Sybil (1976) is a movie that thoroughly and accurately explained Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) through a female character with the name Sybil. Sybil had history of abuse since young and in order to cope with her situation, her brain's coping mechanism has divided herself into different personalities. In the movie, Dr. Wilbur made effort in helping Sybil by understanding Sybil's history and the reason for each personality to emerge. At the end of the movie, Sybil accepted her other identities and with the embracing of other personalities, Sybil accepted who she was and recovered her suppressed memory.
There are often times where we see somebody and has judgement on them, which is perfectly fine because people usually have impression on others on their first sight. Based on evolutionary psychology, this is a defense mechanism of human because by perceiving whether a person is a threat or not helps us in performing certain action that could potentially save our lives.
In the movie, Sybil was laughed by her students when she walked into the water. Despite the fact that the children were immature to think with empathy, never did the children know that Sybil has had a history of abuse. Knowing that Sybil would behave oddly due to her abuse, people might reacted differently by showing more love instead of humiliating them.
2. Emoto's Water Experiment / Crystallization of water / The power of thought
A researcher ran a series of experiments and found out that words and thought could change the crystallization of water. In his experiment, he label water bottles and expose the water into both positive and negative condition. The result was that beautiful crystals was observed after giving good words, playing good music, and showing, playing, or offering pure prayer to water. If words and images of creativity were given, it will be contributing to the creation of a beautiful world. On the other hand, if you are giving out message of destruction, you will then contribute in destructive of the world (Emoto, 2001).
The picture below illustrates the crystallization of water with label of the words that the water is exposed to.
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| Picture taken from http://highexistence.com/water-experiment/ |
In the picture above, the physical shape of water crystallization is refined and beautiful when the water is exposed to positive words. Once one is aware of the impact of words, one will no longer speak destructive or anger words to the people around them (Emoto, 2001). Words is the strongest weapon that one could use to hurt others. It is a choice for whether to change the world by focusing on the word that we use daily. Note that human body is made up of 60% of water, now imagine how much word and thought could impact a person.
Relating the finding of this experiment to the movie, Sybil's mother has conducted actions that are cruel enough to impair development of a child (Sybil). Since a single phrase of sentence could impact the crystallization of water, imagine what would happen to the child when she is constantly being exposed to negative situation such as abuse, discouragement, scoldings, constraints and fears.
With this, it is important for us to have the consciousness to treat people and see people with love and encouragement. Knowing that mere consciousness of things could cause impact, it further encourages us to treat things around with care. It is such a pity for Sybil to encounter such harsh condition during her development which caused her personality to split, but luckily for her to met with Dr. Wilbur who made the effort (love and encouragement) in helping her to regain her mental well-being and confidence.
References
Emoto, M. (2001). The hidden messages in water. New York, NY: Atria Books.
