Medical Case as a Plot-Basing Element of Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber

Abstract

The article is devoted to the consideration of the features of plot construction in American prose about dissociative identity disorder using the example of F.R. Schreiber Flora Rheta Schreiber "Sibyl" (<em>Sybil</em>, 1973). The basis of the plot of the work is the history of mental illness (medical history). Dissociative personality disorder leads to the realization by society of the end of the 20th century of a new psychological state in which a person can be. Such a state, when one consciousness can exist in several states representing different personalities, puts a person on the line between real and fantastic. The artistic interpretation of the disorder carries similar characteristics. The fantasticness of the described is contrary to the scientific component, in this confrontation, the scientific is trying to control the fictional, rationalize it, fit into the real. Psychoanalysis is becoming an indispensable attribute for describing and understanding events. The cause of the disorder is a personal childhood injury, from which a person seeks to fence himself off. Here we see the influence of Z. Freud, whose psychoanalytic practice, including hypnosis, analysis of the events of the past, analysis of dreams, is reflected both in events and in the structural organization of the novel.