Wow. I'll say this, I have thought that some of the stories relayed by people with MPD diagnoses seem impossible to survive. Like Rabbit. Anyone heard of her story, When Rabbit Howls? It involves abuse so horrific, worse than Sybil's that it seems very unlikely a person could survive it.
I think a person would probably die without intensive medical treatment if they suffered the kind of abuse these people describe. Looking back at some of the claims Sybil made, like lesbian orgies her mom had with teen girls in the woods, it does seem we were had.
Not trying to be Mr Smarty-Pants, but I've long doubted MPD (and look askance too at repressed memory syndrome). Harrowing book even if it is fiction, and yes, Sally Field's great in the film role too!
I tend not to buy repressed memory syndrome either. That's because my research into trauma shows that people cannot forget trauma. Instead, it replays and often so consumes their lives that they develop PTSD.
Of course, there are traumas that small, pre-verbal children cannot verbalize so they cannot really remember the incident. I believe one needs language to be able to have a full memory. Such children may experience the effects of the trauma without knowing why, but the "memory" will not come shooting out at them, IMO, some day in the future, because the language was never there to store the event. Thus, people do not remember being circumcised as infants, or given shots when too small to comprehend what is happening.
Then there are incidents of abuse that do not involve pain, like fondling. There may not be trauma associated with such an event no matter how wrong and disgusting it may be, so that may not stick in their brains if very small, yet verbal, when it happened.
But ultimately, I agree that traumatic memories are unlikely to be repressed.
As for MPD, my dad never believed in it for a second. He thought it was malingering, acting, or another type of mental illness. But, I used to argue with him because when I was a teen, I was hospitalized for several months and a gal there had been diagnosed with MPD. She'd been there for over a year with no hope of getting out anytime soon because she was not functional. I got to know her very well. When herself, she seemed very normal. Kind of butch, tough, but also very soft spoken, sincere and rational. Never seemed histrionic or strange at all. Just very straight forward and matter of fact.
Then there were her "personalities". Wow, it was so easy to tell. She walked different, talked different and her face looked different. All the personalities I met were males, mostly kids and teens. They knew me even if I thought I hadn't met them. Some were very violent. It was bizarre and at times very scary.
I asked her about her diagnosis. She described extreme abuse - she had been starved and then put in a high chair with food just out of reach. Or made to eat her own vomit or feces. Or hung upside in the doorway and the door slammed on her - all of this occurring when she was very small - 2 to 3 years old. She said that she never remembered being a different personality. But she knew when it was coming because she felt a kind of buzzing or strange feeling in her hands and her head. Next thing she knew, she would wake up strapped to a table and unable to speak because her voice was so strained from screaming and without a memory of what had transpired.
She told me that she was tested when changing personalities, and that her heart rate and brain waves changed.
She did have scars on her body, including horrible scars on each outer arm, near her shoulders, that looked like someone took forks and just dug in. I did not ask how she got them.
I believed her. I experienced her personalities. Now I'm starting to believe that such a diagnosis is not real. Perhaps the person has other issues that are fostered by ambitious psychologists or psychiatrists, like those who encouraged repressed memories about satanic cults in the 80's and 90's. Hmmm.
