text: This book describes the eleven-year psychotherapy process for a woman with sixteen different personalities.  The analysis process took place from 1954 through 1965.  Sybil, the subject of the book, was a child of the 1920's and 30's, and her multiple-personality disease was a result of her family's genetic history and her fundamentalist, repressed, and abusive upbringing.  Much of Sybil's struggles were due to the time period in which she lived--her family had mental illness but felt that ignoring it and focusing on other pursuits was the best course of action.  She was so denied the exploration of her feelings that she choked back all symptoms of mental illness and tried to act normal, hindering her recovery for years.
  
  I am still in shock over the patience and dedication that was required to work with the frustratingly different personalities over a period of eleven years!  I got frustrated at the slow and relapse-prone re-integration process at the end of the book, and I admire Schreiber for painstakingly recounting the process instead of using Hollywood-style short-cuts.  Sybil's recovery and emergence as a complete, functional woman in her forties was a very hard-won victory.
  
  During the revealing of Sybil's personalities, I really liked Vicky.  She was the all-seeing personality who know the lineage of all others.  I liked her better than I liked the backbone-less Sybil, and I wanted her to exist for this lost woman.  During the personality-integration process, I learned that all of the personalities were a part of Sybil, and such exaggerated emotion as Vicky's had to be integrated in to part of the whole Sybil.
  
  Overall, this is an amazing book that well stands the test of time.
  