Sally Field's 'Sybil' was a lie

[Project Willow]

Please visit and dislike this Nathan video:

http://youtu.be/XMng004Cz5M

Also, this article, http://io9.com/5865263/whats-the-truth- ... psychology originally posted on the ironically named "Real Clear Science" is being shared everywhere. Please comment on it, if you can, in various venues. Below is what I would have said. They would not allow my comment on the original.

Thank you.

There is great irony that this article exists on a site called "Real Clear Science' as it contains almost none. This article is propaganda. The writer chooses to ignore a body of empirical research going back over a hundred years, now bolstered by cross cultural and neurophysiological studies, that is far more substantive than that of many less controversial diagnoses.

From Richard J. Loewenstein, MD, "Nowhere else would a body of research data be so entirely discounted. This empirical base includes clinical case studies, series studied with structured interview data; studies of phenomenology, prevalence, memory, hypnotizability, neurobiology, imaging, and psychophysiology; and psychological assessment profiles, among others. These studies include samples of children and adolescents and cross-cultural samples from North America, Europe, Latin America, Turkey, and Asia."

These attacks on the DID diagnosis are part of a political battle being waged against survivors of extreme child abuse and the therapists who help them heal. A great many of these survivors were used in child prostitution and pornography, multi-billion dollar businesses, and if they are afforded the treatment they deserve they are able to tell, and in some cases, to testify. Keeping these survivors marginalized and dissociated protects the interests of those in the child porn and trafficking rackets. It is wrong and it needs to stop.

[Simulist]

Please visit and dislike this Nathan video:

http://youtu.be/XMng004Cz5M

Done.

[LilyPatToo]

Done. But the article wouldn't allow my comment either, and when I read their FAQ it became obvious that they're only looking for enthusiastic supporters, not actual commentary. Bad place. I might be able to get it posted if I sign in with Facebook, but that would involve a level of decloaking with which I'm not currently comfortable.

This trend literally makes me sick and I suspect that most multiples feel the same. It's difficult enough having a disorder that's out of the ordinary and widely misunderstood, but to have our diagnoses discredited by intellectual-sounding posers is unbearable. It took me until my late 50s to figure out WTF was going on and years after that to come to terms with my past. To now be even more afraid to mention it is massively unfair. And we here know from whence cometh the disinformation, which is even worse. The abusers are winning again and I have no idea how to counter their self-serving poison.

LilyPat

[Project Willow]

Perhaps one answer is to solicit the aid of more mainstream abuse survivor advocacy groups and get their constituencies involved. It's been such a long time that I've inhabited the ra/mc fringe that I would not know where to start. There may be a clue in this offering from Ellen:

Here is an important article, Seizures Hurt Memory, Ex-'Times' Reporter Says,by David Folkenflik that exposes Nathan: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=15430924

Here is the critical excerpt--

Nathan is an advocacy journalist who argues that federal laws on child pornography and child sexual abuse are too strict. "Sex is such a highly charged issue in our culture that — particularly when it comes to child sex abuse — people are very irrational," Nathan says. "Many people are convicted who are innocent, in my opinion."

But Nathan's stories about Eichenwald for New York magazine's Web site and for CounterPunch failed to disclose a key affiliation: She is a board member and donor for the National Center for Reason and Justice, a not-for-profit group that distributes money to help the legal filings of people it says have been wrongly convicted of child sexual abuse. The center distributes about $100,000 a year to their legal defense. Among the recipients of this aid: Father Paul Shanley, the most notorious figure in Boston's Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal.

Suggested Youtube comment:

Debbie Nathan is far from an objective reporter. Her biases are well-documented. She is a board member and donor for the National Center for Reason and Justice, a not-for-profit organization that contributes about $100,000 yearly to the legal defense of individuals convicted of child sexual abuse, whom the organization states have been wrongly convicted, including Father Paul Shanley "the most notorious figure in Boston's Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal", according to NPR's David Folkenflik (see: "Seizures Hurt Memory, Ex-'Times' Reporter Says", dated 10/19/2007: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... d=15430924).

Maybe the folks from SNAP or other such organizations might assist us.

[Project Willow]

Aaaaack! We need more eyes! Missed this important bit (thanks to David S.):

Washington Post book review:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 ... 80560.html

Multiple Personality Deception
The famous patient who inspired the panic was more the victim of her psychiatrist than of mental illness
By Carol Tavris

National Center for Reason and Justice Board-

Dr. Carol Tavris is a writer, lecturer, and social psychologist. She is coauthor, with Elliot Aronson, of Mistakes Were Made (But Not by ME): Why we justify foolish beliefs, bad decisions, and hurtful acts, and author of Anger: The Misunderstood Emotion and The Mismeasure of Woman. She is also the co-author of two leading psychology textbooks. She has written hundreds of articles and book reviews for a wide variety of publications, and has given many addresses and workshops on topics related to psychological science versus pseudoscience for general audiences, attorneys, mediators, psychologists, and judges. Dr. Tavris is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, a charter Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science, and a member of ? the editorial board of Psychological Science in the Public Interest.

To our writers and journalists on the board:
Can anyone see in the review where she comes clean about her affiliation with Nathan or this pedophile advocacy group? What are the ethics governing these kinds of omissions in, well, a book review? Is journalism governed by any ethics whatsoever anymore? (Last one is rhetorical)

[Project Willow]

This is the Orwellian named arts and letters wing of the FMSF.

http://ncrj.org/about/

About Us

The National Center for Reason and Justice was incorporated in April, 2002.
.....
Dr. Leonore Tiefer is a feminist and psychologist who has specialized in sexuality for 30 years. She is currently Associate Professor of Psychiatry at both the New York University School of Medicine and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and has a private psychotherapy practice in Manhattan. In recent years, Dr. Tiefer has written widely about the medicalization of men’s and women’s sexuality [ http://www.fsd-alert.org ], e.g., Sex is Not a Natural Act (2nd edition, 2004) and A New View of Women’s Sexual Problems (with Ellyn Kaschak, 2001). Dr. Tiefer has received professional awards and held office in various groups. She has been on the Board of Directors of the National Coalition against Censorship for over 10 years.
....

My local paper has just published a review of Nathan's book. I was revisiting this thread so that I could begin to draft my letter to the editor.

When I started the clitoris project, I hooked up with a feminist activist group, The New View Campaign, in order to inquire about recent research and related issues such as labiaplasty. Leonore Tiefer was my contact. She voiced support for my project.

The sexologist Susie Bright also supported the project, in more than words, yet she is a friend and supporter of Nathan's. I hadn't written of that odd connection before, but was planning to.

What is this bizarre overlap between feminist sexology and false memory advocacy? What is driving these women? I'm going to cut my connection with the feminist group.

Are there any sex-positive, anti-pedophilia feminists? Helloooooo? Anybody out there?

Meanwhile, in Seattle, the most prominent and active opponent of child trafficking is a (rather frightening) right-wing Christian.

[bks]

Project Willow wrote:

My local paper has just published a review of Nathan's book. I was revisiting this thread so that I could begin to draft my letter to the editor.

When I started the clitoris project, I hooked up with a feminist activist group, The New View Campaign, in order to inquire about recent research and related issues such as labiaplasty. Leonore Tiefer was my contact. She voiced support for my project.

The sexologist Susie Bright also supported the project, in more than words, yet she is a friend and supporter of Nathan's. I hadn't written of that odd connection before, but was planning to.

What is this bizarre overlap between feminist sexology and false memory advocacy? What is driving these women? I'm going to cut my connection with the feminist group.

Are there any sex-positive, anti-pedophilia feminists? Helloooooo? Anybody out there?

Meanwhile, in Seattle, the most prominent and active opponent of child trafficking is a (rather frightening) right-wing Christian.

I'm sure you will make the right decision regarding affiliation with the feminist group you mentioned, PW, but I would humbly suggest considering the fact (if you haven't already, of course) that your affiliation with them may be one of the best opportunities some of those women will get to hear and have to contend with, in the flesh, a powerful and articulate oppositional viewpoint to their own (and from someone with whom they share many of the same views, and who is unquestionably also feminist, as you are).

Allowing one group of feminists to lay claim to the term "sex-positive feminist" already skews the discussion IMO, since it risks identifying the default position of the "typical" (and not just the radical) feminist as sex-negative. This is of course absurd, an it also contributes to the perverse effect by which many young women seek to distance themselves from anything "feminist" when, on the strength of its actual political stances, those same young women might otherwise be attracted to feminism.

Also, there seems to be a good deal of post-feminist, sex-positive nonsense that isn't really about proclaiming a woman's right to have sexuality and be sexual, but championing her right to be made into, or make herself into, a sex object. I'm not saying the line is always clear or easy to draw, but it can't be questioned that the dominant cultural framing of women as essentially objects for male consumption has infiltrated (some would even say "colonized") post-feminist conceptions of female sexuality.

Finally, if it is as large a trend as it seems, the slippage from being against "anti-pornography" to being against "anti-pedophilia" is a disturbing one in feminist thought.

Some interesting comments on the whole "sex positive" debate at the link below (there are hundreds of them, and I haven't gotten all the way through). A few particularly good ones follows:

http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/10/22/the-pervocracy-nails-it-on-misguided-critiques-of-sex-positive-feminism/

saurus 10.22.2011 at 9:17 pm | Permalink
Well, I respectfully disagree with sex-positive feminism, albeit not for the same reasons.

- usually means sex act-positive not sexuality-positive; i.e., often keys having sex as positive, but whether sex is a good thing or a bad thing can really vary from person to person; for some people having sex is not positive nor “healthy”

- sometimes ignorant of how sex positivity not only fails to be immune to rape culture, but can also propagate it’s own unique little rape culture

- often stigmatizes and/or pathologizes people who are asexual, celibate, not that enthusiastic about sex, “modest” etc as prudes, “missing out”, “broken”, internalizing sexism, etc

- I find some sex-positive feminists cannot go through five seconds without talking about sex acts, and then looking at people challengingly like “I dare you to blush!”

- often there’s an emphasis on sex as “fun” and “play” which can make people feel shitty if their experience is not light or does not involve laughing or whatever

- for all the “hurray boundaries”, in some sex-positive communities there’s a subtle pressure to push your boundaries because doing more somehow makes you cooler / more liberal

- for being apparently “sex positive” I have had some truly awful experiences with sex positive feminists who violated my privacy, “pitied” me for not wanting to participate in certain acts, were irresponsible when it came to the emotional side of sex, etc

This is not to say that all sex-positive feminists are like this (duh) or that all of these traits are unique to sex-positive feminists and don’t appear in the general population (duh), but rather that there are certain critiques one can make of sex-positive feminism and how it plays out that aren’t sexist.

That said, the unfair and unquestionably sexist critique mentioned in the OP doesn’t strike me entirely as being about sex-positive feminism so much as a critique of femme, which I think is part of a larger problem in which unless you’re doing exactly the opposite of whatever the mainstream dominant sociocultural thing is, you’re colluding or whatever. We need to liberate ourselves from acting according to Their terms.

*****
EG 10.22.2011 at 11:17 pm | Permalink
That’s actually one of my other problems with it. By naming themselves “sex-positive” feminists, its proponents cannot help implying that the default feminism is sex-negative, and I have two problems with that. 1) It’s buying into a deeply anti-feminist trope about feminism and ignoring a lot of feminist history, and 2) it feels like a shaming technique, akin to the one used by people calling themselves “pro-life.” We’re supposed to be all “oh, sex-positive, of course I want to be that, I wouldn’t want to be lumped in with those jerks who think sex is a bad thing.” Well, fuck that noise. In a great deal of my experience, especially my early experiences, sex has been a bad thing, and it too often feels to me that sex-positive feminism/feminists don’t want to hear about/deal with that.

****
Claire K. 10.23.2011 at 2:46 am | Permalink
When I first heard the term “sex-positive” I thought it had to apply to me –after all, I’m a lesbian and naturally oppose the “sex-is-sinful” dogma. But I can’t help but feel that radical feminist spaces are much more accepting of my sexuality than are sex-positive spaces. Part of the problem is that sex-positive feminists always seem to be reacting to radical feminists, and radical feminists are usually reacting to normative forms of heterosexuality. As a result, sex-positive writings usually say more about how normative forms of heterosexuality can be empowering than about how damaging it is when that sexuality is forced on people or how empowering non-normative sexualities can be.

[Project Willow]

PW, but I would humbly suggest considering the fact (if you haven't already, of course) that your affiliation with them may be one of the best opportunities some of those women will get to hear and have to contend with, in the flesh, a powerful and articulate oppositional viewpoint to their own (and from someone with whom they share many of the same views, and who is unquestionably also feminist, as you are).

I have thought of it as a unique opportunity. I'm just uncertain at this point how to broach the topic, so that it doesn't come off as an attack. I'm also weighing my emotional resources. The Nathan PR campaign, for some reason, I experience as a sucker punch, whenever it pops up. I literally get nauseous.

Allowing one group of feminists to lay claim to the term "sex-positive feminist" already skews the discussion IMO, since it risks identifying the default position of the "typical" (and not just the radical) feminist as sex-negative. This is of course absurd, an it also contributes to the perverse effect by which many young women seek to distance themselves from anything "feminist" when, on the strength of its actual political stances, those same young women might otherwise be attracted to feminism.

Thank you for pointing that out, and I agree completely. In my recent travels, I've come into contact with groups that use the phrase sex-positive to distinguish themselves from the wider culture which they view generally as sexually repressive. It was nothing but my own intellectual laziness that led me to pair it with feminist, something I should not have done.

[Project Willow]

Responses to the book review in The Stranger.
http://www.thestranger.com/seattle/a-cl ... d=14272163

The beautiful Janet:

It's astonishing to me that "The Stranger" would seriously address this book, "Sybil Exposed" in a review. One glance around this planet attests readily to the fact that we are living in a Culture of Abuse and an Age of Denial. The statistics are overwhelming; the results manifesting in a growing swell of violence that is permeating the very heart of what it means to be human. The Stranger has long combined irony, satire and insight in effective retaliation to these unfolding times. Choosing to review Nathan's spurious book as a serious read is a startling sidetrack. It's also dangerously callow. There are a whole lot of us struggling with dissociative disorder as a result of our experienced abuse as kids. It is no fun to really be a stranger in this world--no matter how we display otherwise. And we do. There are lots of talented people out there whose inner lives are defined by degradation and defilement through no fault of their own. We fool you all the time. Dissociative disorder is a brilliant coping skill. It explores the mind in ways neither Nathan nor Ms. Datz have a clue about. It gives us clarity, insight, compassion and ways to negotiate complexity that is brilliant in its creativity. It is also lonely, isolating and alienating. We aren't "normal." But neither is the rest of the world. Which means we are at home in this complex world. It might be time for The Stranger to grow up and join us in the complexity of what it means to be human in an often inhuman world. "Sybil Exposed" exposes its own stupidity and manipulation. Your readers deserve better.
- Janet Thomas, Author of The Battle in Seattle--The story Behind and Beyond the WTO Demonstrations" and "Day Breaks Over Dharamsala--A Memoir of Life Lost and Found."

Anon:

This article ignores many of the problems with the book "Sybil Exposed."

It appears that "Sybil Exposed" was not fact checked by others. In other words, we have to take Nathan's word for it that she correctly cited and interpreted each source. Many reviews at Amazon (see the one star and two star ones) have stated they found errors in her book's research and statements.

Sybil (Shirley Mason) definitely suffered from MPD. This is proven by accounts from her relatives, other professionals that worked with Sybil and even on p. 60 of Sybil Exposed, where it describes Sybil's roommate in 1942 seeing Sybil exhibiting symptoms of MPD before Sybil entered therapy. The book "Sybil Exposed" describes a dissociative fugue Sybil had in 1944 before entering therapy (p. 61). Yet all of this is apparently ignored by Nathan in her book's conclusions.

Sybil's childhood friends verify the fact that Sybil's mother exhibited odd behaviors, like defecating in neighbor's lawns and peeking in the neighbor's windows. One friend stated she believed that some of what was written in the original book "Sybil" about child abuse did happen. Sybil's father verified that the abuse occurred. Mason and Shreiber both died broke.

It appears that Nathan had an agenda to discredit the Sybil story as well as the MPD - DID diagnosis. Nathan leaves out important facts about the DID diagnosis, which has been proven to be caused by severe, repeated childhood abuse at an early age.

A better book to read about the Sybil story, written by a psychiatrist familiar with mental health issues is "SYBIL in her own words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings" by Patrick Suraci Ph.D. This book verifies many of the above facts.

Myself:

Imagine if someone took a few facts about your life and wrapped an entirely false narrative around them, making you out to be something that you never were, and destroying your reputation. This is what Debbie Nathan, in her book "Sybil Exposed", has done to three extraordinary women, Shirley Mason, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, and Flora Schreiber, all of whom are now dead and cannot defend themselves, and her motives are far from pure.

If I wished to be as unfair and unflattering as she, I could take the facts of Nathan's work and her professional affiliations and weave a far more damning narrative around them, suggesting some rather nefarious connections and motives.

A few facts:
As recently as October, 2011 Nathan was listed as a board member of an organization that gives $100,000 a year to the legal defense funds of convicted pedophiles, including Father Paul Shanley, the most notorious figure in Boston's Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal.
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 repeated and ongoing sexual trauma, like multiple personality, and engendering distrust of trauma therapists, are integral to those aims.

Must I even construct the narrative at this point? It doesn't look pretty.

The reviewer freely admits that Nathan is making interpretations and engaging in conjecture, but then she accepts Nathan's central "interpretations" as valid. Let me suggest a different interpretation of the Wilbur's statements. She made them based on her desire that the public rediscover and appreciate multiple personality as a powerful, natural defense against extreme trauma. She wished to bring to light a case of extreme abuse and show it is a reality. She wished to help lessen the stigma leveled at her patient. I can make these inferences because I know people who knew both Mason and Wilbur and these are closer to what fueled their ambition.

What's most stunning about this review, however, is that it promotes Nathan's most damaging thesis: that multiple personality is a fad.

Multiple personality disorder, or Dissociative Identity Disorder, as it is now named (DID for short) is not a modern phenomenon. Cases of DID were first described in Western medicine in the 18th century. It was a major focus of study for the father of modern psychiatry, and various individual cases have come to public prominence over the last two centuries, one of which is the case of Mary Reynolds in the 1860's. References to analogous behavior and symptom clusters, such as demon possession in Christian lore, appear across cultures and eras throughout human history.

As to the science behind it, which any critic must ignore or discount in order to affect an opposition, I like to quote Dr. Richard Loewenstein, "This empirical base includes clinical case studies, series studies with structured interview data; studies of phenomenology, prevalence, memory, hypnotizability, neurobiology, imaging, and psychophysiology; and psychological assessment profiles, among others. These studies include samples of children and adolescents and cross-cultural samples from North America, Europe, Latin America, Turkey, and Asia."

That's right, it's cross-cultural. It's also been verified with neuro-imaging. As Kathy Steel puts it, “I mean, there isn’t [a] way for a fad to show up, I think, on a functional MRI or on a PET scan.”

An estimated 1-3% of the population has DID. As a member of that group, I can attest that we are already marginalized, stigmatized, and often silenced, by a variety of forces and actors, including the sensationalistic media, and former traffickers, perpetrators, and their allies. Attacks on DID are harmful, especially those offered casually, without reasonable argument or reference to opposition, and in informal contexts like a book review. These attacks seek to shift social consensus, in this case, away from the truth. At best they contribute to stigma and denial and keep the focus shifted from stopping perpetrators to questioning survivors by adding another level of discrediting "crazy" to the milieu.

I have to wonder, were Ms. Datz and her editors completely blind to these impacts or was that what motivated them? It wouldn't be fair to conjecture.

[justdrew]

thank you Project Willow for staying on top of this

[Hammer of Los]

...

Also, there seems to be a good deal of post-feminist, sex-positive nonsense that isn't really about proclaiming a woman's right to have sexuality and be sexual, but championing her right to be made into, or make herself into, a sex object. I'm not saying the line is always clear or easy to draw, but it can't be questioned that the dominant cultural framing of women as essentially objects for male consumption has infiltrated (some would even say "colonized") post-feminist conceptions of female sexuality.

And thanks to bks for such a valuable contribution too.

Plenty of food for thought there about the role of sex in our culture.

...

[FourthBase]

Harvey Silverglate

Ugh. I had either forgotten that about him, or never knew. So, so disappointing.

PW, what superb replies to this article, book, and its reviews.

(p.s. I performed an in-house search for "Boston", hence the old thread being bumped.)