pentothal often led to increased insights.

  The first pentothal treatment, administered by vein,  appreciably diminished Sybil's anxiety.
In the sessions that followed, for fifty-six,  sometimes seventy hours after receiving pentothal,  Sybil came to know a sense of freedom that never  before had been hers. Pentothal, a barbiturate  that is both an anesthetic and a hypnotic, had  conferred the sensation of feeling perfectly well--  an experience Sybil had never had before. On the

day after the treatment, there was always euphoria, which was  due not only to the anti-anxiety effect of the  barbiturate but also to the abreaction of severe  trauma. Pentothal brought to the surface the  deeply buried, debilitating hatred of her  mother. Although Sybil could not yet accept this  hatred, the fact that it was no longer buried paved  the way to a later acceptance.
  The freedom Sybil knew through pentothal the  other selves also experienced. Now as never before the  others had the opportunity both to be and  to talk. Vicky had all the memories, her own  and those of the other selves, including Sybil's.  The other fourteen personalities had their own  memories and some of the recollections of the other  alternating selves and of Sybil.
  Only Sybil possessed none of the  memories of the others. But as pentothal unleashed  some forgotten fragments of the past, the memories  relating to the experiences of the others and the memories  of events that Sybil had lived through as herself but had  forgotten began to filter into awareness.
  Memory didn't just happen. After the  pentothal treatment Dr. Wilbur would confront  Sybil with the deeply buried memories that  returned during the pentothal "sleep" and  vanished upon waking.
  "Oh, I had forgotten all about that," Sybil  would remark when, upon awakening, she was presented  with the memory. Then after remembering the event for a  time, she would lose it again. The doctor would then  try again, until, very gradually, what had been  remembered under pentothal began also to be  remembered during normal living.
  Aware of the new order, Sybil had  the feeling of expansive sidewalks,  wherever she stood, reaching beyond the painful present  and the even more terrifying past. The sidewalks  pointed toward the promised land of either being freed  of the others or becoming one with them. Neither Sybil  nor Dr. Wilbur knew which of the two forms  getting well would take.
  For the first time Sybil also began to experience the  emotions attributable to each of the other selves.

Beginning to understand, too, what triggered dissociation,  the patient now knew not only intellectually but  emotionally that "When I'm angry, I can't be."  Anger, of course, was Peggy Lou's province.
  The impression Sybil herself had was that  subsiding slowly was the gnawing conflict that had  driven her to the Hudson River--and also away from  it. More concerned now with "Who am I?" she informed  the doctor, "Pentothal makes me feel that I  am me." Yet although the conflict had ebbed, it had  not disappeared. For the present the barbiturate  bestowed a sense of release, and concurrently, the  feelings of unreality that had been hers almost since  time began for her were gradually replaced by a  feeling of solidity. Always far away from her  feelings, she was coming closer to them now.
  Sailing along with the speed of a schooner in a  gale, Sybil came to regard the weekly  pentothal sessions as propitious winds. That  Dr. Wilbur visited Sybil in her apartment  when pentothal was administered brought additional  comfort. Feeling more alive, more interested, Sybil  redecorated the apartment, made it more  attractive for her doctor-guest. The jab in  the vein, the occasional inability to find a new  vein after months had passed and so many veins had  been pressed into service, the not-infrequent  swelling of the injected part of the anatomy, the  feeling of chill that sometimes ran through the patient,  the hiccups ("I sound as if I'm drunk,"  Vicky said. "And here I am getting treatment  when I'm not sick")--all of this physical  discomfiture was there. None of it mattered,  however, in the light of the bright new day sodium  pentothal had brought. On sodium pentothal  Sybil had even gained fifteen pounds.
  Nirvana? No. The euphoria was often  deflated, sometimes destroyed by the reawakened  memories of childhood horrors that Sybil  had so painstakingly buried.
  "Your mother trapped you, and it's almost  as if you have taken over trapping yourself," Dr.  Wilbur would say. "But you're getting rid of  your mother." Sybil had already done so in her dream  about the

mother cat, but she was horrified by the unnatural  desire.
  "I'm helping you to grow up," the doctor would  continue. "You're getting better, and you're going  to be able to use all your talents." The  incantation, the exorcising of Hattie  Dorsett, would proceed: "Your mother taught you not  to believe in yourself. I'm going to help you do so.  The numbers will come back. The music will come  back. There will be an end to the painting blocks.  You will do many things well."
  "I'm so cold, so cold," Sybil would  reply through chattering teeth.
  Integration? Far from it. As the past flooded  back, there was all the more reason to regress into the  other selves, defenses against the past. Yet in  the valley of dissociation there were also the first  glimmers of coalescence.
        There was a glimmer on a Friday night in the  very height of spring. Seated on her bed after having  awakened from a tranquil three-hour sleep  following a sodium pentothal treatment, Sybil  was thinking about the previous day, much of which had been  blank. Suddenly action was etched into the  blankness.
  Was this memory? She did not know. If it  was, it was memory of a different kind; for she was  remembering not what she had done as Sybil but  what--and this was the bewildering part of the recollection  --she had done as Mary and Sybil Ann.  Sybil was distinctly aware of two persons,  each of whom knew what the other was doing and saying.  Together these two persons went to the supermarket,  bought groceries, and conversed about the  prices of their purchases.
  Perhaps the most extraordinary aspect of the  recollection was that Sybil remembered that at one  moment she had been Mary, at the next Sybil  Ann, and that when she was the one, the other was a  person beside her, to whom she could talk and express  opinions and from whom she could seek advice.
  Sybil could see herself becoming Sybil  Ann. As Sybil Ann she had returned to the  apartment and had been suddenly obsessed with the  desire to go off on a trip. Somehow this trip  had not eventuated, but while

planning to go, she had looked at a purse on the  dresser with Sybil Ann's eyes, thinking that she  would take the purse with her and return it as soon  as she got settled somewhere. Observing that the name  on the identification card was Sybil I.  Dorsett, Sybil in the person of Sybil
Ann thought: that must be the owner. The memory of being  Sybil Ann was so distinct that it had even  included Sybil Ann's confusion as to who  Sybil was.
  This glimpse into the present was followed some  weeks later by an even more confoundingly swift
  
perception of the past.
  At breakfast Teddy was saying, "I'd  certainly like to know what Peggy Lou was talking about  when she said that letters make words, words make  sentences, and sentences make paragraphs."
  "You're asking me what Peggy Lou meant?"  Sybil replied. "Me? I'm the last one  to ask. You know how Peggy Lou and I feel about  each other."
  "Peggy Lou also said something about little gray  boxes in rows and that she had to watch and be careful,  that she had to get away," Teddy went on.  "I've been hearing about these letters, words, and  boxes for several years now."
  Sybil replied thoughtfully, "I haven't the  faintest idea." But as she spoke, she looked  up at the blank red wall just ahead and, although  aware of herself as Sybil, at the same time she  felt like a little girl. It was not a matter of being  childlike but of being a child. Then Sybil found  herself saying, "When I was a youngster, I was not  allowed to listen to fairy tales or any stories  that were not "the truth." Nor was I allowed  to make up stories. But I liked to write,  especially animal stories and  poetry. When Mother and Dad made me  promise I would stop, I devised a way to  "write" without writing. I would cut words and  single letters in headings out of newspapers and put the  letters in little gray boxes, which I took to school.  Then I'd paste the words on sheets of heavy  paper so that the letters made words, the words made  paragraphs, and I could write without writing. You  see?"
  Bewildered, Teddy reminded her roommate,  "But

you just said that you didn't have the faintest  recollection."
  "I didn't," Sybil replied calmly,  "but then I did. You see I devised that  technique when I was in the third and fourth  grades, after my grandmother died."
  The third and fourth grades, after her grandmother  died? The calm vanished as Sybil realized  what she had said.
  Out of the mist hanging heavily over Sybil's  two lost years (between the ages of nine and eleven)  Peggy Lou's memories were becoming Sybil's.  By responding to Peggy Lou's memory as if it
  
were her own, the waking self that was called  Sybil had been able to recall an incident from the  childhood of the alternating self. And all at  once Sybil realized that at that moment she felt  not merely like Peggy Lou; she was one with her.  Pentothal had ripped open the unused line of  communication between Sybil and one of her other  selves to restore a fragment of the lost years.  Sybil, who had never been ten or eleven years  old, had in a swift flashback become those  ages. What had started as a casual breakfast  conversation had become a milestone along the  pathways of restoration of the original Sybil.
  With the new feeling of being one with Peggy Lou there  also came a wholly new attitude toward both  Peggy Lou and the other selves. Sybil was now  becoming able to distinguish what she did, as she put  it, as "someone else" from what she did "as myself."  The Sybil who in Vicky's description stood  aside had now moved in closer.
  Aware now of the others through the eyes of Dr.  Wilbur and of Teddy and through her own experience,  Sybil wondered, with humor, why with all these  "gals and guys" around, the veil of aloneness that  hung over her had not been lifted.  "Let's give a party for ourselves,"  Mary whispered in the recesses of being. Sybil  was amused.
  By Christmas, 1958, Sybil had accepted  her other selves with sufficient humor to include  them in her Christmas greetings to Dr.  Wilbur. A series of cards,

attached to each other like the folds of an  accordion, all designed and executed only  by Sybil, read:

  To Our Dr. Wilbur:
  Multiple greetings--Sybil
  Love--Vicky
  Happy Holidays--Vanessa Gail
  Merry Christmas from Mary
  Glad Noel--Marcia and Mike
  Best wishes--Sybil Ann
  Happy New Year--Peggy

  Dr. Wilbur was not unaware that the Christmas  ball beside Peggy's "Happy New Year" was of  broken glass; nor that Sybil had failed  to send greetings from Clara, Nancy,
  
Marjorie, Ruthie, Helen, Sid,  and that Peggy Lou and Peggy Ann were represented  by a single Peggy. That Sybil could move out of  her longtime negation of the others to share the spirit of the  season was in the nature of an analytical  turning point.

  Unfortunately, to Sybil pentothal became  "magic" and Dr. Wilbur, the "magician"  who could confer bliss. The dependency upon the  doctor that Sybil developed during the  pentothal treatments made Sybil feel both  loved and important. Becoming demanding about  pentothal, Sybil also acted as if she could  control the doctor and, by controlling the doctor,  Hattie Dorsett. Safely ensconced in this  double dependency, Sybil relived the relaxation  she had known at her mother's breast before being weaned and  being confronted with the manufactured nipple that had  supplanted the warm human one. Euphoric on  all these counts, Sybil came to regard  pentothal as ecstasy and salvation.
  Dr. Wilbur, however, was becoming increasingly  concerned about administering pentothal to Sybil. The  doctor didn't like having to use the  needle, didn't like Sybil's growing  dependency and the fact that Sybil was using  pentothal to circumvent problems. It was clear  to the doctor, although certainly not to Sybil, that no  mere medicine could change the underlying psychic  problems or conflicts. Although pentothal, because

of its abreactive effects, had proved  valuable in uncovering buried memories and lost  time, in bringing Sybil closer to her other selves  and so mitigating against her depletion, it had made  no dent in the basic traumas, the core  distortions created chiefly by Hattie Dorsett  and perpetuated through Sybil's own defensive  maneuvers. Yet it was precisely upon the  resolution of these traumas that ultimate  recovery, the final healing and integration,  depended.
  What was most disquieting to the doctor was that  while it conferred upon Sybil the freedom of  feeling well, pentothal had also threatened  to impose upon her the bondage of addiction.  Feeling that the gains did not outweigh the risks,  Dr. Wilbur decided to terminate this treatment.
  Accordingly, the first weekend in early March,
  
1959, was bad not only for Sybil but  for "everybody else," as she called her other  selves. It was the weekend of the weaning from  pentothal.
  "What have I done that made Dr. Wilbur  punish me by taking me off pentothal?" Sybil  murmured to Teddy Reeves. "What have I done  that made the doctor shut me out?"
  "The doctor is going to come," the Peggys    kept saying. "We just know that she is."
  Marcia, shaking her head gravely, said,  "No, the doctor isn't coming and will never come  again."
  Nancy said, "Who knows? She just might."  "No," Vicky observed. "Dr. Wilbur  isn't coming. She isn't going to give in about the  pentothal. The decision to stop it was for our own  good. She said we were becoming powerfully addicted  to it, psychologically speaking. I believe in  her."
  Hearing someone walking up the stairs or in the  hallway, Marcia and Vanessa, Mike and  Sid, Nancy, Sybil Ann, Mary, and the  Peggys, feeling a tremor of excitement, would  pretend it was Dr. Wilbur. The  receding footsteps would electrocute  hope.
  All weekend the Peggys nagged; Mary  cried; Nancy, Vanessa, and Marcia stormed.  Sybil, feeling her own despair compounded by that  of the others, told Teddy, "I've sewed the last  of the hem in the wall hanging.

I'm never going to do another thing around this place.  Dr. Wilbur isn't coming anymore. What's  the use?"
  And Vicky told Teddy: "You can't really  blame them. The end of pentothal is the greatest  loss they've sustained since the death of their  grandmother."
  In the doctor's office on Monday Sybil  demanded, "Just give me pentothal on the  Wednesday night before the chemistry final on  Thursday. Then I'll be in the best possible  shape for writing the exam."
  "No, Sybil. No," said the doctor.  "Pentothal was something I could count on,"  Sybil pleaded.
  "You're of sterner stuff. We'll find other  safer, stronger means."
  
  "I can't stand it."
  "What you're saying to me, Sybil, is that there  are some things you feel that you can't deal with as  Sybil. As of this moment, that's true. But it  doesn't have to stay true, you see?"
  "I don't see. You want me  to dissociate," Sybil replied bitterly.  "If I didn't, you'd miss seeing Vicky and  all those other people you're so fond of."
  "Sybil," the doctor answered, "you know this  makes me think it's a good thing you're not a  drinking girl. If you were, you'd be an  alcoholic. The connection between bottles and  breasts is very real. Pentothal brought you the  relaxation of your mother's breast, just as alcohol  does for the alcoholic. And it is perfectly  clear that you have a powerful psychological addiction  to pentothal. Improvement has not been great enough  to justify the risk."

  Rejected again, newly deprived of the sweet  dependency pentothal had conferred, Sybil felt  hopeless. The resistance she had built against  facing her underlying problems had been ripped  away, and she was terrified by knowing that now  she would probably come closer to the real  roots of her illness.
  With this realization there came the stifling rage that  Sybil used to feel when Hattie Dorsett  punished her without cause. The doctor, Sybil  felt, was as omnipotent as Hattie--and just as  unfair. Now, as in the

past, Sybil believed, had come punishment,  irrational, cruel, and utterly groundless.
  Leaving the doctor's office, Sybil walked  along a crazy, swaying sidewalk. When she  got home, she took a Seconal and went  to sleep. When she woke up, she buried her  face in the pillow, unable to face the new day.
  Why should she face it? she wondered. For what  was she struggling so hard and alone? There was no way  out. Of that Sybil was certain.

          Independent Futures

  During May, 1959, several of the selves  made individual thrusts toward independent  futures. At the same time Sybil, reacting
  
to these thrusts, wondered whether she was  moving forward or backward or, indeed, was moving  at all.

  That May morning the sun was streaming into the  apartment as Mary awoke, stretched toward the  once-confining partition, and realized with a mistlike  recollection that she had done something recently that  would render the partition unnecessary.
  Suddenly, like moving pictures on a screen,  the relevant scenes flashed before her. Dan  Stewart, a real-estate agent, was asking her, as  she stood with him on the front porch of a ranch  house in Crompond, New York, "How  large is your family?"
  "I'm alone," had been her reply.  "More than enough space," he had laughed openly.

"And plenty of room for company. You can throw great  weekend parties."
  Paying what he had called "earnest money,"  she had written a check for five hundred  dollars as a down payment on this house, which was  priced at twenty-two thousand dollars.
  She had been about to sign Mary  Lucinda Saunders Dorsett, but  then she had remembered that it was not she but Sybil  who had the checking account.
  "Sybil I. Dorsett?" the agent had  remarked, examining the check. "Are you related  to the Dorsetts of Glens Falls?"
  "No," she had replied, "I'm from the  Midwest."
  "The closing," he had then told her, "will be in  a couple of weeks. I'll call you."
  By now fully dressed, Mary headed for the  kitchen. "I'm going to pack and leave," she  told Teddy at breakfast, "so as not to be in the  way."
  "I don't want you to go away," Teddy  replied as she walked to Mary's end of the table  to put a reassuring hand on Mary's shoulder.  "I want you to stay right where you are. It's where you  belong."
  "As a little girl," Mary replied wi/lly,  "I always wanted a room of my own." She  paused briefly, adding, "I didn't get it  until I was nine. I've always wanted  privacy but never had it. I sometimes used to think  that I would be driven out of my home."
  
  Teddy left for work but not without a  reassuring reminder that the Morningside apartment was  where Mary Lucinda Saunders Dorsett  belonged.
  Alone, Mary made a fire in the  fireplace. Then, huddled in a heap near the  fireplace with Capri beside her, she began sewing  brownish violet draperies for the bedroom in the  ranch house that would soon be her own.

  Two days later Sybil, standing at her  mailbox, placed in her purse an unopened letter  from her father, noted with wry amusement a letter from the  Book-of-the-Month Club addressed to Marcia  Dorsett, and then opened a manila envelope from  the bank. She was overdrawn. The check for  forty-seven dollars

she sent to Hartley's Pharmacy last night would  bounce.
  Sybil thumbed through the canceled checks. A  check for five hundred dollars? She hadn't  written a check for that amount. Evans Real  Estate? She had never heard of them. In a  less sophisticated stage of her  multiplicity she would have regarded a  check she hadn't signed as a mystery, but now she  realized that one of the others had signed the check.  Who? It really didn't matter. In dollars and  cents terms they were all spelled Sybil I.  Dorsett.
  After Sybil received a telephone call from a  Dan Stewart, informing her that the closing of "her"  house was to take place, she panicked. At first  Dr. Wilbur, who kept on saying, "When you  are well, these things won't happen to you,"  wasn't helpful. The doctor did finally get  a lawyer, however, who, by pleading "mental  incompetence," rescued Sybil from the commitment  made by Mary. Dr. Wilbur, who saw
Mary's house largely as a flight from the  primal scene, thought of it as having been spun  of the same fabric that had made the boys build  the partition and that propelled Peggy Lou in  repeated flights in search of new places.
  Curious about the role of the others, who,  unlike Sybil, had been aware of the purchase,  Dr. Wilbur talked over Mary's house with  two worthy representatives: Vicky and  Peggy Lou. Vicky said: "Mary wanted that
  
house so badly that I decided to let  her go through with the initial stages. I knew she  wouldn't be able to have it in the end. But what was wrong  with letting her have her dream fulfilled briefly?  What she did was certainly no worse than  taking a dress from a shop, wearing it, and then  returning it. Lots of women do that. That's  dishonest. What Mary did was not."
  And Peggy Lou explained: "I was in on  letting Mary buy that house; I helped her  express her feelings because so many people have been  cruel to Mary. It didn't hurt that Mr.    Stewart to let Mary go through with buying that house."
  To Dr. Wilbur's practical question: "But  who is going to pay for it?" Peggy Lou replied  assertively, "Sybil. It's up to her to work and  take care of us."
  Sybil herself thought longingly of the house that

Mary had bought and she herself had rejected.  Mary's wish was her wish; Mary's action, the  uninhibited voice of an unconscious
Sybil.
  The others had a strength in forging reality out of  dreams that Sybil lacked. The lost  house had many mansions, many  barricades against remembrance of things past and  to come. How sweet, Sybil thought, to be in a  house, held and caressed in a house that was hers,  in which the earth mother could gather her children to herself and call  them one!

  Peggy Lou was watching closely as Sybil,  seated at her desk in the Morningside Drive  apartment, wrote: "July 20, 1959. Dear  Carol, I had hoped to be able to accept your  invitation to spend a few weeks at your home in  Denver. I should so love to be with you and Carl,  reviving old times. Then, too, New York  summers are sultry, and I do feel the need  to get away. I even went so far as to check  plane schedules. But, Carol, I've finally  decided that I can't really make it this summer.  There are too many reasons for having to remain  New York-bound. Forgive me. We'll look  hopefully to another time."
  Later in the morning the letter was uppermost in  Peggy Lou's thoughts as she thrashed her way through  the streets, trying to wear down her emotions against  the pavement.
  
  Peggy Lou had counted on going  to Denver and, when Sybil had called the  airlines, had told Dr. Wilbur, "All of  us are smiling inside." But now Sybil had  spoiled everything. It isn't fair. It isn't  fair, Peggy Lou iterated and reiterated as she  quickened her steps to keep pace with her mounting  fury.
  There was also a feeling of betrayal. Waiting  for a traffic light, Peggy Lou suddenly  realized that she had come to the end of the line and could not,  at least would not, continue to ride with Sybil.  They had different destinations, different  life-styles. Sybil doesn't have the same  ideas I have, Peggy Lou protested. She thinks  my ideas are wrong. And she's the one who runs  things. I have to give her credit because there are some  times that she does what I want her to do.

But that's over now. Sybil can never again be  trusted.
  Her betrayal, moreover, as Peggy Lou  saw it, was both a failure on Sybil's part  to do what Peggy Lou desired and a violation of an  agreement--a contract among the  selves, negotiated by Dr.
Wilbur. The doctor had gotten Peggy Lou  to agree not to go off on trips of her own if  Sybil would promise to take Peggy Lou  places.
  Well, Peggy Lou thought, as once again she  quickened her steps, Sybil hasn't kept her part  of the bargain, but I have. I haven't gone anywhere  out of town since Philadelphia. Peggy Lou  made the momentous decision to change her status--  to break free from being an alternating self confined  to a body headed by an alien person.
  The Grand Design, long dimly brooded upon  but now fully hatched, was to break completely with  Sybil and the other selves. Peggy Lou decided  that she would assume command of the body and take it to a  distant place, never to return.
  In the past Peggy Lou had had to be angry in  order to be. When the anger was extinguished,  Sybil had returned. Peggy Lou had never before  been reluctant to return the body to Sybil.  The future would be different. Never again would the  body belong to anybody but Peggy Lou.
  She knew exactly what this would entail. Her  existence had made Sybil's survival
  
possible. Many were the times when Sybil,  overwhelmed by rage, had decided that for her there  never would be anything but suffering, no chance  to accomplish anything without interference from her  selves. At such times, asking, "What's the  use?" Sybil had been close to suicide.
By taking over the rage Peggy Lou had literally  let Sybil live.
  But now that she was going to be the only occupant  of the body, now that she would no longer be an  alternating self but the one self, whose existence  would not depend only upon rage, it would be  different. Sybil would not live.
  Buoyed by the expectation of supremacy and the  sweet feeling of revenge against Sybil, Peggy  Lou

realized that there were practical matters that had  to be considered before she could make this new life for  herself. Everything had to be planned carefully so as  to avoid being apprehended by the police or others  who would search for a missing person.
  She would take the two hundred dollars  Sybil kept in a box in the apartment and leave  New York at once. Those who  pursued her would be looking for the legal  entity called Sybil Dorsett, a  conservatively dressed schoolteacher. Peggy  Lou would therefore seek an occupation remote from  teaching and would bedeck herself in the most flamboyant  clothes that money could buy. The pursuers would  look for Sybil Dorsett in the North or  perhaps the Midwest. Peggy Lou therefore planned  to go south.
  As she turned into East 74th Street, she  suddenly remembered that, before these thoughts had  occurred to her, she had been on her way to keep  an appointment with Dr. Wilbur. Peggy Lou  decided to keep the appointment. She wanted  to see the doctor for one last time.
  Coming closer to the doctor's office, Peggy  Lou marshaled her arguments, rehearsed what she  would say. The essential thrust would be: I'm the  one who lets Sybil live, and she doesn't do  anything for me. The thought of having to take leave  of the doctor, however, made Peggy Lou suddenly  sad.
  Her thoughts, as she approached the building where  for five years she had been allowed to speak  freely and to assert herself, reverted to a snowy day
  
the previous winter, when, to get away  from the frightening snow, she had gone to Grand Central  Station to buy a ticket for some place warm. She  hadn't been at the station very long when, standing beside  her, was Dr. Wilbur.
  Peggy, who didn't know that Sybil, "coming  to" briefly in the station, had called Teddy and  that Teddy had called Dr. Wilbur, couldn't  understand how Dr. Wilbur had gotten there.
  "Oh, Dr. Wilbur," Peggy Lou asked  on first seeing the doctor, "where did you come from?"
  Avoiding a direct answer, Dr. Wilbur  said only, "We have to get you home to a warm  bed."

  And Peggy Lou, instead of being angry because the  doctor had interfered with her plans, nestled up  against the doctor, saying, "Oh, Dr.  Wilbur, I'm so glad to see you." Together they  had walked out of the station to the taxi stalls while  Peggy Lou shivered with the cold. As the doctor  wrapped her mink coat around her runaway  patient, Peggy Lou had continued to shiver, but not  from the cold. It was an exquisite pleasure  to be enveloped in mink. And Dr.
Wilbur had promised that some day
Peggy Lou could have a sleeve of that mink coat as  a souvenir.
  Peggy Lou entered the doctor's office with  mixed emotions. Then, suddenly helpless before the  flood of powerful feelings that overwhelmed her,  Peggy Lou told the doctor every last detail  of the Grand Design for emancipation.
  "What have I done to make you want to leave  me?" the doctor asked softly. In reply  Peggy Lou nestled closer and said, "Oh, Dr.  Wilbur." The gesture and the tone were identical  to what had transpired on the snowy day.
  Now, too, in the cradle endlessly rocking was  Peggy Lou, her resolution to break with the past  to start a life of her own lullabied  into inactivity. Having expended her fervor in the  declaration, Peggy Lou did not have to perform the  deed.

  Vanessa stood in front of the mirror, in which  Sybil never looked. The body Vanessa lived  in was too slender for her taste. A little more flesh,  a few rounded curves, breasts that were more  voluptuous: these she would have liked to have had. Her
  
hair--that beautiful dark chestnut red  hair, flaming with her passions--was nearer to her  heart's desire. She wished for new clothes,  chic and alluring, in which she could face the world. How  tired she was of the veil that hung between her and the world.  It was as if she, along with the others, were facing  life from behind a scrim.
  Poor Sybil, Vanessa thought. She would  enjoy life more if she didn't always have to be  skimping to make ends meet. She hasn't held  a job since she came to New York. Father's  check just covers basic expenses.

Dr. Wilbur isn't being paid. Sybil  doesn't have money for clothes, art supplies,  travel. We don't make it any easier for  her, always nagging for the things we want and often  spending money on our own. The conscience that makes  her feel guilty about indulging herself even in  small pleasures when she's in debt doesn't  help either. The rigidities, Vanessa  reflected bitterly, are the bequest of the  hypocrites of Willow Corners.
  While carefully lining her lips with lipstick,  which Sybil still didn't use, Vanessa  suddenly had a brainstorm. Sybil  wasn't earning anything. Peggy Lou and Marcia  were spending, heedless of Sybil's caution.  Vanessa at that moment took a decisive stand:  she would become the breadwinner!
  Remembering the Help Wanted sign in an  Amsterdam Avenue laundromat, she decided  that to work there would be ideal. Involving neither stress  nor brainwork, the job would reawaken no old  traumas.
  Later that morning the laundromat job became  Vanessa's. Discovering that they had a job, the  others were pleased. Peggy Lou thought it was great  fun, and the boys admitted to getting a "kick" out  of operating the machines. Vicky thought that having a  job was not only economically wise but also good  therapy. Sybil herself agreed that this was the sort of  job that made sense. But it was to Vanessa, who  alternated with the others in performing the simple  tasks the job required, to whom the job meant  most.
  When Sybil I. Dorsett received her first  paycheck, Vanessa Dorsett visited a  small dress shop on Broadway and bought two  stunning but inexpensive costumes. Vanessa, through
  
Dr. Wilbur, was even able  to persuade Sybil to go to the theater.
  In any case, from the middle of August,  1959, to the middle of October, Sybil had a  job that Vanessa had secured. When, however, the  job interfered with the demands of classes, by then in  full swing, Sybil, with Dr. Wilbur's  approval, resigned. Of the selves, Vanessa  alone could not accept resignation from a job that had  provided new clothes and the means to wash away the  guilt and hypocrisy of the past. For Vanessa

the two months in the laundromat had meant  purification.

  In the meantime, Marcia had a better solution  than the laundromat. She wanted to turn her  talents to cash. I could do so many things, she thought  as she walked to the mailbox, if only everybody  didn't get in the way.
  She placed her key in the lock anxiously.  Asking acceptance from the world at this moment were two of  her most recent creative efforts. One was a  pop tune, "On a Holidate for Two," for  which she had written both words and music.  Finding a copy of the song in a drawer,  Sybil had wilted with embarrassment. What,  Marcia had heard Sybil ask, would people think if  I were to die and they were to find this childish tune  among my belongings? Sybil, of course, had  been against sending the song to a publisher. That was  Sybil. Defeated before she starts. Marcia had  sent the song in spite of Sybil.
  Would there be a reply today? If they bought it,  Marcia could then buy all the paints she liked,  and she wouldn't have to use Sybil's money.
  The essay sent to Parents magazine had been  out for three weeks. There might be a reply  by now. The essay was entitled "Can a Loving Mother  Be Dangerous?" Key phrases lingered in  memory: "This mother was ambivalent. This kind of  consistently inconsistent love is dangerous to the  trusting child. Can a loving mother cause her child to be a  potential neurotic? Psychologists and  psychiatrists tell us, "Yes, it is  possible.""
  There was no news about the song or the essay.  But there was a letter from Marcia's book club.  "When you enroll a friend," the letter read, "you get  four free books." Marcia decided to enroll
  
her friend: Sybil I. Dorsett.
  Her friend had objected to having Marcia's name  in the mailbox, but Marcia had held her own,  telling Sybil through Dr. Wilbur that these days  she got more mail than Sybil did. Marcia  had won. There in the mailbox alongside  "Dorsett" and "Reeves" was "Marcia  Baldwin." Well, Marcia thought, I have to have  some victories.

  As she walked up the stairs to the apartment,  Marcia brooded moodily about her status. She  was the one who came to the fore when Sybil  simultaneously felt hidden anger and feelings  of rejection, the one who took over these feelings  that Sybil could not endure. "Marcia," Vicky  had said, "feels what Sybil feels, only more  so." No wonder, Marcia reflected, since  I'm so close to Sybil that when she's asleep,  I can't even open my eyes. But I want to be  somebody, a recognized identity. If I  sell my song and my article, I'll insist on  using my own name. The fame and money will be mine.
  It's the same way with my painting. My style  is so individual that my work cannot be  confused with the paintings of the others. And  I'm cleverer than most of them--except perhaps  Vicky and Vanessa.
  My very existence, Marcia thought as she opened  her apartment door, is tenuous. When Sybil is  happy, she doesn't need me or any of us.
  Inside the apartment Marcia could sense that  Teddy was uncomfortable with her. Teddy, Marcia  realized, was afraid of her depressions and her  suicidal impulses.
  Marcia headed for her easel and began, as was  characteristic, to paint in a great variety of colors.  She left the easel abruptly, thinking, I have  everything and nothing, so much talent and so fragile  an existence.
  As Dr. Wilbur had observed, Marcia was  a seeming contradiction: on the one hand, highly  productive; on the other, as destructive.  Underlying the buoyancy and creativity was a dark  quality connected with her tremendous need for a  loving mother and a desire, equally great, to kill  retrospectively the mother she did have.  Marcia's basic existence derived from the death  wish for her mother, expressed long ago when  Marcia had wished for the little box to grow big. But
  
the death wish alternated within Marcia  with a death wish for herself. When Sybil had stood  at the banks of the Hudson River, ready  to jump, Marcia had been the propelling inner  force.
  I want to live without the hurting, choking, the  crying, Marcia thought as she walked back to the  easel. I want to belong. I want to make a  name for

myself in the world. I want to get up in the morning  and feel good, and I want to get in bed at night  and go to sleep and be able on awakening, whether or not  Sybil is asleep, to open my eyes.

  Seated at her desk on August 17,
1959, Sybil wrote Dr. Wilbur:

  I am not going to tell you there isn't anything  wrong. We both know there is. But it is not what  I have led you to believe. I do not have any  multiple personalities. I don't even have  a "double" to help me out. I am all of them. I  have been essentially lying in my pretense of them.  The dissociations are not the problem because they  do not actually exist, but there is something  wrong or I would not resort to pretending to be like  that. And you might ask me about my mother. The  extreme things I told you about her were not true.  My mother was more than a little nervous. At times she  was flighty, clever, overanxious, but she did  love me. She was overprotective and watched  me all the time. I was not the interesting, charming  person she was. My parents were better than a  lot of parents are. We had a nice home,  plenty to eat, and nice clothes. I had lots of  toys and books. My parents interfered with my  music and my drawing, but it was due to a lack of  understanding, not a lack of caring. I had no reason  to complain. Why I grew to be odd I do not know.

  After writing the letter Sybil lost almost two  days. "Coming to," she stumbled across what she had  written just before she had dissociated and wrote  to Dr. Wilbur as follows:

  It's just so hard to have to feel, believe, and  admit that I do not have conscious control over my  selves. It is so much more threatening to have something out  of hand than to believe that at any moment I can
  
stop (i started to say "This  foolishness") any time I need to. When I  wrote the previous letter, I had

made up my mind I would show you how I could be very  composed and cool and not need to ask you to listen to me  nor to explain anything to me nor need any  help. By telling you that all this about the multiple  personalities was not really true but just put on,  I could show, or so I thought, that I did not need  you. Well, it would be easier if it were put on.  But the only ruse of which I'm guilty is to have  pretended for so long before coming to you that nothing was  wrong. Pretending that the personalities did not  exist has now caused me to lose about two days.

  Three weeks later Sybil reaffirmed her  belief in the existence of her other selves in a  letter to Miss Updyke, the school nurse of  undergraduate days.

  When I had been in analysis for a few  months, I wrote you that Dr. Wilbur had  explained to me about multiple personalities and  that the "blank spells," as I had always  called them, were not blank in anything but  my memory. I had been active, and another  "person" had taken over and said or done the things  that I had not been able to do for some reason--whether  fear of consequences, lack of confidence, lack of  money, or for the reason of getting away from  problems and pressures too great for me to face  as "myself."
  The point I'm trying to make is really  twofold: The "blank spells" I have had  since I was just under four were spells in which I, as  another of the fifteen personalities that have emerged  from time to time, did things to act out the problems or  troubles of the past or the present. Many of these  started with my mother, who was catatonic at times,  at other times laughing hysterically and joking very  cleverly, dancing on the street or talking much  too loudly in church or acting "silly" at a  party, sometimes cruel and sometimes entirely  unreachable. We are trying to undo what has been  done and what you, in your aversion to my mother, seemed  to sense.

  As Miss Updyke read this letter, she  recalled the
  
homeward journey during which,  chameleon-like, Sybil had revealed a swift  succession of what had then been dismissed as  moods. At one point Miss Updyke  recalled that Sybil had put her head in her  companion's lap, but Sybil had later insisted,  "I'd never do a thing like that."

  The others, who had been denied in the past because of  lack of knowledge and denied in the present because of shame,  had been readmitted to awareness.

        Prisoners in Their Body

  Watching Mary take the first steps toward buying  a house, Peggy Lou plan to usurp the  selfhood, Vanessa purge herself at the  laundromat, and Marcia storm the citadel of  authorship, Sybil came to consider herself more and more  the hostage of the selves she hadn't been able  to deny. As far as Sybil was concerned, these acts  were part of the interference she had tried to banish from her  life through denial. Vicky, on the other hand,  decided that, although these were actions of the parts  and not of the whole, they were thrusts toward  health. As she told Dr. Wilbur: "I try  to keep Sybil safe from dangers and give her as  many good days as the others will allow."
  Actually the days free of interference were few:  Sybil's closets, despite limited  funds, continued to sport the clothes she hadn't  bought; her paintings were completed in her "absence";  and medicine--because the others took individual  doses--persisted in running out long before it was time  to renew a prescription.

  On one occasion she had "come to" in the apartment  to discover that she had a bandage over one eye and  looked like a Cyclops. On another occasion she  had found herself wearing ice skates and stumbling  over the living room floor.
  Captive, she was often late for appointments  because her captors had deliberately hidden her  purse or her underwear. Or the captors would  manage to take her somewhere just long enough to keep her  from getting to her destination on time. She often  failed exams because those who held her hostage had  deliberately given incorrect answers or because  a particular jailer--Peggy Lou--had withheld the
  
essential mathematical and chemical  formulas.
  With fourteen alternating selves making  spontaneous appearances in the world, the slender  frame of Sybil Dorsett, roaming the  streets of New York, often confounded  comprehensibility.
  Peggy Lou walked in the rain, went into a  store on Broadway, picked up a glass  dish, wanting to break it. Vicky said no.
  "Do you want the dish?" the clerk asked.  "No," Peggy Lou replied, "I want  to break it."
  "Put the dish back," Vicky ordered.  Peggy Lou did. Together Peggy Lou and  Vicky left the store, leaving the clerk to think that  the customer had been talking to herself.
  Both Peggy Lou and Mary suddenly became  sick at the corner of Seventy-First and  Lexington Avenue. Peggy Lou leaned against an  apartment building.
  "What's wrong?" a policeman asked.  "She's sick," Vicky replied.
  "Who is?" the officer wanted to know.  "I am," replied Peggy Lou.
  Peggy Lou and Vicky, halfway  across Madison Avenue, with traffic coming toward  them from both directions, came to a sudden halt.
  "I'm going over to the gift shop over there,"  Peggy Lou said, moving forward.
  "I don't want to," Vicky replied,  turning and walking toward the side of the street from which  they had come.

  Remarked the traffic policeman, "For  heaven's sake, lady, make up your mind."
  For several months Sybil made repeated  attempts to get to an art gallery to retrieve  a painting that had been part of an art exhibit.  Each time she tried, Marcia took her  elsewhere. In the end not Sybil but Dr.  Wilbur reclaimed the painting.
  Marcia and Peggy Lou took Sybil to a  coffee shop in lower Manhattan. Sybil  "came to" to find herself penniless and too far from  home to walk. Seizing a dime on a counter,  intended as a tip, she telephoned Dr.  Wilbur. Again the doctor resolved the problem.  The next day Sybil returned to the coffee shop  to pay her debt.
  
  Ironically, the captors thought of
Sybil not as their hostage but as their keeper, the  hostess of their body. All complained that she  didn't give them enough to eat, that she didn't  provide their favorite foods--a difficult  task since they had individual tastes.
  When one was ill, the others, who were not ill,  felt the ravages of the illness. After Sybil's  bout with colitis, Vicky complained, "See how  much skinnier I've gotten." When Sybil
Ann or Nancy Lou Ann, because of  depression, would take to their bed, the others would also  be immobilized. Mary and Sybil Ann had  seizures, which were profoundly disturbing to the others.  In cold weather, when Peggy Lou impetuously  went out with insufficient clothes, Vicky would  protest that "that made me cold, too." Vicky  would say, "My head aches when Mary cries."
  Captive the captors were, too, because  Sybil's social life did not always coincide  with their individual needs. Although they liked some people  in common, they also had individual predilections  for both outsiders and each other. Marcia and  Vanessa did things together, as did Mike and  Sid, Marjorie and Ruthie, and the
Peggys. Although not a team, Mary and  Vanessa were special friends.
  Among outsiders Vanessa claimed to like  everybody who wasn't a hypocrite. Peggy  Lou vented her spleen against what she called  "showoffs like Sybil's mother." Vicky favored  intelligent and sophisticated persons.

Both Mary and Sybil had a special fondness  for children. Mary, indicating oneness rather than  autonomy, remarked about a woman they all  knew, "None of us liked her."
  Excited by conversations about music, Peggy Lou  often shut her ears in the course of other  conversations. Bored by female conversation in general,  Mike and Sid sometimes succeeded in making  Sybil break an engagement or nagged throughout the  visit.
  "I'd like to get going on building the new  bookcase," Mike confided in Sid during one  visit in which they were held captive.
  "I have some typing to do and want to get home,"  Sid replied.
  Summarizing what it was like to be a prisoner in  a social situation, Marjorie told Dr.
  
Wilbur, "I go with Sybil when she  visits her friends, but they talk about things they like and  I don't care about--houses, furniture,  babies. But when Laura Hotchkins comes, they  talk about concerts, and I like that."
  Of them all Nancy Lou Ann had the greatest  interest in politics, an interest that was closely  linked with the fulfillment of Biblical  prophecy. As had already become apparent, these  other people within Sybil had different religious  attitudes and different tastes in books. They  also had different vocabularies, handwriting,    speech patterns, and different body images.  Their reactions to sex were not the same. The fear of  getting close to people, the result of Hattie  Dorsett's abuses, permeated the sexual  attitude of all of them. In Peggy Lou and  Marcia, however, the fear became terror. In  Vanessa it was somehow sublimated by a joie de  vivre, and in Sybil Ann it was dissipated by a  yielding lassitude.
  Incipient, insidious jealousies often flared  among the selves. Peggy Lou was furious that  Vicky had an extensive knowledge of early  American furniture. To get back  at Vicky, Peggy Lou burned the  midnight oil for countless hours, poring over  books on this subject, memorizing page after  page, until she could proudly prattle as an  expert on the subject. Vicky looked on with  an amused, tolerant smile.

  Talents and ambitions among the selves were  both the same and different. According to Vicky,  Sybil was the best of the painters. Vicky had  often taught withand sometimes for Sybil. Both  Sybil and Vicky wanted to become doctors.  When asked whether Sybil should study medicine,  Peggy Lou replied, "It's hard for her  to concentrate. But I could do it if I tried."
  The selves alternated with each other, but they  also co-existed. They obstructed some of  Sybil's activities, but they cooperated in  others. Sid had built the partition. As on the  Omaha scaffold, there was harmonious joint  painting. Peggy Lou, who didn't like to paint in  oils, helped with an oil painting. Marcia  talked enthusiastically of an abstract painting that  "we all did together."
  Marcia often went to chemistry classes and
  
lab sessions when Sybil could not  attend, taking notes for Sybil to study later  and signing Sybil's name on the attendance sheet.  Like a secretary signing her boss's  signature in the boss's absence, Marcia often  put her own initials under the signature of  Sybil I. Dorsett.
  None of the selves was essentially more  intelligent than any other, although there were marked  differences in what had been studied, learned, and  absorbed. Although their ages fluctuated, each  self had a prevailing age. Differences in the  prevailing ages, in the quality of emotions, in  the degree of activity and passivity, and, of  course, in the traumas each of the selves  defended accounted for vast differences in behavior.  So clearly marked were these differences that when the  various selves telephoned Dr. Wilbur she  knew not only from the voice but also from the behavior  described who was on the line.
  "Dr. Wilbur, I'm in this bar with colored  lights. Everyone is having fun," the voice  said. "Why can't I have a beer?"
  "Sure you can, Peggy Lou," the doctor  replied.
  "Wouldn't that be naughty?" Peggy
Lou had reversed her position.
  "No," the doctor said reassuringly, "lots  of people drink beer."

  "Well, no," Peggy Lou decided. "I'm  going home."

  Captor and captive, Sybil counted on  Teddy Reeves to mediate among the selves,  to report on their comings and goings, to bridge the  void that existed between blacking out and coming to. A  Greek chorus commenting on Sybil's fragmented  action, Teddy also shared Sybil's interest in  multiple personality.
  In 1957, for instance, when the movie Three  Faces of Eve was released, Sybil and  Teddy saw it together because they had heard it was about a  multiple personality.
  In the movie Eve White changed into Eve  Black, who, talking to the doctor, dropped her  eyes coquettishly. Teddy grabbed hold of  Sybil and whispered, "That's exactly what you  do." Misunderstanding, Sybil thought that Teddy had  meant that she was flirtatious.
  
  "Is that the way I act with people?"  Sybil asked in dismay.
  "No," Teddy replied. "That's the way you  look when you change from one to another. You have a  sort of blank look just for a moment."
  "The movie was exactly like Sybil," Teddy  later told Dr. Wilbur.
  "No," the doctor explained. "Sybil and  Eve don't have the same kind of personality.  The reasons for being multiple personalities  are not the same. But I do agree that Sybil and  Eve have the same blank look when they change."
  Despite the closeness between Sybil and Teddy  in extraordinary circumstances, their relationship  began to quaver. Disquieting to Teddy had been  Peggy Lou's assertiveness and Marcia's  depressions. Sybil, disturbed by Teddy's  disquietude, became increasingly lonely.
  The tension did not come to a head, however, until  one night in the late summer of 1959 when  Teddy made some scathing remarks about the  doctor. "She's exploiting you to satisfy her  own personal needs," Teddy charged.
  "I don't want to hear any more of this,"  Sybil replied angrily as she rose  from the dinner table.

  "Well, you never want to hear the truth,"  Teddy snapped.
  Propelled by mounting anger, Peggy Lou  stepped right into the context of the action. "I'm  leaving," she announced.
  "No, you're not," Teddy replied  authoritatively. "You're not going to run away  again. I'm going to keep you here whether you like it or  not."
  "You get out of my way," Peggy Lou warned,  "or I might hit you."
  "You wouldn't dare," Teddy challenged.  "You get out of my way, or you'll see,"  Peggy Lou threatened, heading for the door.
  With Teddy trying to block the way, Peggy  Lou rushed to a large bay window. Teddy grabbed  hold of her wrist, clutching it tightly.  Breaking away, Peggy Lou crawled on all  fours and, her back to Teddy, wedged herself under a  large dresser. Despite repeated attempts,  Teddy failed to get Peggy Lou out. She finally  appealed by phone to Dr. Wilbur.
  Arriving on the scene within an hour, the doctor
  
got down on the floor, calling,  "Peggy Lou." No answer. "Peggy, it's  Dr. Wilbur," the doctor repeated several  times.
  "Huh?" Peggy Lou, her back still turned and  certain that she was being tricked, mumbled, "where did  you come from?"
  "I came from my house to see you."  "Where do you live?"
  The doctor described her apartment and office.  "Is it really Dr. Wilbur?" Peggy Lou  asked incredulously.
  "Yes."
  "Is that girl still here?" Peggy Lou wanted  to know.
  "Yes."
  "Tell her to go away. I won't come out  until she does."
  Finally Dr. Wilbur was able to cajole  Peggy Lou into emerging from the hideaway.
  A few months later, "that girl" did go  away.
  "I don't usually let anyone get close  to me," Sybil  remarked sadly to Dr. Wilbur.
"I did you and maybe Teddy. But look what  happened."

             Journey to One

  In the autumn of 1959 Dr. Wilbur  faced the fact that the Dorsett analysis was  following a halting path. Progress was slow and  resistances, strong. Sybil showed signs of  marked improvement for longer or shorter periods;  then one of the other selves would slide  into depression, conflict, trauma, fear,  self-destructiveness. All accomplishment  suffered, and some accomplishments failed. One  obvious external failure was that Sybil  dropped out of school--too sick to learn.
  Progress had to be more rapid. New action  was essential. This Dr. Wilbur felt with  increasing assurance and intensity.
  She reread the hypnotic sessions Dr.  Morton Prince had conducted with Christine  Beauchamp and consulted colleagues for their  opinions of the Dorsett case. The typical
  
comment was: "Just keep going. You're  doing fine." The advice was to continue along the  route she had been following. She decided that being  a pioneer was not all that it was cracked up to be.
  Pondering the grave problems confronting both  her patient and herself, Dr. Wilbur knew that  she was facing a professional crisis.
  Her conviction that straight psychoanalysis was  the treatment of choice in the Dorsett case  remained firm, yet she was willing to experiment as  long as there was no threat to her patient or the  treatment situation.

The doctor was aware, too, that she had strong  feelings about Sybil not only as a patient but  also as a human being.
  Dr. Wilbur was convinced also that the  manifestations of the multiplicity and the physical  diseases that Sybil suffered were rooted in  overwhelming childhood experiences that could be  permanently changed through analysis.
  The question that arose was: can I find a way  to speed up the process of integration? The  experience with pentothal had shown conclusively that  symptomatology having to do with  specific traumas and conflicts could  and did disappear when the trauma was revealed and the  conflict explicated clearly to the waking self.
  Dr. Wilbur knew that to reinstitute  pentothal was too dangerous because of the potential for  addiction. She sought other means.
  Her patient was a hysteric. Since the time of  Charcot and Freud hysterics were known to be  readily hypnotizable. Dr. Wilbur decided  at least to investigate the potential of this  technique. Before she had become a  psychoanalyst, she had used hypnosis  successfully with other patients. Now she would  experiment with hypnosis in analysis. Once  again she decided that she was ready to pioneer.
  Toward the end of a gloomy and unfruitful  analytic hour in the autumn of 1959, Dr.  Wilbur said softly, "Sybil, when you first  came to me in New York, you asked me  to promise that I would not hypnotize you. I  agreed, but there were tremendous disturbances I  didn't understand then. Now I believe that  hypnosis can help us."
  Sybil replied quietly, "I have no  objection."
  
  The journey toward becoming one entered  a new, intensified phase. Now, enveloped by the  womb-like comfort of the doctor's office, cradled  by the leavening power of hypnotic slumber, Sybil  went back in time. The other selves went both  back and forward--forward so that, through gradual  stages, all could reach Sybil's age.  Integration, Dr. Wilbur knew, would be  simpler if all the selves were of the same age.  Their very

existence indicated a wedding to the traumas of the  past and an immaturity in the total  personality, both of which made integration  impossible.

  Two-year-old Ruthie was the natural point  of embarkation. "How are you?" the doctor asked  after summoning her in one of the earliest hypnotic  sessions. "Are you all right?"
  "Yes."
  "Do you remember me?"
  "Yes."
  "When did you see me last?"  "Brown chair."
  "Yes. Have you ever been here? When were  you here?"
  "One day and one more day."  "Yes, and what does the room look like?"
  "Chair."
  "Yes. What color are the walls here?"  "Green."
  "That's right. You know, Ruthie, you are two.  Isn't that right? Would you like to be three?"
  "Yes."
  "In ten minutes I'm going to say it is  five minutes of seven. Between now and that time, you  are going to grow up one whole year. It's going  to be all right, Ruthie. You're going to grow up,  and later all the others are going to grow up too.  Would you like to?"
  "Yes. Then I can color."
  "You may draw all you want and make things  with the colored pencils and crayons. Or you may  help Sybil paint."
  "I can?"
  "Whenever she paints, you can help her."  "Yes."
  "Anything else you would like to do?"  "Everything."
  
  "Then you will help everybody do  everything. And you are growing, growing, growing. You will  never be so young again. When you get to be three, you will  stay there for a little while and then you are going

to grow again. I want you to pick a nice day to be  three--a day you enjoyed."
  "Aunt Fay."
  "All right, you pick a day in the summer when you  visited your aunt Fay."
  "She was my Mama."
  "She wasn't really. You liked to pretend she  was your Mama. That was because your Mama wasn't very  satisfactory, and we know that. We are going  to help you grow up so that you don't have to worry about  your Mama ever again. Do you understand, dear?"
  "Yes."
  Ruthie became three, with the doctor's full  knowledge that this was no mere mechanical process, no  simple suggestion. Age progression could only  advance as the traumas and conflicts were resolved.  Age progression was being utilized as the means  to an end.

  Two months later the doctor told  Ruthie, "In ten minutes you will be  six, and it will be spring. Then I will help you  to grow up, to catch up with the others. In ten  minutes, you will be six. You will never be any younger  than that, and as we go on, you will get older. You will  find that as you get older, you can do more about the things you  want to do and you will do less about the things that other people  want you to do. You will grow up one year, two  years, three years, and you will pick a day that was  good."
  "Can Daddy help me make a grocery store  in the haystack?"
  "Then it is summer?" the doctor assumed.  "Winter," Ruthie insisted.
  "A haystack in the winter?"
  "Uh. And there's snow on top of it. And you  dig a hole in it and you put in the oatmeal box  and empty cans and you make a store inside the  haystack."
  "All right. Now you are six years old."  "We're on the farm, and it's the winter time,"  Ruthie said.
  This was the winter of Hattie Dorsett's  catatonia and Sybil's camaraderie with her  father. Ruthie had en-
  
joyed the farm; she was free of her mother  and close to her father.
  "You are six years old and you will never again be  less than that. I'm going to help you grow up  to catch up to the others and finally to Sybil. Would you  like that?"
  "Yes."
  "Now, when I touch your right elbow, I will ask  to speak to Mike and Sid together. Sid. Mike."
  "Hi."
  "Hi. Would the two of you like to grow up?"  "Sure. I don't want to be a little  sissy," Mike replied enthusiastically. "I  want to grow up like Daddy and do what he can do."
  "All right, both of you are going to start to become  grown up. Now is there anything you would like to say  to me before you are older?"
  Mike posed a startling question: "You think the  girls are going to kill us?"
  "Do I think the girls are going to kill you?"  the doctor repeated with disbelief.
  "Yes," Mike replied apprehensively.  "The girls? Which girls?" the doctor asked  in an attempt to elucidate what Mike really  meant.
  "Marcia and Vanessa," Mike  replied cryptically.
  "If they kill them, will we die, too?"  Sid asked with concern.
  "I don't know whom you mean by "they,"" the  doctor insisted.
  "There's a rumor," Sid explained, "that the  girls are going to kill each other, that the time is  coming when some of them won't be."
  "The time is coming," the doctor replied with  emphasis, "when no one of you will be by yourself. All  of you are going to work together. But now I want to get  back to your question. Mike, are you listening? Sid?  I want you to understand very clearly what I'm about  to say. If Marcia and Vanessa were dead, you would  be dead too. Therefore, you must help them to live and  catch up with Sybil so they will not want to die."
  "But they feel so bad," Sid said.  "Yes, I know," the doctor replied  softly. Then with

intensity she added, "But you can help them to feel  better. You can cheer them up. Nobody is going  to kill anybody. And now you are getting older,  older, older."
  
  Dr. Wilbur felt reassured  by the age progression sessions, especially since  genuine analysis was taking place. The boys  had just revealed suicidal intent on the part of  other selves as well as their own fear that  integration would result in death for them.

  Getting older was the order of becoming until,  by April, 1960, no one of the selves was less  than eighteen. Sybil, however, was thirty-seven  and three months. Since identity of ages  constituted an important step toward integration,  Dr. Wilbur talked with Vicky on April  21 about taking this step.
  "I'm overwhelmed," Vicky replied, "at  the thought of being that old."
  "Shall we do it, Vicky?"
  There was silence.
  The psychoanalyst thought for a moment. Then she  tried another approach. "Vicky, you're the one  who knows everything about everybody; you're the memory  trace, the positive force in the Sybil  complex. Shouldn't you be her age when already you have  all the memories of the years that make her older  than you? Isn't that equity?"
  "I suppose." Vicky was not  enthusiastic about approaching forty. Then, lightly  tapping her index finger on an end table, she  remarked, "Have I ever told you that Sybil would like  to be me but doesn't know how?"
  "Making you her age will make it easier for  her," the doctor explained. "Shall we?"
  Vicky said softly, "You're the doctor."  Then, when the patient was under an hypnotic  spell, Dr. Wilbur asked, "Is everybody  here?"
  Someone said, "Yes."
  "Ruthie," the doctor called.
  "Yes," said Ruthie, now eighteen.  "Mike," the doctor then asked, "would you like  to be thirty-seven?"
  "Sure," said Mike.

  "Sid?"
  "Sure," Sid replied.
  When the doctor put the same question to Peggy  Lou, the reply was, "Yes, if I have to do  it."
  "Well, you don't have to do it," the doctor  replied. "What is your reservation?"
  
  "Well," Peggy Lou hesitated.  "I'll miss my television programs."
  "Thirty-seven-year-olds watch  television," the doctor said, laughing.
  "I don't want to have to study all the time,"  Peggy Lou added apprehensively.
  "No, studying all the time isn't good for  anybody," the doctor replied. "You won't have  to do that."
  Peggy Lou gave her consent.
  Then the doctor asked Peggy Ann, who  replied, "Yes, I guess so."
  "You sound a little doubtful," the doctor  remarked.
  "Well, will I have to go to church?" Peggy Ann  wanted to know.
  "No, you won't have to go to church," the doctor  replied reassuringly.
  "Other grown-ups do," Peggy Ann declared.  "Sybil is grown up," the doctor pointed  out, "and she doesn't go to church. You're eighteen  now, and you don't go."
  "Okay. Okay," Peggy Ann assented.  The doctor called on each of the selves.  Nancy Lou Ann, Marcia,
Vanessa, Clara, Marjorie,
Helen, and Sybil Ann had no objections.  Mary, however, protested: "I feel so  tired."
  "If you were Sybil's age," the doctor  argued, "you would not be as tired, and you would feel  better because you would get help and support from the  others. Wouldn't you like that?"
  "Would you still be my friend?" Mary asked  apprehensively.
  "You bet your life," the doctor replied  emphatically.
  "You won't leave me?" Mary asked.  "I won't leave you," the doctor promised.
  "Very well," Mary finally agreed.  "Vicky," the doctor asked, "are you  ready?"

  "I'll take the plunge," Vicky declared.  "Is everybody all set?" asked the  doctor.
  "Yes," Vicky replied, "we are ready."  "We are going to start now," the doctor  announced decisively. "All of you are going  to grow. You are going to keep right on growing.
  
Fifteen minutes from now you will be  thirty-seven and three months--Sybil's  age."
  "Thirty-seven is awfully old," Nancy  Lou Ann demurred. "That's too old for  anything."
  "No, that's not too old to do anything," the  doctor insisted. "I do lots of things, and I'm  older than that." Then proceeding to the attempt at  suggestion as part of the cure, Dr. Wilbur  iterated and reiterated, her voice assuming the  cadence of hypnotic incantation, "You are getting  older, older, older; you are growing, growing,  growing: 25, 28, 31, 33. In six  minutes you will all be thirty-seven and three  months."
  Seconds ticking. Minutes passing.  Waiting, Dr. Wilbur could not know that there was  sudden rapture flowing swiftly through the senses that  belonged to the fifteen selves of her patient. In  every vein and fiber of Sybil there was a quickening  newness, as she and her other selves moved to a  new phase of healing. Still in their hypnotic  sleep they could feel a fluctuant wave,  buoying them with new strength.
  The patient seemed relaxed.
Finally the doctor proclaimed, "You are all  thirty-seven and three months and will never again be  any younger. When you wake up, you will know that now you  are all thirty-seven and three months. You will  all be the same age as the others."
  Then the fear of losing out crept in. "Will you  love us now that we're old?" Peggy Lou asked  wi/lly.
  "I will always love all of you," was the answer.  "And be our friend as you were in the past?" asked  Marcia.
  "Just as much your friend."
  "Things will be quite different," Vanessa remarked  apprehensively.
  "Whenever you have a difference of opinion," the  doctor pointed out, "you will be able to discuss it with

each other within yourself. You won't have to fight about  it."
  "Or run away," Peggy Lou added.  "You'll have more in common and will be able to share some  of the things you enjoy," the doctor explained. "One  of the reasons for conflict and the lack of communication  among you has been the vast differences in your
  
ages. If Marcia feels  depressed, the rest of you will be able to cheer her up.  If Sybil Ann is listless, the others will  give her energy."
  Marcia asked, "Does this mean we can't  call you if we don't feel well?"
  "No," the doctor replied earnestly, "it  does not mean that." She knew that the underlying fear  Marcia had expressed for all of them was: Will  I be rejected if I get well? The end of  treatment to these troubled selves implied loss of the  doctor, who had also become a friend.
  "Now you are going to wake up," the doctor  began in hypnotic cadences. "One--stretch.  You are waking up. Two--stretch, stretch,  stretch. Now you may wake up. Three."
  Sybil opened her eyes. She and the doctor  looked at each other intently--their eyes  mirroring the other's hopes. Finally, the doctor  spoke: "How do you feel, dear?"
  "Quieter," Sybil murmured. Then she  added, "I will have more time to use, and everybody can  use it."
  "That's exactly right," the doctor replied with  expectation. "Now you will go home, and you  will have a good day. I'll see you in the  morning." With added reassurance she remarked,  "There are no little girls around now to keep you from  getting here on time."
  Through hypnotic age progression, Dr.  Wilbur had metamorphosed what had been  fixations in the past into viable parts of the present.  The hope was that this would become the bedrock on which  to erect the superstructure of integration, a way  to open the pathways to the original Sybil--and  to restore her.

          They Are Me, Too

  The next morning--April 22, 1960--  Dr. Wilbur asked: "Sybil, would you like  to meet the others?"
  "If you want me to," was the acquiescent  reply.
  "I'll introduce you to Ruthie first," the  doctor said when Sybil was in a deep  hypnotic sleep. "Until a few months  ago she was just two years old. When I touch your  right elbow, I will ask for Ruthie."
  
  Ruthie was summoned: silence. The  doctor waited. Then Sybil's voice said  quietly, "I see her."
  The moment was loaded with meaning because this was the very first  time that Sybil had had a visual impression of  any of her other selves, the first time that they had  existed for her within her own consciousness. The way  Sybil "saw," moreover, was a reminder of  Sybil's freedom from psychosis; for Ruthie  had been perceived not as floating in space, not as the  projected image of a hallucination but only in the  mind's eye.
  "You see her?" the doctor asked. "Now  tell me: why did you leave her behind?"
  "Because she had ideas of her own. She wouldn't do  what I said." It was a curious concept, the  expression of the yawning chasm between the directives  of the conscious mind and their execution by the  unconscious.
  "What do you think about that now?" the doctor  asked.
  "I don't think that's right," Sybil  replied, "because things change all the time." Then  she added, "Ruthie has her arms out, and I think  she wants me."
  "What do you think of her?" The  doctor's voice was

low. "Do you like her? Would you like to have Ruthie with you  now?"
  A breathing stillness, then Sybil's saying,  "Yes, I want her. She belongs to me."
  "Ruthie will be with you," the doctor replied,  conferring connection.
  "I want her," Sybil iterated.
  "She is as old as you and can help you," the  doctor explained.
  "I want her help," Sybil admitted.  "Now, how do you feel?" the doctor asked.
  Sybil, in scarcely more than a whisper,  replied, "Happier!"
  "Now, Sybil," the doctor continued, "the  others are right here, and you'll have to choose the next  one you want to meet."
  "That would be Vicky," Sybil said without  hesitation. "She has taught me some things even  though I haven't met her."
  "She has helped us a great deal, too," the  doctor explained, "by telling us what the others  didn't know or couldn't tell."
  
  Then Sybil asked, "Is Vicky  my friend?"
  There was strong conviction in the doctor's  answer: "Very much your friend. Now I'm going to ask  Vicky to come. Vicky."
  "Hi," said Vicky.
  The introduction of sleeping selves, now  jointly sharing the unconscious, was simple.  "Vicky," the doctor said, "this is Sybil."
  Silence, awkwardness. "Does she want to be  friends?" Sybil asked.
  The doctor put the question to Vicky, and from  Vicky came the gracious reply: "I should like  to very much."
  The conferral of friendship: "There are no  obstacles. Now you two girls go right ahead and  be friends."
  Suddenly tears flowed copiously. Sybil's  tears. This depleted girl was crying now at the  prospect of having a friend within her. Over the  tears came the doctor's affirmation: "Vicky  is part of you." Then the question: "Why, Sybil,  did you leave Vicky behind?"

  Sybil insisted, "I didn't.
When I couldn't do something, Vicky did it for  me. I didn't leave her."
  More affirmation from the doctor: "Vicky's a  part of you that is very likable."
  "I have these two friends now," Sybil said.  "They came toward me willingly." Then the  avowal, the declaration of acceptance: "They are  me, too."
  More silence. Then Sybil said, "I would like to go  home. That's what I wish."
  "Very well," the doctor agreed. "I will  explain to the others that you will meet them another time.  And we will do no more today."
  "Yes," Sybil agreed, "I would like to meet  them just a little later." Instinctively Sybil  knew that meeting each of the selves involved facing  the conflicts and traumas that each defended. Quite  wisely Sybil decided that meeting two  selves was enough for one day.
  "Turn aside, Sybil, and rest. I want  to make some explanation to the others, and then you can go  home."
  "Peggy Ann," the doctor called.  "Yes," from Peggy Ann.
  
  "Does everybody understand why
Sybil isn't meeting you today?"  Unhesitatingly Peggy Ann replied:  "We certainly do. It's all right with us. We have  no special claims on Sybil. We did  some things to hurt her. Peggy Lou and I took  her to Philadelphia, Elizabeth, other  places. We did some things."
  "Do the others understand?" Dr. Wilbur asked.  "The boys are laughing," Peggy Ann  replied. "They think it's funny."
  "What?"
  "All this about getting older and meeting  Sybil. And I think it's funny, that the boys  are men now. Thirty-seven is a man."
  "In their case, no," said the doctor. "I  would hope that they will become a woman."
  Puzzled, Peggy Ann responded only with  an "Oh."
  Then, returning to the original theme, the  doctor said, "We will wait a little while and let  Sybil become adjusted to the idea of meeting  all of you. Is that okay?"

  "It's okay," Peggy Ann  replied.
  "That's very kind of you, very good of you," the doctor  said. "Sybil will understand how good you are when she  gets to know you better."
  "Oh, Doctor," Peggy Ann blurted.
"I hope Sybil won't go around saying  "We" instead of "I.""
  "Now," Dr. Wilbur said, changing the  subject, "I'm going to touch your right elbow and  ask to speak to Sybil."
  "Yes?" from Sybil.
  "I'd like to wake you up now," said the doctor.  "When you are awake, you will know that you, Vicky, and  Ruthie are together, that you will always be together, and that you  will never need to be apart. Now you are going to wake  up. One--stretch; you are waking up. Two--  stretch, stretch, stretch. Now you may wake  up. Three."

  In all analyses periods of improvement  tend to be followed by periods of regression; for every  step forward there is at least one step backward.  After Sybil had established an entente with  Vicky and Ruthie, she continued to resist meeting
  
the other selves. In July, 1960,  a month after the entente, that meeting still had not taken  place. Moreover, as Peggy Lou made clear  to Dr. Wilbur, many of the old conflicts had  returned to plague Sybil, who once again was  suicidal.
  A woman now, Peggy Lou began the session  with, "I'm afraid I'll do something foolish.  I worry about that."
  "Yes?" Dr. Wilbur asked thoughtfully.  "I was a little girl for so long, and now I'm a  woman. Some of my old ways are no longer  appropriate."
  "I wouldn't worry about that," the doctor    replied. "From what I can see you're doing fine.  Now I'd like to ask you a question."
  "Yes?"
  "Sybil felt happier when she met Ruthie  and Vicky. But what has happened to the  happiness?"
  "All the old feelings," Peggy Lou  replied knowingly,

"have come back. I thought it wasn't going to be like  that anymore."
  "She called me," the doctor  confided.
  "I know," Peggy Lou replied.
  "I never really know whether to go or not when she  calls," the doctor explained. "I sometimes  think she feels guilty about having me come."
  "She does," Peggy Lou agreed.
  "I don't want to undermine her feeling about  herself any more than I want to weaken your feeling  about yourself. Have the old suicidal feelings come  back?"
  "Even more strongly than before," Peggy replied  with concern. "Her fears drive her to it. The  greatest fears she has now are facing religion  and school. She tried to tell you yesterday but  couldn't."
  The fears were so powerful that they led  to retrogression, even after the entente with Vicky  and Ruthie.
  "Sybil feels that is a lot to face,"  Peggy Lou explained. "I heard Vicky say  to Sybil: "Well, you take it one day at a  time." But Sybil dreads that things will get like they  were in the time of tension."
  "What is it about religion that terrifies
  
Sybil so, especially when Mary is  still defending Sybil against the most serious  religious conflicts?"
  "It's a terrible fear of finding out that there's  nothing to it," Peggy Lou replied thoughtfully.
  "Could she be afraid of finding out that she  doesn't want to be in her religion?" the  doctor asked.
  "She'd fear that," Peggy Lou reported,  "if it occurred to her."
  "This would frighten her?" the doctor asked.  "There's a reason why she's afraid,"  Peggy Lou explained.
  "Yes?"
  "Well, you see," Peggy Lou continued, "she  believes in God and that the Commandments are true.  They say, "Thou shalt not kill." That makes  it wrong for her to kill herself. Her life isn't  her own."
  "Yes?"
  "And that's an inhibition, the last thing in the way

of self-destruction. If that were taken away ...  well, I don't know, Doctor, I really  don't."
  "Aren't there other things that keep her  from doing it?"
  "There are several things," Peggy Lou replied  with conviction. "We are one reason. You see, now  that she has gotten to like us, she feels a  responsibility toward us and doesn't want  to destroy us."
  Peggy Lou had always exerted strong  pressures to let Sybil live. But she did  it in a new way now. She did it, too, in  concert with the other selves. Now the life force  resided less in the actions of the others than in  Sybil's new reaction toward them.
  "So," Peggy Lou went on, "the evidence  piles up. Sybil's afraid to kill herself because  of God, because of us, and also because of you. She  doesn't want to hurt you. She can't hurt you,  and she can't do what God doesn't want. But you  see, if she found out there wasn't any God,  there would be one restraint gone. She's not afraid  of the punishment in itself. Sometimes she thinks that would be  over quickly--that you can't burn forever. But she's  afraid to find out that there is no God and there's  nobody to stop her but you and us."
  "Now, Peggy," Dr. Wilbur asked, "you
  
would say then that she wants to believe in  God and the Commandments?"
  "Well," Peggy Lou replied, "there are some  things that Sybil thinks you will think are silly. The  truth of the matter is that she's afraid to find out  that she's the one who thinks it's silly. If she  thought that, it could all collapse."
  "So," the doctor asked, "is this why she is  afraid to talk about religion?"
  "And when things were bad, she used to ask God  to help her, and she thought He did," Peggy Lou  went on. "She believed it."
  "Yes."
  "Yet things were bad," Peggy Lou continued  skeptically, "even while she was doing that. But she  always thought there was an explanation. She had it all  reasoned out. You kind of mixed it up for her, and  she

wants to straighten it out. She knows she can't get  anywhere unless she does. All I can say is that  she has to make up her mind about what she  believes. I don't know what the others think.  They're just standing there."
  "Now, Peggy, will you and the others who can  still stand aside from Sybil join me in  making it possible for Sybil to go ahead and get  things done?"
  "Well, I should think so," Peggy Lou  replied with intensity.
  The new Peggy Lou was both objective about  Sybil and on Sybil's side.

  New York's sultry summer of 1960  brought unrelentingly high temperatures. While  the nation girded itself for the Kennedy-Nixon  campaign, the Dorsett case was reverberating  with a private cataclysm.
  Dr. Wilbur's brows were knitted in  astonishment. Sybil had been hypnotized,  Peggy Lou summoned. Expecting Peggy  Lou's crisp "Hi," the doctor heard instead:  "I say to myself Sybil."
  The voice was not unlike Peggy Lou's, but the  message confounded comprehension. "I say to myself  Sybil"?
  Fixing her gaze on her sleeping patient, the  doctor said quietly, "But I called for  Peggy Lou."
  "You don't understand, Doctor," was the answer.
  
"I am Peggy Lou, and I heard you.
I am also Sybil. I'm Vicky, too."
  A conglomerate? How come? Rapprochement had  been achieved so far only among Sybil,  Ruthie, and Vicky. Peggy Lou was one of the  selves who still stood aside from Sybil. Yet  without introduction and by her own volition Peggy  Lou had moved into the tiny inner circle: "I am  Peggy Lou, and I heard you. I am also  Sybil. I'm Vicky, too."
  The doctor called again for Peggy Lou.  "We hear you," was the reply. "And your  surprise does not surprise us. But you will  become accustomed to us. This is what we have  become."
  "Vicky," the doctor called.
  "We are Vicky."

  The doctor called, "Sybil."
  "We are Sybil."
  Peggy Lou, Vicky, and Sybil had spoken  with one voice.
  "All right," the doctor then said, "it is time  to wake up. When you do, you will feel relaxed. You  will not try to solve any problem. The  others who are not yet part of you have told  me, without my asking, that they are with you and are going  to help you. When you wake up, you will not feel  lonely. You'll feel a little more sure of yourself, a  little more confident. You will go about your business without  fear."
  The patient awoke.
  "Sybil?" the doctor asked.
  "Yes," was the reply.
  "Just Sybil?" from the doctor.  "Why do you say it that way?" Sybil asked.  "Who else should there be? I'm really just me, and  I'm not ready to hold hands with all those other people."
  "How do you feel, dear?" the doctor asked.  "I feel better."
  "Are you a little less scared?" the doctor  continued.
  "I think so."
  "Do you think you can do what you want to do today?"  "I'll try to make buttonholes this afternoon,"  Sybil replied.
  "It's going to be a good day for all of you,"  Dr. Wilbur predicted.
  "I'm really just me," Sybil insisted.  "All of you are just you," the doctor replied
  
prophetically.
  The prophecy, however, was without any  optimism as to when the integration would take  place. What had happened in this session was  spontaneous, spectacular, but the doctor could  not be certain of the true significance. Peggy  Lou had obviously joined sleeping Sybil,  Vicky, and Ruthie, not through the assistance of  hypnosis, but spontaneously. The doctor had  not said, "Peggy Lou, I want you to meet  Sybil." It was Peggy Lou herself who said, "I  am Sybil and Vicky,

too." Since the spontaneous merger had  occurred in the hypnotic state, the joining was with  sleeping Sybil, not waking Sybil. The  doctor believed that the wisest course of action was  to wait and see what would happen to this spontaneous  integration.
  Meantime, between July, 1960, and early  January, 1962, analysis proceeded,  traumas were resolved, and the massive residue  from the past began to chip away. The two and a half  years, however, were a period of watchful waiting  for the major breakthrough that would make  Sybil one person.

             Hate Heals

  On a day in early January, 1962, as  Sybil and Dr. Wilbur were driving along the  West Side Highway on one of their now  frequent out-of-the-office visits, Sybil was  listless, gloomy. Usually she enjoyed the  nonprofessional moments with the doctor, but on this  overcast day depression shrouded enthusiasm.
  "You're down," the doctor ventured, "because  you're angry and you've turned your anger against  yourself. It's probably your mother."
  "That doesn't make me feel any better,"  Sybil replied defensively. Turning to the  window, she made clear that the matter was closed.
  Dr. Wilbur's hands were on the steering wheel;  her eyes were focused on the traffic ahead, but  her thoughts were on the impenetrable void that still  clearly separated the conscious from the unconscious  Sybil. Virtually all of the other selves,  representing the unconscious, had vigorously  declared their hatred of
  
Hattie Dorsett, a hatred
Sybil also had expressed in the dream about the mother  cat. Neither the reactions of the other selves nor  the behavior in the dream, however, had filtered  into Sybil's conscious awareness.
  Now, when the chasm between inner truth and outer  awareness had become apparent, was the very moment,  Dr. Wilbur decided, for a direct  onslaught on this stranglehold suppressing  Sybil's freedom to be one.
  "Sybil," the doctor called, placing her  hand on Sybil's shoulder.
  "Yes?" Sybil replied hesitantly.  "Would you mind," the doctor asked, "if I  hypnotize you to get at the source of your  depression?"
  "Here?" Sybil looked at the doctor  incredulously.
  "Here," was the decisive reply.  Against the background of honking horns and chugging  cars, there then came the hypnotic chant. As  consciousness faded and Sybil drifted off  into sleep, she dug her fingernails into the car's  upholstery and murmured, "When somebody is your  mother, you're supposed to love her,  honor her."
  "Not when she doesn't earn your love or  give you reason to honor her," said the doctor.
  "I wanted to please her because she was my mother,"  Sybil pleaded in a low, strained voice. "But  I never could. She said I was funny. I feel  choked up, like crying, when I think of her. She  tied me down. It hurt terribly. She was always  doing things--hideous things." Sybil's voice  quavered; her body shook.
  "Sybil?" the doctor asked quietly.
  "I got all mixed up," was the reply. "I  never did understand. Put it way inside. A  black strip with a round hole in it. I see it  now."
  Silence. A low moan of suffering. Dr.  Wilbur held her breath. She knew that  Sybil, like a surgeon pointing a knife at the  crucial lesion, was poised on the threshold of  traumatic revelation. Sybil's voice  rose. "I told myself I loved mother and only  pretended that I hated her. But it was no  pretense." Sybil's voice broke. The  crisis had passed. Sybil went on: "I  really hated her--ever since I can remember."
  
  Overpowering feelings of hatred  flooded Sybil. "I

hate her," she gasped. "Whenever she hurt me,  I saw myself put my hands around her throat.  Other ways, too. Stab her. Lots of times
I wanted to stab her. Figures of her filled  with nails. Never did it at home. Sometimes at  school, sometimes at the hardware store. But I  wanted to do it. I wanted to. When she died,  I thought for a moment I had killed her. I  wanted to for so long. I wanted to kill my mother."
  At this point Dr. Wilbur could see that the  paroxysm of hatred, drained from the unconscious,  was invading the conscious. The internal motion  catapulted Sybil forward. Dr. Wilbur  caught her before she could hit the dashboard, but the  doctor could not--and would not even if she could--  restrain the torrent of hatred. A crescendo of  short, swift stabs: "I hate her. I hate  that bitch. I want to kill my mother. Even if  she is my mother. I want her dead! I hate  her, do you hear? I HATE HER!"
  Sybil's fists pummeled the dashboard.  Turning inward, Sybil had reclaimed  the anger she had denied since the time in  St. Mary's hospital, when the original  Sybil had ceased to be.
  There was silence in the car, but from outside came  the honking of horns, the sound of an auto careening  because of a flat tire. Largely oblivious of  outer things, Dr. Wilbur knew that the taproot  of trauma that had triggered the original  proliferation into multiple selves had been  demolished. The doctor decided to wake  Sybil up.
  "I guess I didn't think much of my mother,"  was Sybil's first remark. Amazed that the patient  had remembered, Dr. Wilbur countered: "On  the contrary--you thought a great deal of her. And you  wanted desperately to have her love you."
  Smiling wryly, Sybil replied, "Wanting  to kill your mother isn't very loving."
  Even more startled than before at how much of what  had been spoken under hypnosis had been  remembered, the doctor knew that a milestone in  the analysis had been reached. Not only had  Sybil remembered what she had said under  hypnosis, but she also had recalled and accepted  as hers Mike's "killing" in effigy of
  
Hattie Dorsett. These two  developments, supplementing the fundamental  admission of hatred of Hattie, so crucial  to recovery, had represented vital moves  toward integration.
  Now, for the first time since she was three and a half  years old, Sybil could get angry. The need  for the selves who dealt with anger had therefore  diminished, and those selves were now partially  integrated with Sybil. Now, too, that  Marcia's death wish for mother had become  Sybil's wish, it was possible for Marcia and  Sybil to move closer. But most remarkable of  all was that once the capacity to get angry had  been restored to Sybil, the pathways had been  cleared for other emotions. The very act of  expressing rage against Hattie Dorsett had  transformed Sybil into a woman no longer  bereft of emotions. Sybil had begun to move  away from depletion, toward wholeness.
  Hattie Dorsett, who had not really died  until Sybil killed her with hatred on the  West Side Highway, was no longer the major  obstacle to Sybil's return to health.
                                  
  The liberation of Sybil was almost  immediate. It revealed itself dramatically several  weeks later during a visit to her father in  Detroit. She was seated on the sofa in the  sunroom when Willard joined her. At first,  simply reminiscent, she half expected him  to take refuge behind Architectural Forum.  When, instead, he seated himself beside her, eager  to talk, apparently receptive to what she would  say, for the first time she had no inhibitions about  talking to him.
  "When I was six and you had neuritis," she  heard herself saying in a gush of powerful  recollections soon after the conversation had begun,  "you let me be close to you for the first time." There was  an involuntary twitching in Willard's face as  he replied softly, "I didn't realize that this  was so."
  "When we went to the farm that winter," she continued  unrelentingly, "our closeness was intensified. But  when we left the farm and you returned to work and I  began school, we became strangers again."  Flustered, defensive, Willard Dorsett  replied "I gave you
  
everything. A good home, good clothes,  toys. Guitar lessons. I did these things because  I cared."
  "Dad." Sybil paused to weigh her words;  then, swept along by the assertiveness that had so  recently been returned to her, she took the  plunge. "You gave me a guitar when I  wanted a violin," Sybil said. "Don't you  realize now that you were working in a vacuum? That you  never bothered to communicate with me?"
  Willard drew himself up with a sharp, abrupt  movement. "I did sense," he said, "that the  guitar lessons made you nervous, but I  certainly didn't know why." He paused  reflectively. "I see a lot of things  differently now. I always wanted to do the right thing for  you, but I didn't know how."
  Very much aware of his proximity and stunned that he  had not tried to make her feel guilty because she  had been direct with him for the first time in her life,  Sybil decided to give voice to what had been  buried deepest.
  "Dad," she said, "there are things that happened  to me when I was very little ..." Willard Dorsett  shut his eyes to stop the stream of his  daughter's recollections, now flowing  perilously close to the guilt that five years  earlier in Dr. Wilbur's office he had  accepted as his own. "Dad, are you all right?"  Sybil asked anxiously.
  Opening his eyes, he held up his hand in a  gesture of entreaty, saying: "Sybil, say no  more. I'm an old man now. Spare me because of  my years if for no other reason."
  "When I was very little, Dad," Sybil persisted  despite the entreaty, "hideous things happened.  You didn't stop them."
  "The wheat crib. The buttonhook,"  Willard murmured. Then he looked directly  at his daughter, imploring, "Forgive me."
  This time it was Sybil who rose to her feet,  pacing. Forgive the lost time, the lost years? The  anger that so newly seethed in her precluded  forgiveness. "Let the dead past remain buried,"  was as close as she came to conciliation. She was  ready to forget, not in the old sense of retreating from  what she couldn't face but

in the altogether new way of not making an issue of  what had been done long ago.
  
  The moment passed, and her outer mood  shifted. Willard and Sybil began to talk of  less painful things and the pleasures in store for her  during the visit. But before Frieda called to say  that lunch was being served, Willard Dorsett for the  very first time talked to his daughter about her  blackouts. "If I gave you more money," he  asked, "would the blackouts end?"
  "Money always helps," Sybil said simply,  "but after thirty-six years of having blackouts,  more money is not directly the answer." Then she  added, "But they are becoming less frequent.  I'm getting better."
  "While we're talking about money, Sybil,"  Willard went on, "I want you to know that if  anything happens to me, you'll be taken care of.  The new duplex I'm building will belong to you."
  "Thanks, Dad," Sybil said, half daring  to trust in the caring he had at long last  expressed.
  At this point Willard made a curious  remark: "Tell me, Sybil, who are these people you  talk to and think you know?" Startled, she  scrutinized the man who for so many years had lived  under the same roof with the Peggys,  Vicky, Marcia, Vanessa, Mary,  and the others.
  "Dad," Sybil said, "you misunderstood what  Dr. Wilbur told you about these other people. I  don't talk to them or think I know them. I was  unaware of their existence until Dr. Wilbur  told me about them. I'm only now getting to know  them, beginning to talk to them."
  This declaration was too much for Willard  to absorb. Groping for meaning, he managed  to say, "There is so much about you, Sybil, I  can't understand." Still profoundly perplexed he led  her into the dining room for the lunch Frieda had  prepared.
  That night, in the guest room of her father's  house, Sybil dreamed about the sunroom of the  Dorsett home in Willow Corners.
Hattie was dead, and Sybil had come  expressly to visit her father. The only bed in the  house--the familiar large white iron bed in which  her parents had slept--was now placed in the  sunroom. Since Sybil had to sleep somewhere and  this was the
  
only bed in the house, she was asleep  on one side of it. Her father slept on the other  side. Awaking suddenly, she saw a man's  face at the window. The lips moved. To someone  unseen the stranger was saying, "They are mating."
  "Don't move your eyes, Dad," Sybil  called aloud, waking him. "There's a man  watching through the window. He thinks we're sleeping  together." Then, observing that the accuser at the window  had a camera, she covered her eyes with her arm  to avoid being recognized in the photograph.  "Dad," she pleaded, "please get me a  glass of hot milk so I can sleep better."  As her father silently complied, she studied the  accuser's face so as to make an accurate  sketch of him for the police. She was disturbed because  the accuser at the window had blonde hair.
  Carefully reaching her arms through the bars at the  head of the bed, she felt for the phone on the floor.
  "Operator," she said, "get me the  police." She heard a voice answer,  "They're gone for the night."
  "Then please try the constable," Sybil  persisted. "Gone for the night," the voice iterated  in sepulchral tones. "But I have to have  help," Sybil cried. "There's a  man at my window."
  "Does your father carry any insurance?" the  voice queried.
  "What has that got to do with it?" Sybil  shouted.
  "I'll call the insurance broker, madam,"  the voice replied obligingly. "If you have the  number ..."
  Sybil suddenly found herself clutching a handful  of small business cards of insurance companies.  As she groped for a name, she found the print too  small to read. "Number, please; number,  please," hammered at her brain. "I can't read  the numbers," she protested helplessly. "The  cards keep slipping." Her hands tried vainly  to control the cards, which, of their own momentum, kept  shuffling themselves.
  "Drop this call, please," the operator's  voice finally said.
  "Please," Sybil pleaded, "someone must  help."
  The shattering silence that followed told her the  truth, a truth she had never before been able to face  ---
  
that nobody was going to avenge the accuser  at the window or indeed ever come to her rescue in  anything.

  Three months later, a letter from Frieda  Dorsett, dated April 12, 1962,  arrived in Dr. Wilbur's office. It read:

  My husband's doctor called me this noon and  told me that Sybil's father would not last much  longer. As I wrote before, Mr. Dorsett is  suffering from terminal cancer.
  The doctor suggested that I write you and let  you know that he will be glad to talk to you and tell you the  situation if you will call him. Enclosed is his  card.
  Neither Sybil nor her father has mentioned whether  she is planning on coming home to see him. I have  not suggested anything about it because I do not know whether  she can get along without you. It seems they do not  realize the seriousness of his illness. Mr.  Dorsett keeps saying he will be better in a  day or two. The doctors have given him enough  medication to take away his pain, but it has also  taken away his mind. He has not asked  about Sybil's letters in over a week  now, and they were always of great importance to him. The  last time I tried to read one to him, he stopped  me.
  I will be glad to have Sybil come home if I  can take care of her, but frankly that has  worried me for a long time. You know I have to work and  cannot stay with her during the daytime.
  I will be glad to hear from you if you have anything  to suggest.

  Two weeks later Dr. Wilbur informed  Sybil of Willard's death. Sybil took the  news quietly, but Mary, who had loved her father  unreservedly, did not. Sybil didn't want  to go to the funeral, and it was Sybil's decision that  prevailed. The night of the funeral, however,  Sybil dreamed that she was at a party at which Dr.  Wilbur told her that her father was dead. "He is  not. He is not," Sybil heard her own  protest. Then

rushing to the sunroom, she found him alive and in  bed, with people standing around him. She threw herself on the  bed beside him, still protesting, "He is not dead.
  
He is not dead."
  But Willard was indeed dead for Sybil in a more  devastating way than she could have remotely  suspected. News from Frieda that Willard had  left his daughter penniless confronted Sybil with the  terrible truth, for which her dreams had already prepared  her. "You see, Sybil," Dr. Wilbur said  consolingly, "you have always had strong Oedipal  feelings for your father, but you've also always hated him.  The original Sybil hated both her mother and her  father."
  The hatred was buttressed by the irony of her  father's words, which now returned to mock her: "If  anything happens to me, you'll be taken care of."
  Taken care of? With her allowance from her father now  ended and no inheritance, Sybil found herself barely  getting by. Fortunately, she already had her  masters degree in art and had dropped out of the  premedical program that had wed her to chemistry.  There were therefore no tuition fees. The analysis,  however, had to go unpd--Dr. Wilbur's  investment in the future of achieving the integration of  Sybil. As far as Sybil was concerned, however,  this was a loan that would be paid. For rent, food,  clothes, and other necessities Sybil  was dependent upon gifts from friends. These  gifts she also regarded as loans. In addition,  there were her own slim earnings from intermittent  tutoring and sales of paintings (she no longer  worked at the Westchester hospital). And there was the  temporary job in the laundromat to which Vanessa  had led her.

  Meanwhile, the analysis, propelled by the  momentum of the anger Sybil could now feel, made  measurable strides. Vicky was effectively  bringing the various selves together by telling them about the  past and the present of the total Sybil  Dorsett. "The gang," Vicky told Dr.
Wilbur, "is getting chummy."
  No longer were there two Peggys but a return  to Peggy Louisiana. The consolidated Peggy,  moreover,

was accepting with humor the prospect of becoming one  with Sybil. On a morning in May, 1962,  wearing a trench coat and peering through the corners of  her eyes, Peggy strode into the doctor's  office, looked under desks and chairs, and finally  announced in pontifical tones: "We must get
  
to the bottom of these traumas. It  takes good detective work, Dr. Wilbur--  I mean Dr. Watson."
  "Well, Mr. Holmes," Dr. Wilbur  asked. "What shall we uncover today?"
  Peggy replied: "The pieces, Dr.  Watson, all the pieces that will solve this  unusual case."
  For three successive days Peggy continued  to play the role of Sherlock Holmes while she  cooperated in disinterring and eradicating the  traumas of the past.
  Then all of a sudden, just as Dr. Wilbur  began to believe that integration was within easy  grasp, Mary went into a severe depression.
  Sitting in the doctor's office in early  June, 1962, Mary was so depressed that she  couldn't talk. The next day none of the selves  turned up for the appointment. When Dr. Wilbur  telephoned the apartment, there was no answer. When  she finally managed to get into the apartment, she found  Mary under the dresser, refusing to come out. Finally  extricating Mary, the doctor put her to bed.  The next day, when again no one kept the  appointment, the doctor returned to the  apartment to enact the same scene. There were  many such repeat performances.
  On one occasion Mary fumed: "I'm in here."  "Where?"
  "A place of stone with no doors, no  windows, curved and open above," Mary replied.  "There isn't any way I can get up to the opening    up there. There is no exit. I'm caught  inside these walls."
  At first Dr. Wilbur thought that the walls  symbolized Mary's frustrated wish to have a  home of her own.
  "What is this place, Mary?" the doctor  asked.
  "It's shaped like an igloo," Mary answered.  Remembering Mary's earlier discussions of  religion, in which she had talked of being caught  "inside these

walls," the doctor asked, "Could the igloo be  the Church?"
  "I don't know. I don't know," Mary  sobbed.
  When it became apparent that religion was the  imprisoning igloo and that the igloo had formed a
  
stranglehold on the progress of the  analysis, Dr. Wilbur had to tear the igloo  down stone after unyielding stone. This involved  analyzing again the underlying religious problem. The  more they concentrated on religion, however, the more  depressed Mary became. The greater Mary's  depression, the more depressed--and the more suicidal  --became the total self. Marcia wanted  to jump into the Hudson River. This time Vicky,  who had protected Sybil on the earlier  occasion, told Dr. Wilbur: "Marcia  wants to jump into the river, and I think I'll  let her."
  "Wait till I get there," Dr. Wilbur  urged. And though Vicky had responded to the  contagion of Mary's intensely pervasive  depression, Vicky waited.
  The suicidal nightmare continued as Mary  explained, "Even if you burn forever, you can only  hurt for a little while," or, "I don't care if  I don't go to heaven. The only reason I'd like  to go there is to be with my grandmother, and if mother is  there, she'll keep me from Grandma anyway."  Then, weeping, Mary would talk of what she  called "my sorrowful childhood" and the  barren walls of the church in Willow  Corners.
  Peggy protested: "We want to do things, but  Mary drags us down."
  It was paradoxical that, with the liberation of  Sybil from her mother that had taken place on the  West Side Highway, there should still be so strong a  desire for suicide among some of the other  selves. Dr. Wilbur had always regarded  Sybil's suicide wish as an expression of the  hatred for her mother turned against herself. The doctor  hypothesized, however, that Sybil's liberation had  not affected Marcia, who had always carried the  burden of that wish and who at the same time had, as  Vicky explained, a greater need for her mother.
  Mary, for her part, had not been deeply  affected by

Sybil's liberation from her mother, for her mother was not  one of Mary's major problems. This  personality's chief concerns were with Grandma  Dorsett and her father and the fundamentalist  religion that had informed their lives. As long as  Mary accepted Grandma's simple faith of  living an exemplary life, Mary was serene.
  
When, however, she had allowed herself to be  overwhelmed by the church and the theology that Grandma  eschewed but which her father and Grandpa Dorsett  embraced, she had carried the burden of  religious entrapment that in some measure most of the  selves, including Sybil, shared. For Mary there  could be no resolution, no diminution of her  suicidal inclinations until she was freed of her  religious conflict.

  The years between 1962 and 1965 were torn  by conflict. Year after year Mary remained  trapped in her igloo; year after year there was the  struggle between survival and suicide, between getting  well and remaining ill. "We're all afraid  to get well," Marcia confided in Dr.  Wilbur. But there was also another fear--subtle,  indefinable, existential--a fear that Mike and  Sid had voiced earlier when they had asked,  "Are they going to kill us?"
  "Am I going to die?" each of the selves  asked Dr. Wilbur. For some of the selves  integration seemed synonymous with death. The  doctor's assurances that, although one with Sybil,  the individual selves would not cease  to be seemed at best only partly  convincing. "There are many things I have to do," Vanessa  told Marcia. "You see, I won't be here very  long." Even Sybil, misunderstanding what Dr.  Wilbur meant by saying that Vicky was endowed with more  of the original Sybil than was Sybil herself,  remarked with intensity, "I don't want to die and  yield to that blabbermouth."
  Then two new developments occurred that made  the promised land recede even further.
  Dr. Wilbur had thought that Mike and Sid  had been integrated shortly after the age  progression to thirty-seven. It had seemed  theoretically impossible

for thirty-seven-year-old "men" to find sustenance  in a woman's body. It had seemed probable that  they would just yield to the totality of being the male in  every woman. But one day in 1964 there came the  crisp, "I'm Mike, and I want to talk  to you, Dr. Wilbur."
  "Hi, Mike," the doctor replied.
Well, she reasoned, she hadn't treated a  multiple personality before, and she didn't  really know what to expect. Why should she be
  
surprised?
  "I want to know something," Mike asked  belligerently.
  "What's that?"
  "How long are you going on with this farce about  integrating Sid and me with all these women?"
  "But I explained to you long ago," Dr.  Wilbur reminded her patient, "that you live in  a woman's body and have to accept that fact."
  "Then why did you make us men? A Godlike  sort of thing to do. Doesn't it bother you?"
  Mike was cornering the doctor in the way that some  of the selves had complained that she cornered them.  "I didn't make Sid and you men," she finally  replied. "Just as you were never really boys, you're  not men now." She added quietly: "You still don't  have penises."
  "It's a lie," Mike replied angrily.
"A bare-faced lie. Like anything else, a  penis exists in the eye of the beholder. In my  mind's eye my penis exists. I'm a man  among men." He held the doctor's eye  fixedly and added: "I'm not going to be part of a  woman. Sid isn't either."
  "Where is Sid?" The doctor  stalled for time.
  "Right here," Sid answered. "I came with  Mike. He spoke for both of us. Now that our  dad is dead, we're the men in the family, and  no sissy doctor is going to stand in the way."
  "Sid," the doctor asked, "what have I done  to make you speak this way? I thought we were friends."
  "Then act like our friend," Mike responded.  "Give us our freedom to be what we are."

  "That is what I'm trying to do," Dr.  Wilbur protested.
  "Don't try to trick us with double meaning,"  Sid snapped. "Integrating us with that gang of  women is not freedom. It's bondage."
  "I've been their hostage long enough," Mike  added ruefully. "The time for our freedom is at  hand. Whether you like it or not, we're not going to be  part of a woman. We're going to be men in our own  right."
  "You are what you are," said the doctor.  "Well, let me tell you something," Mike  declared. "You're getting Sybil ready to go into the  world on her own. You've encouraged her in her  dream of being an independent woman and making a
  
place for herself. A teacher? Maybe.
But the big jobs in education are held by men. But  Sid and I aren't going to help her as we did in  the past. We're not going to build anything for her  or play Mr. Fixit in her house. As far as  that silly dream of being a doctor is concerned,  she doesn't have what it takes. All these years  of studying science subjects that haven't come  naturally have gotten her nowhere. Medical  schools are very selective about the women they  take, and they're not going to settle for her. This  is still a man's world, and women don't really have a  chance. Doctor, it's time to wake up to the truth  about Sybil Dorsett. She's a woman, and a  woman can't wow the world."
  Then they stalked out of the office. From the door  Mike pronounced an ultimatum: "Give us  our freedom, lady doctor. The world belongs not  to you but to us!"
  With Mike and Sid in revolt, with Mary still in  the igloo, the time was out of joint. Once again  Dr. Wilbur had to summon the patience of the  previous eight years.
  The next morning the patient was Sybil,  fortified by Vicky, Peggy, and
Ruthie, all of whom were close enough  to give her strength. As in the beginning of the  analysis, Sybil talked of music, although not  in the same way. "I haven't played the piano  since I was a child," Sybil said wi/lly. "I  lost all that. It bothers me."
  "You will play," Dr. Wilbur promised in  much the same tone that Dr. Taylor had used about  the violin in

the old Willow Corners drugstore. "You will  play beautiful music on the piano."
  "How can you say that?" Sybil asked in  perplexity.
  "It may surprise you," Dr. Wilbur  replied, "to know that one of your other selves does  play beautifully. When you are one with her, she will  return to you the ability to play the piano in the  way that Peggy has returned the capacity to get  angry."
  Bewilderment shrouded Sybil's smile. "Which  one?" she asked.
  "Vanessa," Dr. Wilbur answered. "I'm  going to have a talk with Vanessa and will try  to persuade her to come closer. She's still pretty
  
far from you. But, soon, Sybil, when  all fifteen of you are one, it will be otherwise."  Thinking of Mary, Mike, and Sid, the doctor  hoped she was not being unduly optimistic.

  In March, 1964, Mike and Sid were still  recalcitrantly fighting integration, but Mary  had stepped out of the igloo. In an analytic  session she announced, "The church doesn't  mater. What is important is to live a good,  Christian life and love your fellow man." It  was the very philosophy, Grandma Dorsett's  philosophy, Mary had enunciated earlier in  the analysis, but which had become obscured as the  church had reached out to trap her.
  With the problems carried by Marcia and Mary  resolved, Sybil was now well enough to hunt for her  first full-time job since coming to New York.
  "Vanessa," Vicky told Dr. Wilbur,  "doesn't think we have the right clothes for our  reentry into the world."
  Dr. Wilbur went shopping with Sybil and  bought her several new outfits. Fortified with new  costumes and the assertiveness that Peggy had  returned to her, Sybil, who had  difficulty in getting back into teaching  because of not having taught in ten years, paced the  pavements of New York to a variety of  employment agencies.
  Waking up at 4:45 A.m. on August
8, Sybil recognized that she had very definite  "Peggy feelings." She closed her eyes and  drifted for a few seconds to see

if she could discover what Peggy wanted.  Purple boats with green sails came  into Sybil's mind's eye. She had once done  a painting of sagebrush in Professor  Klinger's class, but she had never had a very high  regard for the combination of purple and green. Then  Peggy said, "See, there are three pink flags  on the ship." Sybil got out of bed. It was  5:00 A.m., too early to go job hunting.  She decided to give Peggy the chalk and paper  to make purple and green boats with pink flags.  A dreadful mixture, Sybil thought, but why not  please Peggy? At six Peggy's completed  boats were sailing high. Peggy wanted to call the  drawing Pink Flags; Sybil preferred
Of Ships and Sailing, but in the end Sybil
  
let Peggy have her way.
  Later that morning Sybil visited the  agencies, feeling calm and energetic. She  attributed her happy mood to having allowed  Peggy to color. That morning Sybil secured a  job as a receptionist at a New York
Hotel.
  She had been working there for a week when Ramon  Allegre asked her for a date. She accepted.  From the first, her response to Ramon, an  accountant on special assignment to the Gotham  and soon to return to his native South  America, was positive.
  The day after their first date Dr. Wilbur  left for a medical convention in Z@urich and a  vacation abroad. Accompanying the doctor to the  airport, Sybil talked about Ramon. "I like  him," she said with an unabashed forthrightness that the  doctor had never seen her display toward any  man. "He's asked me for another date tonight."
  "He's rushing you," the doctor said smiling.  "Is that what you call it?" Sybil asked.  "It's been so long since I've had a date,  I've forgotten the vocabulary."
  As Dr. Wilbur's plane shot  up steeply into the air, Sybil  watched until nothing was left. Then, finding a  set of benches out in the cool air, Sybil sat  down to enjoy the sights. She felt peaceful and not  alone even though Dr. Wilbur was not beside her.  The thought of Ramon contributed, too, to the  feeling of well-being.

Was this euphoria? That word had never been in her  vocabulary until this moment.
  That night, after Sybil had returned to the  apartment and before Ramon called for her, Sybil    continued to feel as if the doctor were still with her.  Dr. Wilbur had often said that this was how it should  be, but the feeling hadn't come before. This time,  however, Sybil really felt it. She was so  pleased to have been able to tell the doctor about  Ramon. Sybil knew that the togetherness that Sybil  had enjoyed with the doctor outside the office had  been an important, perhaps the most crucial,  part of the therapy. And now Ramon. There was also  peace in the thought of him--a man against whom she  hadn't shut the door.
  
                 31
                Ramon

  Ramon Allegre had aroused feelings in  Sybil that to her were entirely new. Always  afraid to see the same person, man or  woman, too many times for fear that the friend would  discover her lapses of time or meet one of the other  selves, habitually unable to make plans in  advance since the morrow might not belong to her,  Sybil had dared to be with Ramon in the course of  eight weeks of continuous dating.
  By day she had glimpses of him, preoccupied  but not remote. At night and on weekends, they  enjoyed concerts, theaters, art galleries, long  walks in Central Park, and an occasional  evening in the Morningside Drive apartment.  Since Teddy's departure only two people had  been admitted to closeness: Laura Hotchkins,  a friend from Whittier Hall, and Flora Rheta

Schreiber, a friend and professional writer to whom  Dr. Wilbur had introduced Sybil in
1962. Yet while Laura and Flora knew  that Sybil was a multiple personality  and Flora had met the other selves,
Ramon knew nothing about Sybil's "condition."  In seeing him, therefore, Sybil was declaring her  confidence in her own ability to remain herself.
  Indeed, while cooking dinner for Ramon one  Thursday evening, Sybil suddenly realized that  no longer was she what she had been--a depleted  person, incapable of loving or of personal  involvement. Shortly before meeting Ramon she  had confided in Flora, whom Dr. Wilbur and  she had brought close to the analysis, "I can't  feel anything. How can you feel when you have such a  mix-up in your emotions? You're too busy with the  feelings complicating existence to have any others."
  But now Sybil was no longer the shell of a  self she had been when Stan--who had proposed  a sexless marriage and had been comfortable with her just  because she had not been intense--had wooed and  rejected her.
  It was different with Ramon. She was gripped with  intensity of feeling. Was this love? The feeling was  new, as new as the experience of solidity that had  replaced the floating feelings of the past.
  Was she well? she wondered. Was it health that  had ripped away the heavy weight and had brought
  
her to a metaphorical gate, through which  she was reentering the world?
  What lay beyond the gate? Sybil didn't  know. She had glimpsed what she knew belonged  to the world of well people, yet she also knew that she was  still set apart. This was so even though, despite  Dr. Wilbur's absence and an altogether new  experience with Ramon, she had not once  dissociated during these eight weeks. But some of  her other selves still existed.
  Vicky had told her, "Ramon's a nice  person, but he's pushing too fast." Peggy had  said, "He comes from Colombia. How exciting.  It's a place I want to go." Vicky and  Peggy were close to her now. Some of the others,  however, had never been close, and they were

fighting integration. Even though she had concealed the  fact from Ramon, she was still a multiple  personality.
  As Sybil worked on preparations for dinner, she  also admitted to herself that her depression and  suicidal feelings had not been put to rest by the  euphoria of her romance. Even during these eight  weeks there had been tugs of despair,  desire for surcease. The surcease of  death.
  She went into the bedroom, started to dress,  looked into the mirror. Until her meeting with  Ramon, mirrors had been ruled out of her  existence. Finally daring to look, she had not been  displeased with what she saw. Lingering at the  mirror, Sybil was also aware that the truth about  herself that she had tried to conceal from Ramon was  changing. At the age of forty-one she was waiting for    him with the expectation of a teenager. For the very first time  she was experiencing love.
  The doorbell roused her. There stood  Ramon, holding a bouquet of red roses.  "Cara," he said as he kissed her, "I missed  you." It had been precisely two hours since  they had seen each other at the office, less than  twenty-four hours since their last date.
  "Ramon," she replied, "I missed you,  too."
  To Sybil, who often personified people, moods,  and things in colors, who had described her lost  two years as blue and had conceived of chickens with  blue feet, Ramon seemed all brown, like the  earth. He took her in his arms so easily,
  
touched her so expressively, that she,  to whom the slightest touch had once been  abhorrent, did not withdraw.
  "A new drawing, cara?" Ramon called as  his eye rested on the mantel, where there was a  brooding figure of black and white chalk. "A  self-portrait?"
  Sybil was embarrassed. It was Peggy's  drawing of Sybil.
  "The figure looks omnipotent," Ramon  remarked.
  Silence.
  "I've always liked that one," Ramon commented as  he walked toward an abstract figure of blue  on a

background of darker blue. This time Sybil  felt more comfortable, for that painting was her own.
  "Notice the shading," she said. "All the  shades of blue that are love."
  "I never thought of love as blue," Ramon  replied.
  "Blue as the sky, the sea. I always have," was  Sybil's answer.
  Ramon studied the painting thoughtfully.  "It does create the impression of  love," he admitted. Then, looking at  drawings and paintings in which figures of children  predominated, he observed, "You seldom draw  grown-ups. Have you declared war on the adult world?"
  Sybil laughed. "Not exactly," she teased.  "But one of my recurrent motifs is a large  house in which many brothers and sisters stand in a row.  I suspect it's because I'm an only child."
  "That's just about the first thing you've told me about  your past," he replied. "After eight weeks I  didn't even know that."
  The remark made Sybil uneasy.  Circumspect and careful to withhold the truth about  herself, she had repressed her entire  autobiography.
  "All I really know about you," Ramon  continued, "is that you are my age and that, like me, you  have never married. For the same reasons, I  suspect. Both of us have been busy with other  things."
  The uneasiness had become acute. Sybil  changed the subject, saying, "I better get the  casserole out of the oven."
  At dinner, Ramon, a Roman Catholic,
  
said grace. Sybil found her thoughts  wandering to Nancy's strong anti-Catholic  feeling and Mary's entrapment in an  anti-Catholic church. Nancy's problem had  been resolved, and Nancy herself had disappeared.  Resolved, too, had been Mary's religious  conflicts. Unless these things had happened,  Sybil mused, Ramon would not be sitting at this  table.
  After grace, Ramon remarked, "I had a  letter from my little niece this morning. Would you like to see  it?"
  "I can't read Spanish," Sybil replied,  but she took the letter readily. "There are more  pictures than

words," she remarked, while examining it with  delight. "Like me when I was six."
  Although she had not met Ramon's niece,  Sybil had grown fond of her and of her two  brothers, of whom Ramon talked constantly.  Sybil had come to think of them as Ramon's children  because she knew that, after the death of their mother,  Ramon's sister, and her husband in an  automobile crash, Ramon had  instituted adoption proceedings.
  From the first, Ramon's strong family feeling  had moved Sybil. As his story had unfolded,  she had been deeply impressed, too, with the  energy he had shown in realizing his  rags-to-riches dream. Ramon, eldest of  nine children, was the only one in the family to get an  education. A scholarship saw him through a  Catholic college in his native Bogot@a.  By working at night and studying during the day he had  earned a degree from the Columbia University  School of Business. An accountant now, he  had secured a number of special assignments  in first-class American hotels.
  As Sybil returned his niece's letter  to Ramon, he remarked, "You love children."
  "As becomes a schoolteacher," Sybil  temporized. "Even though it's been years since  I've taught. I've been so involved with  graduate work, you see." She felt uneasy  at having allowed the threads of the past to become  entwined with the present.
  "You should have married," Ramon said. "You would  make a wonderful mother."
  The room was still. The many avowals of motherhood from
  
Sybil's childhood flooded her  thoughts. She heard herself saying to herself, "When I  grow up, I'm going to have lots of children. They can  play with each other. I'll be good to them. I'm  going to let them do what they want to do. I won't  hit them or tie them up or bury them in a wheat  crib. I won't ..."
  She remembered how she had pretended that she was  a mother, how she had planned for each of her  fifty-odd dolls and for her paper dolls as  well. Then she suddenly realized that in these  games of pretense never once had she considered  actually bearing or deliver-

+ a child. Ramon's ready-made family  coincided with her early fantasy.
  As she served coffee, she thought: I could love  these children, I, who probably can never have children of my  own.
  "I can still see the little girl in you," Ramon  remarked. Yes, Sybil thought, that little girl,  those little girls, were around long past their time.
  The conversation turned to books, music, and  religion. "I used to have a confused set of  ideas about religion," Sybil commented.  "I'm over that now." And she thought: how  good it is that Nancy, with her strong  anti-Catholic feeling, has disappeared.  Nancy would never have accepted Ramon, a  Catholic, or let me accept him. Now the  difference of faiths did not separate Sybil from  Ramon.
  Ramon turned on the radio for the market  news. A newscaster was talking about a  psychiatrist's testimony in a murder case.  "Complejos Americanos," Ramon said  with irritation. "People with real troubles don't need  what you Americans call a shrink. Latins and  Europeans don't indulge in the silly  luxury of psychiatry the way you Americans  do."
  Silence.
  "Are you angry about something, cara? I didn't  offend you?"
  "Oh, no, Ramon." She looked at the  brown hair, the dancing eyes. Complejos  Americanos. American complexes? How little  he understood. He could never understand the emotions that  had complicated her existence.
  Sybil arose from the table to kneel at the
  
fireplace. "These October days can  be chilling," she said as she lit a flame.
  "Let me help you, cara," he replied,  kneeling beside her.
  She thought: I want him to make love to me.  I want to have a baby of my own. If only I  could. I'm scared. For eight weeks my fear  has made him afraid. We've touched and  kissed but that's all. I want more--I've got  to have more.
  Responding to her unspoken entreaty, Ramon

caressed her. Her head moved against his chest. He  embraced her tightly. "When I have an  erection," he told her, "I measure. It's  seven inches. Good?"
  She smiled nervously and recalled that she used  to think that love hurt, that when people loved you they hit  you and put flashlights in you and bottles. Then  she dismissed these thoughts as recollections belonging  to the era before she had come to terms with the past.
  "Cara, I want you," Ramon murmured  passionately.
  "No, Ramon," she replied with a quiver of  still surging desire as she extricated  herself from his embrace.
  He moved back toward her and began gingerly  to unzip her dress.
  She shook her head, pulled up her zipper,  and seated herself on the sofa.
  "I love you, Sybil," he said.
  "I love you, too, Ramon. And that's why  my answer is no."
  "But I don't understand," he protested.  "I know you don't," she replied. "I'm  afraid."
  "Afraid of me, Sybil?" he asked,  confounded. "I love you."
  "I love you, too," she replied. "But I  have reason to be afraid."
  He looked at her in a manner that reflected  both perplexity and tenderness. Anxious to advance  his cause, he was also eager to protect Sybil  against her fears. He quietly said, "Maybe  it's not the right time." He put on his coat and  walked to the door. "Tomorrow night," he said. "The  opera. I'll call for you at six. We'll have  dinner first, some place we haven't been before."  He kissed her fingertips and was gone.
  After the door had closed behind him, Sybil
  
thought: what if he doesn't come  back? What if he does?

  The following Sunday morning Sybil and  Ramon walked in Central Park. The solid  rock they passed reaffirmed for Sybil her own  solidity. The denuded trees reminded her of the  leaves of herself that had fallen away. How many of the  selves had merged was

as hard to say as to count the leaves strewn in the  pathway.
  "Quiet today, mi amor," Ramon  remarked.
  "I was thinking of the fallen leaves," she  replied, "and of the enduring rock."
  "My little one is poetic," he answered.  "I wrote poetry as a child," she replied.
  Ramon next suggested that they take a drive  in a horse and carriage. "After all," he  teased, "I'm a visitor in your country."
  As they were driving, Ramon drew out of his  pocket a small box wrapped in white paper  and tied with a blue bow. "I have something for you," he  said as he opened the package. She  gasped as he uncovered a diamond and  ruby ring, which he placed on her finger. "It will not  be a long engagement," he said. "We will marry  at once. You will go to Bogot@a with me for the children.  Then we will return to the United States with our  family. Are you happy?"
  Torn by conflicting feelings, Sybil was  silent. She wanted these children more, if possible,  than she wanted Ramon himself. If she were their  mother, she would be good to them, would undo all that had  been done to her. All that had seemed beyond grasp  was now on her finger, symbolized by Ramon's  ring. "You say nothing," Ramon said urgently.  "Why do you say nothing?"
  For a time the only sound was that of the horses'  hoofs. "We won't stay in Bogot@a long,"  Ramon explained. "You won't get  homesick."
  Homesick for what? she wondered. She was  ready to go now. She wanted to marry Ramon,  wanted to help care for those children. "I must have your  answer at once. We don't have much time,  cara," Ramon pleaded. "The children can't wait.  They need a mother."
  Conflicting emotions rendered Sybil incapable
  
of replying. To Ramon she seemed  serious, abstracted. She opened her lips as if  to speak, then closed them again.
  "Are you all right?" Ramon asked  anxiously.
  Sybil became tremulous. She didn't  want to seal

her fate. "You must say yes," Ramon was  insisting. "Yes has been in your eyes for many  weeks."
  Finally, in a low, broken voice, Sybil  said, "I love you, Ramon. I want to marry  you and help raise those children. But I cannot."
  Baffled, he protested. "Why? There isn't  anyone else to stand in the way."
  Silence. She could not tell him that although there was  no husband or lover to obstruct his path, there were  people in the way. How he would mock her if she  told him that she was a multiple personality.  He was like the rest of the uncomprehending world. You  could tell people about any other illness, even other  mental illnesses, but this she had kept enshrouded from  all but a very few.
  "Your answer, cara?" Ramon was  asking.
  "Give me time, Ramon," Sybil pleaded.  "Sybil, we do not have time. It must be now.  These children must have a mother. I want that mother to be the  woman I love."
  Time, Sybil agonized. Time has always  betrayed me. She asked only, "But why isn't  there any time?"
  "Don't you see?" he said. "I cannot have these  children unless I have a wife. And I cannot bring them  here to live unless that wife is an American."
  The urgency of Ramon's petition suddenly  became terrifyingly clear. He wanted a mother for  these children, but he wanted an American without  complexes. Who would rear these kids? Not Sybil  alone but Peggy, Marcia, Vanessa, Mary,  Mike, and Sid. Ramon would never understand.
  "It has to be now," Ramon spluttered.  The others were falling into place within her. She  was getting well. But even though she had reached the  threshold, she had not yet crossed it. The gift  of time could rescue this love, but Ramon had  given her an ultimatum: now or never.
  "Marry me. You stay here. I'll go and bring  the children," Ramon now offered.
  
  "Ramon," Sybil replied  desperately, "it's no use. I just can't marry  you."
  "For God's sakes, why?" he cried.

  "I can't," she repeated.
  Turning from him, she looked through the window,  fighting her despair.
  Then she returned the ring to the box and the box  to Ramon.
  "Woman of mystery," Ramon spluttered  angrily. "Tell me the reason for the mystery,  or I'll go away. You'll never see me again."  At once his tone changed from anger to tenderness.  "If it's something serious, something grave, you can  tell me. I love you, Sybil. I will  listen."
  The "don't dare tell" of earlier days  returned to plague her. But although she didn't  dare tell, she was not running away from the truth  about herself as she had in the past. She was indeed a  woman of mystery to Ramon; the years of  analysis, however, had made her no mystery  to herself. Her unconscious stood clear,  translucent, while that of most people was  sealed in noncommunication. Her  unconscious had paraded itself before her as perhaps no  other human being's ever had.
  "I will listen," Ramon insisted.
  Ramon was so eager to reach her yet so incapable  of understanding what it was he would reach. Ramon had not  really penetrated, as she thought he had, the heavy  veil of aloneness that hung between her and the world. The    veil remained.
  The carriage came to a halt. As Ramon  helped Sybil out of the vehicle, she reveled in  his touch.
  Silence reigned during their taxi ride.  Then Sybil and Ramon stood at the entrance  of the old brownstone. "Will you reconsider?" he  asked. His face bore the shadow of gloom.
  "I wish I could," she answered.
  How do I handle this? was her inner plea. In the  past I didn't handle crises; I let the  others act for me. But I'm not the same. Now  I'm capable of facing my own problems. I'm  also able to see the distinction between romance and reality.  Ramon loves me--but with strings attached. I  love him, and I want the children. But he is  turning time into the old betraying enemy.
  
  Ramon's lips and cheeks turned  white. He relapsed into gloom. Then he  seemed to withdraw. "I wish you no ill," he said  vacantly, "and all good. But unless you change  your mind and let me know that you have, we shall not meet  again."
  "Must we part this way, Ramon?" she asked.  "The decision was yours, Sybil," he replied  coldly. "But remember, it is also yours  to undo."
  The avalanche had begun, but the earth did not  yet crash down. The crash came when he chided  bitterly, "You've rejected not only me but those  three children you claimed to love even without knowing them.  But once again I tell you: you can still undo what you  have done." He turned from her, walked a few  steps, and returned. He put the box with the ring in  her hand. "Take it anyway," he said. "It's  your birthstone. And you like pretty things. Take it  in memory of the life you rejected, of your  refusal to live."
  She fled into the house.
  She had rejected Ramon, Sybil thought, as  she herself had so often been rejected. At three  and a half she asked a doctor in a  hospital, "Would you like to have a little  girl?" He had turned from her in the same way  that she had just turned from Ramon. She had turned  her back on three children the way a doctor long  ago had done to one.
  Yet in an instant she also realized that she had  no reason to feel guilty for her actions.  Ramon's efforts to inflict guilt feelings on  her had not succeeded. That realization gave her  strength.
  Have I been using my being a multiple  personality as a mask for the real fears that keep  me from what I most desire? she asked herself.  Am I really so moral, so noble as  to sacrifice myself to protect Ramon and his children  from my malady? But Sybil knew that her very  salvation depended upon her commitment to her dawning  health.
  As if in confirmation of this sudden insight, the first  thing she did in the apartment was to empty the vase of the  now-withered roses Ramon had given her three  days before.

  The next morning Sybil thought of not going  to work, but she made herself go. Conscience again, she
  
thought. But Ramon was not there. His  special assignment had been completed, she  learned, and he was not returning to the hotel.
  No time. Ramon had meant what he had said.  At the end of the week, finding it too painful  to remain alone where Ramon and she had been together,  Sybil gave up her job at the hotel.
  Sybil was certain that Ramon did not harbor  a spirit of vindictiveness toward her. Both  by nature and principle he was superior to the mean  gratification of hard feelings. He probably  would never forgive her for having scorned his love,  but that was another matter.
  The memory was a lingering torture. It kept  up a slow fire of remorse, a tremulous  grief that would not ebb. She tried to propitiate  her regret by an objective recollection of the  practicality of his marriage suit and its  implicit manipulation. Nevertheless, tears  flooded her days. The remarks of the others still within  her added to her distress. Vicky's: "He was a  nice person. All of us liked him. You should have  told him the truth." Peggy's: "He was great.  We all wanted to marry him." The taunting of  Vanessa: "You turned him down because  underneath perhaps you didn't want him."

  Dr. Wilbur, who returned shortly after  Ramon had departed, was impressed with the growth in  her patient. Sybil's letters had informed her,  "This is the first time you've been away that I've  managed to stay myself throughout." The psychiatrist  who saw Sybil during this period verified  Sybil's own account.
  Moreover, both in the office and away from it  during the first few weeks of the resumption of the  analysis, Sybil seemed stronger, more  confident. She had even gained weight, which in her  case was always linked with an upswing in health, both  mental and physical. There was a strong  psychosomatic aspect of Sybil's grande  hyst@erie.
  The relationship with Ramon, however, troubled the  doctor. The references to him in Sybil's letters  had in

no way indicated the seriousness of their  relationship. She felt that if she had been in the  country, the relationship could have been salvaged by her  talking to Ramon.
  
  Sybil, showing her new maturity,  insisted, however, that it would have done no good because  Ramon did not understand emotional problems or  mental illness, and when Dr. Wilbur urged her  to write to Ramon so that the doctor could talk with  him, she replied: "I must first know when I will be  well."
  "You're so much better," the doctor replied.  "You wrote me that you remained yourself in my  absence. Did that continue to be true even after you  parted with Ramon?"
  "It did," Sybil replied confidently.  "The others talked to me sometimes, especially at  the end, but I ran things."
  While Dr. Wilbur was absorbing the  transformation in her patient, Sybil protested,  "But you haven't answered my question. When will I be  well?"
  "Sybil, I don't know. You've shown health  in your relationship with Ramon. But the boys are still  fighting integration."
  Sybil looked steadily at the doctor.  "You've answered my question," Sybil replied.  "If you had told me I'd be well in a  month, two months, three months, I  would have written Ramon and taken my  chances on your making him understand. But time has  betrayed me once again."
  "If he loves you, he'll understand anyway,"  the doctor protested. "We can write him and  try."
  "No," Sybil replied quietly.
"Ramon is a practical man. He won't  wait for a neurotic."
  As Sybil left the doctor's office, she  felt lonesome to the core. In songs, she thought, people  belonged, loved, lived, danced, marched. What  Sybil had loved had been torn away.
  She didn't hope to love again. Yet there was  triumph in defeat. In the old days a crisis  like this would have caused Sybil to dissociate. Now,  however, she had not only remained herself but also  continued to recognize the new feelings of  solidity. The grief she

felt over Ramon, moreover, was real, as  surely as the emotions of the past had seemed  unreal. Although the grief was terrible, the new  reality was good. For the first time, despite her  grief, she felt solid enough to be able to defend
  
her place in the world.

                 One

  "Dead vines, old vines, barbs or  briars," Marcia said under hypnosis in  January, 1965. "I'm afraid of life and the  world--afraid of going out into it. Afraid of being  rejected, turned down, cast aside." It was a  natural fear of reentry.
  "I'm looking forward to being a well person  among well people," Vanessa declared. "Life is for  living, and I've waited too long."
  "I think," Mike admitted during the same  session, "Sybil's worth more than she thinks she  is or Sid and I ever thought she was. People care  about her--Flora, Flora's mother, and, of  course, the lady doctor and Ramon."
  "Maybe," Sid added, "Sybil can do the  things Mike and I want to do but haven't been  allowed to do. Maybe it's all right for a woman  to build a partition. Maybe she can be the kind of  woman she wants to be and do well in a career.  With Mike's skill and my skill, with  our enthusiasm, I'm sure she can.
What she wants to do is all right with Mike and  me. We like the new Sybil."

  The new Sybil? Who am I? she asked  herself. Who is she? Dr. Wilbur likewise  asked. For although Sybil

was not yet a whole person, she was no longer a  mere waking self.
  The only person to appear for the Dorsett  appointment these days was this new Sybil. When  Dr. Wilbur wanted to communicate with the other  selves, she could do so only through hypnosis.
  Shortly after Mary had come out of the igloo,  Mary and Sybil Ann had been consolidated.  Vanessa, always closer to Sybil than most of the  other selves, had moved further in the same  direction. Vanessa's passionate denunciation of  hypocrisy had now in fact sharpened Sybil's  awareness of it, both in the past and the present, thus  providing the waking self with new insights.  Marcia, who previously had voiced a  patient's typical fear of getting well, had  gotten well by joining Sybil. The joining had
  
taken place after Marcia, too, had  accepted the death wish for mother.
  Peggy did not appear even when summoned.  Peggy Lou and Peggy Ann had already been  consolidated as Peggy; now the consolidation had  gone even further. These keepers of the  unintegrated past with its angry and fearful  memories had returned to Sybil. After doing the  portrait that Ramon had admired--the very last  work to come from her--Peggy had ceased to exist as a  separate entity. But her assertiveness was very much  in the forefront of the new Sybil.
  The newly emerging Sybil, however, was very  different from what Dr. Wilbur had originally  expected. Since Vicky had all the  memories and possessed more of the original  Sybil than waking Sybil, the doctor had  thought it might be a good idea to do away with all the  selves, including waking Sybil, and allow  Vicky to be the one self. Yet the doctor had  discovered that Vicky, like all the selves, existed  for the express purpose of masking the feelings that  the waking or central self could not bear to face.
  The answer, therefore, had been to preserve the  waking self as such while returning to it  all the memories, emotions, knowledge, and  modes of behavior of the other selves, thereby  restoring the native capacities of the original  child. It also meant returning to the waking self the  experiences of the one-third of Sybil's

life that the other selves alone had lived. This was  pioneer work for Dr. Wilbur.
  The doctor knew that all the selves had come  close to Sybil. As Sybil changed, the other  selves changed as well. There had previously  been two levels of denial of Sybil's mother.  Sybil had accepted Hattie Dorsett as her  mother but had denied the hatred. The other selves had  denied that the woman whom they hated was their mother.  After Sybil, in that moment of purging in the car,  had accepted the hatred, the other selves had come  to accept Hattie and now acknowledged her as "our  mother." Even Vicky, whose parents had never come from  France to reclaim her, finally had come to admit,  "Sybil's mother is also mine."
  Sybil had begun to assume the behavior of the  others. For example, what had been the  exclusive preserve of Peggy Lou had become  Sybil's capacity to draw black and white.
  
In fact, an overlapping of painting  styles had developed among all the selves.  On the other hand, although Peggy had returned  to Sybil the multiplication that had been learned in  Miss Henderson's fifth-grade class,
Sybil was still not proficient in its use.  In May and June, 1965, the use of  hypnosis had tapered off even more, now almost  solely confined to communicating with the selves, who  could not otherwise be reached. The days of Sybil's  dissociation and the spontaneous appearance of the  secondary selves seemed over.
  Sybil was in her apartment, writing resumes  for a teachers' agency with which she had registered in  hope of getting a job outside New York.  She now felt able to manage without Dr.  Wilbur and was eager to prove her independence.  As Sybil was typing, her fingers suddenly went  numb. Frightened, she called Dr. Wilbur, but  without success. She called Flora. By the time  Flora came on the line, Sybil felt numb  all over. "I'm sick," she cried into the  telephone. "If anything happens to me, sell  the stamp album--see that Dr. Wilbur is  reimbursed for the analysis." Sybil  tried to say more, but the receiver dropped out  of her hand. Her arms and legs moved  involuntarily. Pitching forward, she

hit the wall, crashed across the room, and even  hit the ceiling. Then she fell into an inert heap  on the floor.
  It was there that Flora found her, black and  blue, a terrifying sight. Finally able to speak,  Sybil said triumphantly, "I watched all    of it. I was aware of what was happening every minute  of the time."
  Rising to her feet, Sybil seemed taller  than her normal self. A voice younger than  Sybil's, light, lilting, and cheerful,  exclaimed, "I'm the girl Sybil would like  to be. My hair is blonde and my heart is  light."
  Then she was gone, and Sybil was there. "I must  have blacked out," Sybil said. "Still? How can it  be?"
  Flora knew at once that the blonde self  who had instantaneously emerged was not any one of the  fifteen selves she had previously met. A  new self at this stage of the analysis, when
  
Sybil was nearly integrated? The  immediate matter at hand, of course, was to get  Sybil into bed, to apply cold compresses to the  injuries, and to reach Dr. Wilbur. And then?
  "It was a major gastrointestinal upset,"  Dr. Wilbur told Flora later that evening,  "accompanied by a waking seizure and spasticity.  All through it Sybil was aware of what was  happening."
  Then Flora told Dr. Wilbur about the  blonde. "The dissociation was brief, perhaps no more  than a minute," Flora said.
  "Last February," Dr. Wilbur replied  thoughtfully, "I met this blonde in the office,  although I didn't realize it at the time. Sybil  had been talking; then she looked blank for a  minute, as she did in the old days. Then I  heard the voice you described. It was only a  minute, a mere flash."
  The next day in the office Dr. Wilbur  hypnotized Sybil. Mary Ann was the first  to emerge. "We had a fit," she explained.  "There's lots to have fits about. The people in the old  church in Willow Corners--the barren, ugly  church. We hate those people."
  Vicky said, "In our room last  night there was someone else."
  "Blonde hair--that one, I saw her,"  Marcia added. "I don't know her name."

  "Who does?" Vanessa asked.
  "I suppose Vicky does," Marcia  replied, "because I think Vicky knows her. Who  is she?"
  "A new girl but not new," Vicky  replied.
  Suddenly the newcomer spoke--stiltedly,  strangely, with the cadences of a rehearsed speech.  "I'm not really new," she said. "I've been  around for nineteen years. I'm the girl Sybil  would like to be. Born in tranquility, I've  lived unseen. An adolescent while the others  still remained essentially children, I've carried no  childhood traumas. I never knew either  Hattie or Willard Dorsett, never lived  in Willow Corners, never attended the Willow  Corners church. I came in Omaha. I  enjoyed college, and I love New York.
I would have joined sororities, would have had many  dates, would have been a cheerleader at sports
  
events, a campus leader in everything.
I love life and living. The only thing that has  stood in my way is that I wasn't free to be  myself, to walk in the sun and face the world. But now  that the others are about to face it, I shall go with them.  Now that the others have shed their traumas, I will  hold hands with the rest. My vitality will lend  strength; my zest for living, buoyancy; my  unscathed past, assurance. I, who have never been  ill, will walk with Sybil in the unprotected world  of well people."
  "Welcome," said Vicky.
  "You and I belong together, Victoria," the  blonde, who still had given no name, replied.  "Unlike the others, we were not cradled in  traumas but in Sybil's wish. You and I are  blonde--the only two of all sixteen of us who  are. I understand there were a lot of blondes in  Sybil's mother's family and that her mother  glorified that hair color. We are blonde  because Sybil wished to be blonde."
  The blonde was a dream girl--the girl who  had stood with Sybil at the mirror, throbbing with  adolescent expectations, as they had waited for  Ramon. And if her speech sounded  unnatural, it was the affectation of a  teen-ager, spouting her newly found knowledge and  confidence.
  "I've come to set Sybil free," the  blonde announced.

"As she enters the world, she will throw away what were  once Marcia's dead vines and walk with me  among newly budding trees, not in the winter of  life but in the springtime."
  Silence. Dr. Wilbur tried to get the  blonde to say more, but Vicky replied instead.  "The blonde is Sybil's adolescence,"  Vicky said.
  "Isn't this late?" Dr. Wilbur asked.  "She needs to be with Sybil now," Vicky  replied.
  "Is there anybody else?" the doctor  asked, as if she were reliving the first days of the  analysis.
  "Why should there be?" Vicky seemed to shrug  vocally. "We didn't expect the blonde,  true. But as she told you, she has been around for  nineteen years, although inactive. How could she have  been active when Sybil, carrying the weight of
  
childhood, bypassed adolescence in  anything but a strictly physical,  developmental sense?" Vicky paused. Then  she added, "It was hard for Sybil to have a normal  adolescence. She left so much of herself behind,  fixed in childhood. Now that Sybil has  scotched these childhood traumas, you should  expect to find the lost adolescence returning in  search of the gratification of maturity."
  As Vicky's words trailed off, the lilting  yet stilted voice of the blonde was heard again.  "I held back," she said, "until Sybil  fell in love. When I realized that Ramon  wouldn't work out, I rose to protect the  adolescent Sybil from heartbreak. She was an  adolescent, you know, when she was with Ramon."
  "If Sybil still wants to feel like an  adolescent in love, there's no reason why she  shouldn't," the doctor said. "People of all ages do  this. She can function as an eighteen-year-old  blonde at forty-two. Sybil can integrate  you."
  "She has," the blonde replied. "I'm no  threat to the final healing. In fact, I will make  the wheels of that healing turn faster."
  "Have you been listening, Sybil?"
Dr. Wilbur asked.
  "I have," Sybil replied. "And I know that this  part of me who gave no name is telling the  truth."
  The wish, personified by the dream girl, had  brought

new youth to the unlived life, to the womanhood  aborted by depletion and discontinuity.
  Baffling, terrifying, life-renewing, the  episode of the blonde's appearance proved to be  the climax of Sybil's illness. After the event  there were many days during which she just sat and absorbed  the emotions, attitudes, knowledge, and experiences that  since early June of that year the other selves  had voluntarily shared with her. And while she  took a new look at her emerging self, within  her a tremendous reorganization of personality  was taking place. The past blended with the present;  the personalities of each of the selves with that of the  others. The past returned, and with it the original child  called Sybil, who had not existed as an entity  since she was three and a half years old. Not  everything came to a conscious level all at
  
once, but the significant things that  did were normal memory and a new sense of time.  After thirty-nine years the clock was no longer  incomprehensible.
  A week after the July 7 crisis Sybil  was talking animatedly to Dr. Wilbur about her  plans to become an occupational therapist. They  would involve leaving New York.
  "The old fears seem to be gone," Dr.  Wilbur remarked. "You sound well."
  "Oh, I am, Doctor," Sybil  replied, smiling. "I've thrown my last fit.  But I was fully conscious of everything that was  happening during it. It was not the same way out I  took in the past." She added: "And the blonde?  Well, I feel she is with me. I know that I  will never dissociate again."
  "You've never said that before," the doctor  replied, "even during all this time when none of the  others appeared."
  "I didn't say it," Sybil averred, "because  never before did I feel that it was so."
  "We can tell," the doctor explained, "if  all the memories of the others are now yours.  Let's test it."
  Through the several hypnotic sessions  that followed Dr. Wilbur matched Sybil's  memories alongside those of the selves who still had  individual identities.

  Not one of these selves had a single memory  that Sybil did not also have.
  Sybil's attitude toward these selves,  moreover, had completely changed, from initial  denial to hostility to acceptance--even to love.  Having learned to love these parts of herself, she had  in effect replaced self-derogation with  self-love. This replacement was an important  measure of her integration and restoration.
  Three weeks after the July 7 crisis  Dr. Wilbur hypnotized Sybil and called  for Vicky Antoinette. "How are things going,  Vicky?" the doctor asked. "What progress  is there underneath?"
  "I'm part of Sybil now, you know," Vicky  replied. "She always wanted to be like me. Now  we are one. I used to say, "This or that event  was before my time." Now I say, "It's after my  time." You see, I'm no longer completely  free."
  
  That was the last time that Dr.  Cornelia B. Wilbur talked to Victoria  Antoinette Scharleau.
  On September 2, 1965, Dr.
Wilbur recorded in her daily analysis  notes on the Dorsett case: "All  personalities one."
  On September 30 it was moving day at the  old brownstone. Sybil's furniture and  paintings went to Pennsylvania, where she had  obtained a job as an occupational therapist; she  herself moved to Flora's apartment to spend the last  two weeks in New York.
  The Sybil who entered Flora's apartment was  new not only to Flora but even to herself. She was not  what had been waking Sybil. Neither was she any  one of the fifteen other selves. She was all of  them. Like Miranda in The Tempest, she  seemed to be standing on the threshold of discovery,  almost literally crying out, "O, wonder: ar How  many goodly creatures are there here: ar How  beauteous mankind is: O brave new world, ar  That has such people in't!"
  The world seemed new because she was new, real because,  for the first time in her adult life, she was  a whole and real self. As she took  off her coat, settled her bags, and sank into a  chair, she was silent. Then she said, "I've  been here before--yet I haven't."
  "Who is the I?" Flora asked.

  "The one who can feel," Sybil replied.  "I have new feelings now, real feelings. It's  not the way it used to be."
  The "It's not the way it used to be" was the clue  to the understanding that even though Sybil now had the  feelings that for thirty-nine years the others had  masked, her frame of reference was still that of the waking  self.
  Flora had prepared a snack, and as they  ate, they talked for a while about impersonal  things. Then apropos of nothing that had previously  been said, Sybil remarked, "Memories make  a person mature emotionally." Although stated as a  generalization, it was obvious to Flora that Sybil  was referring to herself and was saying in effect: now that the  others have returned their memories to me, I have  been able to mature emotionally; now that I'm  whole, I'm mature.
  Paradoxically, however, while this new Sybil
  
seemed more mature, she also seemed  younger than her forty-two years. The impression  became even stronger when she remarked, "I'm  discovering things that everybody else my age has  known for a long time."
  The next morning at breakfast Sybil said,  "I hoped for a time when I would know what I was  doing all the time I was doing it." Then she added  with a compelling intensity, "Now I can account for every  minute. When I wake up, I know what I  did yesterday and can plan what I'm going to do  today." She looked at Flora and Flora's mother  and asked with fervor, "Do you know what it means to have  a whole day ahead of you, a day you can call your  own?"
  At last, after thirty-nine years of having it  otherwise, a day for her was all its hours. Before,  time had to be done away with by relegating it to other  selves. Now time presented the opportunity for  self-realization.
  Each morning as she planned the day ahead, her    eyes sparkled and she betrayed an excitement that  for anyone else would have been wholly out of  proportion to the nature of the activity. The  excitement continued with heightened awareness  as the day unfolded and she did ordinary  things--reading a book, watching television,  talking.

  "I see a name of some public figure in the  newspaper," she remarked to Flora one evening.  "Hear it again on television. Then someone talks  about it. I always recognize it!" There was a  reminiscent torment in her eyes as she added,  "There were many times I couldn't do that--in the past."  She lingered on the phrase in the past with the  fascination one feels for a bygone horror. Then  elucidating the isolation, the alienation of what it  had been like to be a multiple personality, she  explained, "I'd see the name in the newspaper,  but by the time we ran into it again on television, it was  often not I who saw it but one of the others. When it  came up in conversation, still somebody else might have  been there. The parts didn't go together."
  Again she was using I as the frame of reference  of the er/while waking self. Triumphantly she  added, "Now the parts come together. The world seems  whole."
  Her expression became suddenly wi/l as,  looking fixedly at Flora, she remarked with
  
earne/s, "I know it doesn't seem  like anything to other people to be able to see a whole  television program without interference from within, but  to me it's revelation!"
  Other insights continued to find expression.  "It's quiet, very quiet around here," she said on  another evening. "Come to think of it, I'm quiet,  too, inside. There isn't any arguing with myself."
  In yet another evening, when she returned with  Flora and Flora's mother from a dinner engagement,  Sybil summarized it with the supreme accolade  by saying, "I was there all the time. I myself,  Sybil. I see the food, recall every word of the  conversation. All of it."
  Simple things became momentous. One morning,  for instance, when Sybil did the marketing, she  discovered upon returning to the apartment that she had  forgotten the orange juice. "It's wonderful,"  she observed humorously, "to be able to forget the  way other people do!" More than humor, this statement was  an avowal of inclusion--of being one with the human  race.
  One morning Sybil wanted to go to a store  to buy  some material for a dress. Flora  went with her. The store was crowded. Many women were  standing at the dry goods counter. The saleswoman  started to wait on a customer who had come in after  Sybil. "I'm sorry, but I was here first,"  Sybil protested. Flora held her breath.
In the past such assertive action would have been  impossible for Sybil, would have had to come from one of the  other selves, usually Peggy Lou. The only  self who was present, however, was a newly  confident Sybil.
  Further indication of the success of the analysis  followed. The saleswoman handed Sybil the  receipt. Sybil scrutinized it, multiplying  the number of yards by the cost per yard to see whether  the total was correct. In the past Sybil would  have appealed to her companion to check the accuracy  of the receipt for her. But endowed with the knowledge Peggy  Lou had hoarded since Miss Henderson's  fifth-grade class and aided by a  post-analytic phase of treatment during which  Dr. Wilbur had taught the new Sybil how  to use the knowledge the selves had returned to her,  Sybil handled the transaction herself.
  In the dress department Sybil decided on a
  
brown dress with red and gold paisley  print cuffs and belt. Leaving the store, she  commented to Flora, "I got the brown dress for  Sybil, but the paisley print for the Peggy part of  me."
  Outside the store Flora started to flag a  taxi. Sybil stopped her, saying, "Let's  take the bus." Recalling Sybil's intense  terror of buses, Flora was very much aware of the  significance of the remark. "Anybody can get  on a bus and go places. It's so simple,"  Sybil remarked reassuringly. And on the bus  Sybil gave voice to the thoughts that Flora had  had while in the store. "I used to let other people do  my arithmetic," Sybil said, "or I didn't  do it at all. But now I can figure things out for  myself. I can order the things I want, make  change in a taxi, measure material for a  dress or drapes, measure mats for framing  pictures--do all the things I couldn't do before."  Again there was a curious emphasis on the word  before, accompanied also by a radiance at having  expressed her new freedom.

  There were still moments, of course, when  Sybil demonstrated flashes of what used to be  the other selves. The new Sybil would pace the  living room, saying, "I'm going away. I'm  going to build a new life. Everything's so  exciting. There's so much to do, so many places  to go." To Flora it rang of the time that Peggy Lou  had planned to break with the others forever.
  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 con-

vention. 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  wi/l 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.

  Item: The four selves of a  twenty-four-year-old, each of whom was  independently given a psychological word  association test, had totally different
  
responses for individual words and for sets of  words. From self to self there was indeed  no leakage, no cross-fertilization of a single  word association. Unmistakably, selves I,  II, III, and IV were as independent in their  responses as if they were four separate  individuals.

  Item: A battery of psychological and  neurological tests was administered to the four  selves of another patient (jonah), a  twenty-seven-year-old. The selves reacted with  complete independence of one another. Even their  EEG'S (electroencephalograms) were  unalike.

  A study, which won an award from the Society  for Experimental and Clinical Hypnosis,  tabulates the results. Entitled "The  Objective Study of a Multiple  Personality," the article, which was published in the  Archives of General Psychiatry,  April, 1972, by Arnold M. Ludwig,  MD, Jeffrey M. Brandsma, MD,  Cornelia B. Wilbur, MD, Fernando  Bentfeld, MD, and Douglas H.  Jameson, MD, tabulated the
EEG of Jonah and his secondary selves--  Sammy, King Young, and Usoffa--thus:

  Summary of Objective EEG Data  (15-Minute Sample of Each Recording)

  Note: The columns of this table follow each  other in this order: Data: Jonah; Trance;  Sammy; King Young; Usoffa; Jonah.

Alpha frequency mode: *1 10.5;  9.5; 9.5; 9.5; 10.5; 10.0.
Alpha range: 9.5-10.5; 9.0-10.0;  9.0-10.0; 8.5-10.0; 9.0-11.0;
  9.0-10.5.
Alpha amplitude mode: *2 20.0;  20.0; 20.0; 30.0; 15.0; 20.0.  Theta frequency mode: *1 5.0; 4.0;
  4.0; 4.0; 4.0; 5.0.
Theta amplitude mode: *2 20.0;  20.0; 25.0; 15.0; 25.0; 15.0.
% time alpha: *3 53.0; 20.0;
  20.0; 52.0; 41.0; 60.0.
  
% time theta: *3 31.0; 76.0; 75.0;
  18.0; 45.0; 8.0.
% time low voltage: *3 15.0; 3.0;  5.0; 30.0; 10.0; 19.0.
% time asleep: *3 1.0; 1.0; 5.0;  1.0; 2.0; 0.0.
Movement and muscle activity (secstmin):  9.0; 0.2; 4.0; 33.0; 13.0;
  16.0.
Eye movementsstmin: 5.0; 4.0; 2.0;  14.0; 5.5; 5.7.
      *1 Frequencies are given in  cycles per second.
      *2 Amplitudes are given in  microvolts.
      *3 Percent time is the average number  of seconds dominated by the indicated
    feature per 100 seconds of trace.

  Even though Jonah's four selves could be  substantiated through objective tests and  clinical observation, thirteen army  psychiatrists failed to spot the nature of his  illness. That Dr. Wilbur, fresh from an    eleven-year exploration of Sybil Dorsett,  did make the diagnoses, not only of  Jonah but also of five other cases in  seven years, seems to indicate--just by the

law of averages--that this illness occurs more  frequently than is recognized  by physicians. Not impossibly many persons  who suffer from amnesia are in reality multiple  personalities. At any rate, since the  prognosis is very good when the multiple  personality is recognized and properly  treated, it is essential to develop further knowledge  of this little explored, too often ignored field of  medical knowledge.
  Its importance is implicit in a statement  of Freud, which appears in The Interpretation of  Dreams:

  The whole multiplicity of the problems of  consciousness can only be grasped by an analysis  of the thought-processes in hysteria. ...  Examples of every possible variety of how a thought  can be withheld from consciousness or force its way  inffconsciousness under certain limitations are to be  found included within the framework of
  
psychoneurotic phenomena.
                                 
  If you translate "thoughts" into "secondary  selves," you have the analog of the seven multiple  personalities, including Sybil Dorsett,  whom Dr. Wilbur has treated.

  During the Columbus Day weekend, 1972,  Sybil, Dr. Wilbur, and I got together  to celebrate the book's approaching completion.  Sybil was marvelous--so well that it was hard  to remember that she had once been otherwise. She  is climbing the professional ladder with alacrity.  Her colleagues respect her, and her students  love her. She has many new friends, has her own  home, drives her own car, and makes regular  payments to Dr. Wilbur for the now-distant  analysis. The several art exhibits of  Sybil's work reflect the wholeness of an  integrated artist in contrast to the medley of  disparate styles of the past. In short, Sybil  is leading the good life--a whole life.
  During our weekend together I mentioned to Sybil  that one of the typists of this book had become so  involved with the story that she dreamed she was Sybil.  Next morning at breakfast Sybil's  lips curved in an impish smile as  she announced, "I dreamed I was Sybil."

  The Sybil about whom the typist dreamed seemed  like someone other than the woman before me. The dream  --or rather the nightmare--had receded so far into the  past that at the breakfast table that October morning  there was no question but that there were only three of us.  Sybil was well, and as her friend I rejoiced in her  story's happy ending.
  
  Psychological Index

abandonment, 58  abreaction, 355, 356  abuses, 195-196, 219-220, 221-222,
  275-296, 308, 379, 404, 422;  battering, 251; father's evasion of, 252,
  269, 271, 274, 275-276;  physical, 222, 224; psychological,  acting out, 118, 331. See also
  symptoms, psychological age progression  by hypnosis, 385, 388, 389, 390,
  391, 411  alienation, 295, 350  aloneness, 150, 152, 153-154, 155,
  160, 360  alternating personalities. See alternating
  selves  alternating selves, 116-119, 319, 339,
  387; acquisitions by, 339, 340-341;  active and passive, 347; activities
  of, 322-323, 380; ages of, 380,  384; alternations of, 380; ambitions of,
  315, 380; as obstruction to action,  378, 380; as surregates,
  380; assertiveness of, 339; attitudes  of, 315; autonomy of, 339, 446;
  behavior of, 379-380; body images of,  315, 380; capacity to negotiate of,
  340; captors of the waking self, 376,  381; confidence of, 339; coexistence of,
  377, 379; collaboration of, 379-380;  cooperation of, 379; defenses of, 380;
  degree of strength of, 347; desires of,  315; different characteristics of, 315; emotions
  of, 315; 340, 380; family trees of,  340; female-male, 315; fixations in the
  past of, 391; functioning as defense, 340,  347; functions of, 342, 376,
  402-403; handwriting of, 380; hostility  of, 340; independence of, 356; independent
  futures of, 364; individual tastes of,  377-379; intelligence of, 380; interference
  of, 282, 352; jealousy among, 379; knowledge  of the waking self, 324, 325; libido of,
  340; life style of, 367; linkage to the  waking self, 336; male, 394; memory
  trace of, 340; modes of behavior,
  
  315, 340; "mother" of the woman, 391;
  painting styles of, 69, 95;  passivity of, 380; Peggy Lou, 65,
  71-72; poise of, 339; prisoners of the  waking self, 376, 381; quiescence of,
  339; rage of, 339, 342; sexual  attitudes of, 379; speech patterns of,
  315, 380; spontaneous appearances of,  377-378; Sybil's unawareness of, 405;
  talents of, 315; tastes

  of, 379-380; thought processes of, 315;  twosomes, 334-335; Vicky, 90;
  vocabularies of, 379; withholding from the waking  self, 325; younger than the waking self,
  315, 321. See also alternations of    personality; multiple personalities  alternations of painting styles, 69, 95,  alternations of personality, 23, 47,
  65ff, 69-70, 71ff (peggy Lou)  87, 89 (peggy Lou), 90-91
  (vicky), 97, 107, 109, 113,  117-119, 141ff, 155-156
  (vicky), 162, 164, 197, 207,  208, 212, 248 (peggy Lou),
  249 (marcia), 253, 277,
  280, 283, 327, 331, 337-339,  344, 345, 351, 375-376, 377,
  382; first recognition of, 359. See  also alternating selves  alternations of speech and language, 89,
  99-100, 122  amnesia, 70, 80, 81, 243, 246,
  327, 339, 356, 446, 448    Anderson family: physical symptoms of,
  245; psychosomatic illnesses of, 245;  schizophrenia of, 245. See also
  family history
Anderson, Winston (hattie's father), 212,  224, 241, 242, 244-245;
  alcoholism of, 243. See also  grandparents, role of  anger, 55, 75, 401; Peggy Lou as
  defense against, 72  anxiety, 63, 119, 276  aspects of same person, 169  assertiveness, 436; of Peggy Lou, 38  Azam, M., 109
  
battered child, 158ff, 207  Beauchamp, Christine, 91, 108,
  109-110, 313, 383  becoming, 358, 334, 388  blindness, fear of, 212  Blonde, The, 433, 434-435, 440; first
  appearance of, 432. See also alternating  selves; alternations of personality.  Bourne, Ansel, 108, 109

catatonia, 199, 375, 386  causation, 446; contrast with Eve, 381;
  Dorsett lineage, 260ff; entrapment  by religion, associated root of,
  292ff, 298, 340; father's failure,  associated root of, 256, 268, 271,
  273, 275, 341; mother, taproot of  traumas, 199, 207, 246, 268,
  274, 341, 401-403; multiple roots  of, 109; original events of, 314,
  337-339; pathological attachment of  Hattie to her father, 244; psychopathology
  of Hattie, 241ff; roots of the illness,  207, 246, 273, 313, 340, 363;
  shock, 110; trauma, 110, 119  Charcot, 116
Chase, Robert H., The  Ungeared Mind, 109  child molestation, 204, 205-206  childhood fantasy: having many children, 420-421  chorea, 166, 243  church, 81, 295, 298; Omaha, 299,
  302, 303-04
Cleckley, Dr. Henry, "A Case of  Multiple Personality," 108  Clara (dorsett), 301, 304,
  304-308, 311, 312, 313, 315,  341, 361, 389. See also alternating
  selves; alternations of personality.

co-analysand, 112, 313, 335  conflicts, 386, 391, 394, 411,
  423-424; religious, 396-397  core conflicts, 320  core distortions, 361

death wish, 373; for mother, 402; Marcia's for  mother, 249  defecation, 204  dejection, 427
  
defenses, 119, 207; alternating selves
  as, 296-297, 313, 336,  340, 358; of Willard Dorsett against
  psychoanalysis, 48-50  denials: of normal childhood, 347; of
  normal womanhood, 347  dependency, 361  depleted personality, 336, 340  depletion, 111, 441; departure of, 416;
  lessening of, 362; moving from 403;  resolution of, 393  depression, 251, 276, 297, 312,
  373, 378, 381, 383, 390, 400,  409, 410  despair, 343  diagnosis, 44, 90  dissociation, 70, 90, 119, 199, 207,
  313, 322, 335, 337, 338, 339,  340, 344, 356, 358, 362, 363,
  417, 432
Dorsett, Aubrey, See Grandpa  Dorsett
Dorsett family, 37-38, 41, 43,  44, 45-46, 54. See also family
  history
Dorsett, Henrietta (hattie)  Anderson, 37, 38, 41,
  45-46, 48-49, 51, 54, 55, 69,  93, 131ff, 138, 139, 152,
  154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159,  160, 161, 163, 166, 167, 168,
  179, 182, 183, 184, 185, 186,  187, 188, 190, 195, 196, 197,
  198, 199-206, 208, 209, 210,  211, 212, 213, 214, 215, 216,
  218, 219, 222, 241, 245, 248,  249, 258, 259, 268, 269, 270,
  271, 273, 302, 304, 361-362,  363, 379, 386, 401, 403, 431,
  433; attitude toward motherhood,  131-134; "bad spells," 168-169;
  chorea, 243; depression, 193, 268;  enfant terrible, 244; nemesis, 243;
  "nervous" symptoms, 243; postpartum  depression, 133-134, 312. See also
  mother
Dorsett, Mary. See Grandma Dorsett  Dorsett, Sybil Isabel, 23ff.
  See also waking self, the  Dorsett, Willard, 37, 44, 48, 50,
  
  54, 56, 77, 78, 127ff, 158,
  160, 166, 182, 184,
  187, 188, 189, 204, 208, 213,  219ff, 250, 254ff, 255ff,
  267, 403-305, 433; aloof,  non-seeing, 271; neuritis, 192,
  269; passivity of, 258. See also father  drama of cruelty, 207  dreams, 42, 55, 262, 275, 334,
  345ff, 405ff, 407, 449;  incestuous, 405ff; interpretation of, 449  drugs, 48, 49  dual personality, 70, 89, 109, 245

electroencephalogram, 448  entrapment, 68, 76, 85, 89, 111,
  216, 221, 273, 297, 321, 322,  342, 343, 363; father as contributor
  to, 274; religious, igloo, 409  environment: early, 127-130; hypocrisy
  in, 158, 313; prejudice in, 129,  159; religious, 129  environmental influences, 447

ethical code, 319  euphoria, 416
Eve, 109
Eve: White, 381; Black, 381

family history: Dorsetts, 131ff;  Andersons, 131ff  family therapy, 171  father, 38, 41, 46, 48, 49, 51, 52,
  53, 56, 76, 77, 78, 121, 129,  137, 138, 141, 145, 146, 147,
  152, 154, 158, 162, 166, 169,  174, 176, 189, 190, 192, 193,
  194, 196, 197, 198, 213, 214,  219, 221, 261, 262, 263, 273,
  274, 282, 297, 348, 359, 386,  403, 405-406; aloofness of, 253;
  betrayal by, 278; cancer, 407ff;  castrated, 185; death of, 407; denial
  by, 276; doubt of, 277; evasions of,  276; passivity of, 274; projection of,
  276; puritanism of, 290; rejection  by, 278. See also Dorsett,
  Willard  fear of getting well, 411  Felida X, 108, 109
  
femininity, 290
Fisher, Doris, 108, 109,
  
Flournoy, M., 109  force, psychoanalytical, 50  Freud, Sigmund, 116, 292, 449  frustration, 310  fugue, state of, 70, 71, 87, 98,  fundamentalist faith, 45, 81, 138,
  146, 152, 173, 257ff, 277,  279, 292-294, 311, 396; biblical
  prophecy, 309; end of world, 276, 292;  entrapment, 409-410; evangelism,
  299-300; genesis of hysteria, 313,  341; inner rebellion to, 293;
  orthodoxy of, 293; prohibitions of,  255, 296, 351; religious conflict,
  291, 398; religious distortions, 291;  rigidity of faith, 292

glass, broken, 24, 66, 70, 76, 84,  87, 201, 247, 248, 325, 327,
  330-331, 332, 349, 361  grande hyst@erie, 116, 145, 427  Grandma Dorsett, 133, 273,
  278, 308, 360, 362,  410-411. See also grandparents, role of  Grandpa Dorsett, 282, 288, 292,
  299; religious influence of, 147, 257,  313, 341. See also grandparents, role
  of  grandparents, role of: Anderson, Aileen
  (hattie's mother), 245; Anderson, Winston  (hattie's father), 212, 244; Grandma
  Dorsett (mary Dorsett), 88, 133,  135f, 137ff, 159, 173-175,
  176, 183, 188, 214, 221, 258;  Grandpa Dorsett (aubrey Dorsett),
  136, 138, 163, 221, 257ff;  religious influence, 138ff, 341  group therapy, 171  guilt, 56, 347, 426

hallucination, 392
Hattie. See Dorsett, Henrietta  (hattie) Anderson
Helen (helen Dorsett), 301, 302,  315, 341, 381, 389. See also
  alternating selves; alternations of
  
  personality
Hodgson, Dr. Richard, 109  homosexuality, 206  humor, 178
Hyde, Mr., 115
Hyslop, Professor, 109

hypnosis, 50, 384, 391, 400, 401,  402, 431, 446; age progression by,
  385ff  hypocrisy, 129, 158, 181, 185,
  186, 279, 295, 378; excessive  propriety, as part of, 185  hysteria, 84, 87, 106, 309, 384,
  446, 449; conversion symptoms, 165ff;  genesis of, in environment, 314, 341.
  See also psychological symptoms

identifications, multiple, 287  identification with: aggressor (mike),
  288-289; father, 262; father, as Sid,  284, 288; grandfather Dorsett, as Mike,
  284, 288; Jews, 275; males, 287  igloo, 409-410, 414  immaturity, 37, 43, 320, 395  incest, 188, 262, 405-406  incomprehensible thing, the. See
  terrible thing, the  injuries, physical. See abuses  insanity, 47  integration 314, 316, 328, 333, 342,
  344, 348, 360, 361-362, 384,  388, 391, 400, 403, 409, 432,
  435-436, 440, 446; existential fear  of, 411; mood improvement, 414; of
  Peggy Lou, 397-398; of Ruthie,  392-393; resistance to, by male
  personalities, 411-413; return of  assertiveness, 414; spontaneous, 400  intercourse between parents, 183-189  internal injuries, 210, 275  Interpretation of Dreams (freud), 449  IQ, 38, 278

James, Professor William, 109  Jekyll, Dr., 115

laughter, 195, 197, 198, 201, 209,  213, 224, 242, 248, 269, 286  lesbian feelings, 351, 381; of Sybil
  
  Ann, 381  lesbianism, encounter with, 205  listening, blockage to, 307  lobotomy, 48  lost time. See terrible thing, the

male cells, 288  male figures: Danny, 150ff, 164,
  165, 278, 279, 336; Henry,  349ff; love for, 418; Ramon, 415,
  416ff, 433-434, 441; Stan,  62ff, 417  male personalities, 283; environmental
  influences upon, 290; genesis of, 290  maleness, in every woman, 412  Mamie, 108, 109  manic depressive psychosis, 261  Marcia (marcia Lynn Dorsett, sometimes
  Baldwin), 122-123, 177, 178,  179-180, 181, 186, 289, 296,
  298, 312, 335, 338, 340, 345,  361, 362, 365, 371, 372, 373,
  376, 378, 379-380, 387, 389,  390-391, 403, 405, 410, 411,
  424, 430, 433, 434, 445;  depression of, 381. See also
  alternating selves; alternations of  personality
Marjorie (marjorie Dorsett), 301,  302, 315, 335, 341, 361, 378,
  389. See also alternating selves;  alternations of personality  Mary (mary Lucinda Saunders Dorsett),
  123, 162-164, 165, 166, 168,  170, 171, 172, 173,

  174, 175, 176, 177, 180, 186,  288, 297, 298, 299, 315, 341,
  344, 345, 347, 349, 358, 360,  362, 364-366, 367, 376, 377,
  378, 379, 389, 390, 405, 407,  409, 410, 411, 424, 440, 443.
  See also alternating selves;  alternations of personality  masturbation, 205; mutual, 206  maturity, 437, 440
Mayo Clinic, 40, 128, 274-275  memory, 51, 356, 357, 430; normal,
  436; return of, 436  memory trace, 388, 446; Vicky's,
  
  157, 356  menstruation, 163  mental illness, 424, 427
Mike (mike Dorsett), 282,  283-284, 285, 286-287, 288,
  291, 296, 299, 301, 315, 335,  341, 344, 347, 361, 362, 378,
  379, 387, 388, 402, 411-412,  413, 414, 424, 429, 440. See
  also alternating selves; alternations of  personality
Mitchell, Dr. L., 109  modes of behavior, 431  money, 405; father's abuse of, 251, 269  Montana mother, 224  moodiness, 4, 130, 277  mother, 38, 41, 43-44, 45, 46, 48,
  51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 62, 69,  73, 81, 83, 87, 88, 93, 114,
  130, 137, 138, 139, 141, 145,  146, 147, 148, 153, 154,
  161-162, 169, 173, 174, 179,  183, 185, 186, 187, 190, 191,
  192, 193, 194, 196, 197, 198,  201, 202, 205, 206, 207, 213,
  214, 215, 216-220, 221,
  222, 248, 249, 258,
  259, 275, 295, 297, 302, 322,  326, 328, 332, 338, 340, 357,
  358, 359, 372, 374, 375, 388,  391, 411, 431; abuses by,
  209-212, 273; as Hitler, 275; death  wish for, 402; depression of, 193; hatred
  of, 401-402; need for, 181, unparalleled  destructiveness of, 273, 275. See
  also Dorsett, Henrietta (hattie)  Anderson  multiple personality, 94, 115, 120,
  199, 207, 241, 246, 267, 273,  274, 291, 313, 315, 340, 345,
  347, 375, 381, 384, 402, 417,  424, 427, 438, 445, 446, 449;
  associated root, 274; Beauchamp,  Christine, 108, 110, 313; Bourne,
  Ansel, 106, 109; dynamics of,  331; Eve, 109; Felida X, 108,
  109; first formation of, 109; Fisher,  Doris, 108, 109, 313; genetic
  factors of, 111, 246, 313, 322;  letter of denial of, 374; Mamie, 106,
  
  109; objective study of, 448;
  predisposition to, 111, 246;  Prong, Silas, 108, 109; reaffirmation
  of, 374-375; Reynolds, Mary, 108,  109; Smead, Mrs., 108, 109;
  Smith, Miss, 108, 109; taproot,  274; trauma, 110; verification of,
  277; Vive, Louis, 108, 109; with  male selves, 291. See also
  alternating selves; alternations of  personality  multiple selves. See multiple
  personalities  multiplication, return of, 439  music, 85-86, 95, 101, 112, 130,
  131, 256, 303, 327, 420;  frustration over, 342; guitar, 166,
  255, 277, 404; love of, 349;  piano, 87, 132, 177, 212, 213,
  242, 246, 251; violin, 200, 404,

nameless thing, the. See terrible thing, the  Nancy (nancy Lou Ann Baldwin),
  301, 308-313, 315, 361, 362,  378, 379, 389, 390, 440.
  See also alternating selves;  alternations of personality  neurasthenia, 301, 304  neuritis, Willard's, 404  neurological test, 447  neurosis, family, 127, 244  neurotic solution, 342  nursing, 134, 361  nurturing, lack of, 112, 241, 245,

"Objective Study of a Multiple  Personality," 448  occupancy of the body, simultaneous, 177  Oedipal feelings, 262, 408  only child, 38, 421  original child, 340, 342, 391, 402,
  411; cessation of, 340; restoration of,  ovaries, 287  overprotection, 37

parents, 37, 38, 40, 41, 43, 44,  47, 49, 300, 340
Peggy, after integration of Peggy Lou and Peggy  Ann, 410, 413, 415,
  417, 419, 422, 427, 430, 431.  See also alternating selves; alternations
  of personality
Peggy Ann (peggy Ann Baldwin), 93,  94, 115, 133, 145, 169, 170,
  289, 290, 295, 307, 310, 315,  317, 318, 320, 321, 323, 329,
  332, 333, 335, 339, 341, 347,  361, 362, 389, 394, 395, 405,
  430. See also alternating selves;  alternations of personality  "Peggy" feelings, 414
Peggy Lou (peggy Lou Baldwin), 94,  97, 99, 111, 116, 117, 122,
  133, 145, 159, 160, 161, 162,  166, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172,
  174, 178, 180, 182, 185, 205,  275, 282, 286, 288, 289, 290,
  295, 297, 299, 307, 310, 315,  318, 319, 320, 321, 322, 323,
  325, 326, 327, 328, 329, 331,  333, 334, 335, 339, 340, 341,
  342, 345, 347, 350, 357, 359,  360, 361, 362, 366-371,
  376, 377, 378, 379,
  380, 381, 382, 389, 390, 391,  394, 395, 396, 397, 398, 399,
  405, 430, 431, 439, 440, 445,  446; assertiveness of, 381; rage as the
  core of being of, 368. See also  alternating selves; alternations of
  personality
Peggy Louisiana, 183, 339, 408.  See also alternating selves; alternations
  of personality  penis, 185, 188, 286, 287, 412;
  envy, 290; identification, 290  pentothal. See sodium pentothal  personality reorganization, 435  personality, secondary, 108, 111  predisposition to multiple personality,
  111; genetic, 246  prejudice, 295; against women by male
  personalities, 412-413  pretend world, 223, 247  primal scene, 183, 184, 262, 279,
  367; different reactions to, 185  Prince, Dr. Morton, 91, 383; The
  Dissociation of a Personality, 108  prisoner, 213, 221, 292,
  
Prong, Silas, 108, 109  psychiatric literature, 63  psychiatrist, 37, 39, 40, 53, 55,
  173, 330, 427

psychiatry, 44  psychoanalysis, 49, 50, 52, 55,
  58, 62, 64, 113, 115, 116,  168, 171, 268, 295, 297, 301,
  320, 323, 341, 342, 344, 347,  348, 351, 355, 383, 384, 388,
  425, 427, 446, 449; as force, 49;  turning point of, 361  psychoanalyst, 267, 320  psychological test, 447, 448; word
  association, 447  psychoneurosis, 116, 250. See also
  grande hyst@erie  psychosis, 116; freedom from, 392. See
  also schizophrenia  psychosomatic illness, 117  psychotic, 117, 204  punishment, 351  rage, 220, 351; genesis of, 342;
  return of, 402
Ramon, 336, 416, 433  rejection, 56  religion, 420-421. See also
  fundamentalist faith  religious conflict, 288  repression, 111, 214, 221; of the waking
  self, 73  repudiation: of femininity, as reaction against mother,
  285; of women's organs, 287  resistance, 46, 320, 326, 335, 348,
  363, 383
Reynolds, Mary, 108, 109  ritual battering, 209ff; burns, 211;
  cathartics, 209; dislocation, 211, enemas,  209; fracture, 211; instruments of
  torture, 210; internal injuries, 210;  sadistic tortures, 210; severing of hymen,
  210; suffocation, 211, 212; vaginal  manipulation, 210; vibration, 211. See
  also abuses
Ruthie (ruthie Dorsett), 186, 187,  289, 296, 304, 315, 335, 341,
  361, 378ff, 385,
  388ff, 392, 395, 396, 398,  399, 413, 446. See also alternating
  selves; alternations of personality

schizophrenia, 117, 241, 261,  273-274, 313, 322; catatonic
  phase of, 207  secondary selves, 431, 447  seizure, psychological, 47  self-effacement, 39  self-realization, 308, 437  self-repudiation, 343  sex, 64, 262; as degradation, 185;
  attitude toward, 182; copulation,  parental, 184; desire for, 351;
  differences, 286-287; distinction, 291;  distortions about, 290; intercourse, 184,
  186; sexless marriage, 417; starvation,  348; violation, 250  sexuality, 186  shame, 376  shock treatment, 355
Sid (sid Dorsett), 283-285,  286-287, 290-291, 296,
  315, 335, 341, 361,
  362, 378, 380, 387, 389, 411,  412, 413, 414, 424, 429, 440.
  See also alternating selves; alternations  of personality  sinister force. See terrible thing, the  sleeping Sybil, 399
Smead, Mrs., 108, 109
Smith, Miss, 108  sodium penthothal, 355, 356, 357,
  360, 363, 384; addiction to, 363,  384; dependency on, 361, 363;
  psychological addiction to, 363; weaning  from, 363

special friends: within, 50, 177-180; without,  100-108, 122, 178  speech, precocity of, 213  stealing, 202, 203  suicide, 310, 311, 312, 368, 373,
  388, 395, 397, 410, 411;  attemp, 336; consideration of, 352  Sybil. See waking self, the  Sybil Ann (sybil Ann Dorsett),
  301, 302, 303, 304, 315, 341,  347-348, 358-359, 361,
  362, 378, 379, 389. See also  alternating selves; alternations of
  personality  symptoms, emotional, 52, 64-65, 75,
  76, 81, 93, 111-112, 122, 130,  135, 142, 211, 423  symptoms, hysterical: conversion, 165, 221;
  numbness, 431; paralysis, 431;  paresis, 431; seizure, 431;
  spasticity, 431  symptoms, nervous, 15, 37, 39, 41,  symptoms, physical, 39, 42, 51,
  84, 86, 91, 93, 113, 195,  211, 213, 220, 224, 263, 337,
  357, 377, 378, 401;  gastrointestinal, 432; Vicky, 164.
  See also symptoms, psychological  symptoms, psychological, 49, 53, 64,
  65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 72, 76,  77, 80, 81, 85-86, 91, 102,
  107, 112, 113, 118, 119, 122,  135, 138, 142, 143, 151, 155,
  164ff, 172, 196, 220,
  292, 304, 308, 336,
  349, 355, 356, 357, 358, 359,  373, 374, 378, 383, 401, 407,
  426; linkage with early traumas, 341;  neurasthenia, 304

terrible thing, the, 39, 51, 52, 53, 55,  56, 65, 69, 107, 113, 114,
  117, 122, 144ff, 150, 151,  153, 155; lost time, 114, 117,
  122, 150, 151, 156, 164, 282,  315-316, 341, 344, 360, 361,
  362, 375, 404-405  testicles, 287
Thigpen, Dr. Corbey H., A Case of  Multiple Personality, 108  Three Faces of Eve, 381  time: new sense of, 435; normal, 445  torture, instruments of, 222  trauma, 110, 176, 188, 199, 306,
  314, 327, 336, 362, 380, 383,  385, 386, 394, 402, 409, 434;
  original one, 341; taproot of, 402  trust, 45, 68, 77, 176, 224, 297,
  368, 405  umbilical cord, 179  unconscious, the, 119, 275, 283, 291,
  297, 321, 346, 367, 392, 393,  400, 402, 425, 443, 447, 449;
  total, 381    uniqueness, 291  uterus, 287

vagina, 286, 287
Vanessa (vanessa Gail Dorsett), 123,  173, 177, 178, 179, 180, 181,
  182, 186, 289, 295, 296, 298,  315, 335, 341, 344, 347, 361,
  362, 370, 371, 372, 373, 376,  378, 379, 387, 389, 390, 405,
  411, 414, 424, 427, 440, 445.  See also alternating selves; alternations
  of personality
Vicky (victoria Antoinette

  Scharleau), 100-101, 106, 107,  108, 111, 116, 117, 122, 127,
  155ff, 156, 158, 159, 160,  161, 162, 164, 166, 167, 168,
  169, 170, 171, 172, 173,  174, 177, 178, 180,
  181, 185, 186, 202, 282, 286,  289, 298, 312, 313, 315, 317,
  318, 335, 336, 337, 338, 339,  340, 341, 342, 347, 348, 350,
  352, 356, 357, 360, 361, 362,  366, 371, 373, 376, 377, 378,
  379, 380, 389, 390, 393, 394,  395, 396, 398, 399, 405, 408,
  410, 411, 413, 414, 417, 427,  430, 431, 433, 434, 436, 440,
  445, 446. See also alternating  selves; alternations of personality  Vive, Louis, 108, 109  voyeurism, 203

waking self, the, 111, 321, 336, 341,  446; as "boss," 357; depletion of,
  340, 341; Dorsett, Sybil  Isabel, 23ff; recollection of
  behavior of alternating self, 357;  recollection of memories of alternating
  self, 360; unawareness of alternating  selves, 324

walking, delayed, 213