Sybil (1976)

The story tells of a young woman admitting to have blackouts, fearing they are getting worse. She is believed to suffer from multiple personalities, as a result of severe sexual abuse at the hands of her mother, whom the psychiatrist, Cornelia B. Wilbur, believes was schizophrenic. The movie Sibyl is based upon author Flora Rheta Schreiberthe's novel and fictionalized version of the life story of Shirley Ardell Mason, an American psychiatric patient, claimed to have suffered multiple personality disorder. The novel Sibyl, was in it's turn based largely on the alleged actual accounts of psychiatric treatment that Shirley Ardell Mason underwent, documented by American psychiatrist Cornelia B. Wilbur. Numerous psychiatrists, both contemporary and more recent, have strongly contested the diagnosis.