Sally Field's 'Sybil' was a lie

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

'Sybil' was named after the wife of a VIetnam War POW who was adamant about exposing the POW-MIA cover-up.
Classic negative framing of a whistleblower.

[DeltaDawn]

hmmmmmmm, hugh, very interesting, is there any links/info/background articles you can give, for me to read on this?? an interesting concept, let's see if there's any validity to this intriguing tidbit!? Has always been an engrossing subject for me

[Hugh Manatee Wins]

You probably know that Sybil's husband, James Stockdale, eventually exposed the hoax of the Gulf of Tonkin decades after the fact. He was the lead pilot who went up to look around and saw nothing but "black water...and American fire power." Well, she started a whistleblowing org that was eventually co-opted and turned into a gatekeeper.

hmmmmmmm, hugh, very interesting, is there any links/info/background articles you can give, for me to read on this?? an interesting concept, let's see if there's any validity to this intriguing tidbit!? Has always been an engrossing subject for me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_Stockdale
[

Sybil Stockdale was the wife of an American Vietnam War Navy pilot who became a prisoner of war. Sybil then became a co-founder, and then later served as the national coordinator of the National League of Families,[1] [2] a nonprofit organization that worked on behalf of American Vietnam-era Missing in Action and Prisoner of War Families. In her capacity as national coordinator for the League, she also served as its liaison to the White house and the Department of Defense.[3] [2]
Mrs. Stockdale is credited with helping to better publicize the mistreatment of US prisoners by North Vietnam and for helping to improve American policies concerning the treatment and handling of POW families.[4] [2] Stockdale is the recipient of the U.S. Navy Department's Distinguished Public Service Award. [5] She is the only wife of an active-duty officer ever to have been so honored.[6]
Stockdale is also the co-author, along with her late husband, of the book "In Love and War: the Story of a Family's Ordeal and Sacrifice During the Vietnam War".[7]
Her husband, James Bond Stockdale, was a recipient of the Medal of Honor for bravery in war, and after his release at the end of the war, was eventually promoted to Vice Admiral and by the time of his death in 2005 was one of the United States' most honored and decorated military veterans in the post-WWII era. He was present at the August 4, 1964 Gulf of Tonkin Incident, spent 7-1/2 years under torture as a POW in North Vietnam, later became President of The Citadel military college, and eventually ran for Vice-President of the United States with Ross Perot heading the ticket.

The 'Sybil' decoy novel came out the year of the so-called US withdrawal, 1973.
The 'Sybil' CIA movie came out after Saigon fell and the POW-MIA cover-up kicked in, 1976.

[Project Willow]

Fuck you Hugh.

[Simulist]

Were there is bullshit, KWH dogshit eventually manages itself into the pile.

[Hammer of Los]

The article is clearly a calculated hit piece on the idea of multiple personality disorder.

Why would an anonymous journalist write this?

The Daily Mail, yes quite, it does its share of the sort of populist agit prop truth telling that we all like so much don't they, but with an insidious right wing slant. Funny that. Like so much stuff on the internet. Anyway, I digress.

I know exactly what you mean about the derangement of language, Wombat.

To read and analyse the content of the article is to reveal its purpose.

Its quite clear.

It is devoid of facts apart from the reference to two sentences in a single letter allegedly written by Sybil.

The rest is gross distortion and outright fabrication, coupled with character assasination that purports to know with certainty the attitudes, plans and dispositions of three people in their actions forty years ago. That's one hell of an act of mindreading.

Hugh, really. Can't you see it? Ain't no KWH here. And Vulcan was an ancient deity before it was a military codeword. I guess that means the military went back in time to influence the renaming of Hephaestus by the Romans. I'm digressing again.

[crikkett]

I wonder how many of our soldiers are coming home with multiple personalities. But then this is a UK article, and so maybe not related to the need to marginalize soldiers with psychological problems.

PS "shit like this article makes me see red (and smell brown) "
^^^ beautiful turn of phrase. I will be using it.

[sw]

Her next book exposes Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan for faking being blind and deaf for attention and money.

[Project Willow]

Her next book exposes Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan for faking being blind and deaf for attention and money.

Spot on. Love you, sw.

These are overdue: Sim, Searcher, Hammer, Wombat, and supporters here, all survivors...

[Pele'sDaughter]

I love all of you, and it was hard to post this knowing how upsetting it would be. Finally, I decided it needed to be known anyway.

[Project Willow]

I appreciate that Pele's D. Hugs to you.

I also appreciate this from Dr. Suraci but I hope more will be forthcoming. People need to be unequivocal, not just about verifiably false facts, but how Nathan is twisting reality to defame the 3 women.

October 19, 2011, Statement from Dr. Patrick Suraci

I went to the Special Collections Library at John Jay College of Criminal
Justice to verify statements made by Debbie Nathan in her book SYBIL
EXPOSED.

1. On pages 99-100 Nathan writes: "Connie would carry her apparatus to
Shirley's apartment and climb in bed with her. She would clamp the paddles to
Shirley's temples, twirl the dials, and press the buttons. Connie's gadget
was an old electro-convulsive machine she had retired years earlier."

Nathan cites the evidence for this in her "Notes: Chapter 8, No.38.. FRS
Box 37, Files 1081, Tape 124." In this document on January 26, 1955, Shirley
writes about "electric shock" along with her other treatments. There is
absolutely no documentation of Nathan's outrageous claim.

2. On page 71 Nathan writes: "Completely inexperienced with men, she had
little idea of how to take Gene's (O'Neill) measure. He noticed her
ignorance and didn't like it. Too‘girlish' he called Flora, particularly when it
came to sex. In a sheaf of notes she wrote to herself, she described feeling
pain at having his finger inside her, let alone his penis. ‘Be an animal,'
Gene would urge her, and he blamed her reticence on the fact that she had
a profession. ‘You bring Adelphi College into the bedroom. It is not that
career women don't want to go to bed – it is that they don't know how,' he
scolded Flora."

To prove this Nathan cites in: "Notes: Chapter 6, No.11, FRS Box 34, File
1051" In this document Schreiber writes about Eugene O'Neill: "His
complaint – Be an animal – give – you bring Adelphi College into the bedroom –
we're close friends in the living room and the moment we go into the bedroom
you become a stranger…he says that it is not that career women don't want
to go to bed – it is that they don't know how. Outcome might have been
different if she had gone to bed with him on the last Saturday after he told her
about _____" Schreiber at no time writes about O'Neill's "finger" or
"penis."

3. On page 232 Nathan writes: "…She (Shirley Mason) died quietly in her
home, surrounded by nurses, on February 26 of that year. She was seventy-five
years old. It was early evening when she died."

In my book SYBIL in her own words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her
Multiple Personalities and Paintings. On page 261 I write:

"The penultimate time I phoned Shirley's home was on February 26, 1998, at
12:07 PM. In the background I heard her weak voice pleading to Roberta
,(Guy) ‘Tell him I'm sorry. I'm sorry.' Roberta informed me that Shirley was
too sick to speak on the phone. I mumbled, ‘Please tell her that it's okay,
it's okay. I'll call later.' …

"When I called later that day at 3:01 PM Roberta stunned me with the news
than Shirley had just died."

Dr. Suraci has the telephone records of that day, September 26, 1998.

Information about Dr. Suraci:

“SYBIL In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple
Personalities and Paintings” by Patrick Suraci, Ph.D.

SYBIL is a new book about Shirley Mason who had 16 personalities. It
tells the story of her life after her cure depicted in the book SYBIL and TV
movie starring Sally Field. This book contains paintings by 5 of Sybil’s
alternate personalities. The author’s interviews with Shirley Mason report
her own words and her new whole personality.

In the book, the author presents evidence refuting Dr. Spiegel’s claim to
have hypnotized Shirley Mason. Dr. Suraci discovered an audio cassette
where Ms. Mason and Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, her therapist, discuss how it was
impossible for Dr. Spiegel to hypnotize Shirley, because she did not trust
or like him.

WHATEVER HAPPENED TO SYBIL?
by Dr. Patrick Suraci
Thursday, September 30, 8:00 p.m.
Reading, Discussion & Book Signing

Her name was Shirley Mason but the world would know her as Sybil. In 1973 Flora Rheta Schreiber wrote a groundbreaking bestseller entitled Sybil: The True Story of a Woman Possessed by 16 Separate Personalities (two films followed). Schreiber met Sybil through Dr Cornelia Wilbur, the NYC based psychoanalyst who treated her. The three women agreed that Schreiber would write a book about the ten-year treatment process, to be published only if Sybil were, in fact, cured.
Upon Flora Schreiber’s death, Dr Patrick Suraci inherited a painting that Sybil had done for her, initiating a friendship with Shirley Mason that lasted until her death in 1995. Dr Suraci’s recently published book picks up where Schreiber’s story left off. It explores the productive life of Shirley Mason as artist and teacher.
Dr. Suraci will present a slide show of the paintings done by 5 of Sybil’s personalities and discuss how each portrays the traits and characteristics of the respective personality. A number of the original paintings will also be on display.

[Project Willow]

My brief, preliminary rebuttal.

Sybil, The Nathan Defamation

I regret that this may only be the first among many posts on this topic. If you are a supporter, loved one, or caregiver of an extreme abuse survivor, a little additional support might be helpful as this controversy plays out in the media.

Shirley Mason is most commonly known as Sybil Dorset, one of the most famous of all DID cases. This beautiful, brave woman, her caregiver, and a dedicated journalist are being defamed in a smear campaign.

Debbi Nathan, an academic and former proponent of the now thoroughly repudiated False Memory campaign, has put Sybil in her cross-hairs in a new book. The New York Times and several other media outlets have jumped upon this potential new controversy, which from all appearances at this point, springs from a single statement in one of the letters Sybil wrote early on in her treatment.

Therapy for extreme trauma involves a long and repeated grief process. Denial is a natural part of grief. Denial is also a central feature of dissociation. In DID cases, alters actively cultivate denial of the trauma so that the child can perform in normative life. Of course these aspects present in therapy, not only at the beginning, but over and over again, as the process of awareness and then grief repeats itself until all the traumas are confronted.

Sybil’s early declaration that she is not a multiple is a normal and expected part of the therapeutic process. Nathan, and those who have covered her work, have cynically highlighted it as a singular proclamation of truth. This is the very definition of propaganda, suggesting an alternate meaning of a fact in service of an agenda.

Child pornography and domestic child trafficking are mutli-billion dollar businesses. There are networks of people who have high stakes in keeping survivors silenced and out of treatment. Confusing the public about the natural responses to this kind of abuse, like DID, and engendering distrust of trauma therapists are integral to those aims.

I have no evidence that Nathan is tied to any such criminal network, but neither are any of the targets of her attacks here to confirm or deny her insinuations. I have no doubt if Shirley, Connie or Flora were alive today, Nathan could not publish this book.

Yes, I see what I did there.



Here is a video of Dr. Suraci commenting on earlier attempts to claim fraud.

[Project Willow]

According to the product description of SYBIL EXPOSED, "Nathan gives proof that the allegedly true story was largely fabricated."

Although Nathan did a good job of constructing a narrative of how and why she believes the book SYBIL came to be, neither the patient (Shirley Mason aka Sybil, the psychiatrist (Wilbur), nor the author (Schriebner) are alive to defend against Nathan's interpretations of their interactions and their motivations to produce the book.

On p. 396 (Kindle), Nathan states that Wilbur "used her medical credentials to aggressively promote a diagnosis [multiple personality disorder] that, ultimately, hurt women far more than it helped them . . ."

As a journalist Nathan has a right to use her research findings to impugn the motives of Dr. Wilbur; however, she offered no research to support her contention that the diagnosis "hurt women far more than it helped them."

Wanda Karriker, Ph.D. Morning, Come Quickly

[Simulist]

My brief, preliminary rebuttal.

Sybil, The Nathan Defamation

I regret that this may only be the first among many posts on this topic. If you are a supporter, loved one, or caregiver of an extreme abuse survivor, a little additional support might be helpful as this controversy plays out in the media.

Shirley Mason is most commonly known as Sybil Dorset, one of the most famous of all DID cases. This beautiful, brave woman, her caregiver, and a dedicated journalist are being defamed in a smear campaign.

Debbi Nathan, an academic and former proponent of the now thoroughly repudiated False Memory campaign, has put Sybil in her cross-hairs in a new book. The New York Times and several other media outlets have jumped upon this potential new controversy, which from all appearances at this point, springs from a single statement in one of the letters Sybil wrote early on in her treatment.

Therapy for extreme trauma involves a long and repeated grief process. Denial is a natural part of grief. Denial is also a central feature of dissociation. In DID cases, alters actively cultivate denial of the trauma so that the child can perform in normative life. Of course these aspects present in therapy, not only at the beginning, but over and over again, as the process of awareness and then grief repeats itself until all the traumas are confronted.

Sybil’s early declaration that she is not a multiple is a normal and expected part of the therapeutic process. Nathan, and those who have covered her work, have cynically highlighted it as a singular proclamation of truth. This is the very definition of propaganda, suggesting an alternate meaning of a fact in service of an agenda.

Child pornography and domestic child trafficking are mutli-billion dollar businesses. There are networks of people who have high stakes in keeping survivors silenced and out of treatment. Confusing the public about the natural responses to this kind of abuse, like DID, and engendering distrust of trauma therapists are integral to those aims.

I have no evidence that Nathan is tied to any such criminal network, but neither are any of the targets of her attacks here to confirm or deny her insinuations. I have no doubt if Shirley, Connie or Flora were alive today, Nathan could not publish this book.

Yes, I see what I did there.

Well-written and persuasive.

[Searcher08]

My brief, preliminary rebuttal.

Sybil, The Nathan Defamation

I regret that this may only be the first among many posts on this topic. If you are a supporter, loved one, or caregiver of an extreme abuse survivor, a little additional support might be helpful as this controversy plays out in the media.

Shirley Mason is most commonly known as Sybil Dorset, one of the most famous of all DID cases. This beautiful, brave woman, her caregiver, and a dedicated journalist are being defamed in a smear campaign.

Debbi Nathan, an academic and former proponent of the now thoroughly repudiated False Memory campaign, has put Sybil in her cross-hairs in a new book. The New York Times and several other media outlets have jumped upon this potential new controversy, which from all appearances at this point, springs from a single statement in one of the letters Sybil wrote early on in her treatment.

Therapy for extreme trauma involves a long and repeated grief process. Denial is a natural part of grief. Denial is also a central feature of dissociation. In DID cases, alters actively cultivate denial of the trauma so that the child can perform in normative life. Of course these aspects present in therapy, not only at the beginning, but over and over again, as the process of awareness and then grief repeats itself until all the traumas are confronted.

Sybil’s early declaration that she is not a multiple is a normal and expected part of the therapeutic process. Nathan, and those who have covered her work, have cynically highlighted it as a singular proclamation of truth. This is the very definition of propaganda, suggesting an alternate meaning of a fact in service of an agenda.

Child pornography and domestic child trafficking are mutli-billion dollar businesses. There are networks of people who have high stakes in keeping survivors silenced and out of treatment. Confusing the public about the natural responses to this kind of abuse, like DID, and engendering distrust of trauma therapists are integral to those aims.

I have no evidence that Nathan is tied to any such criminal network, but neither are any of the targets of her attacks here to confirm or deny her insinuations. I have no doubt if Shirley, Connie or Flora were alive today, Nathan could not publish this book.

Yes, I see what I did there.

Well-written and persuasive.

Seconded - I found it really clear and helping towards understanding, Willow - everything the Mail article was not.