Sally Field's 'Sybil' was a lie

[Pele'sDaughter]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... -FAKE.html

Sally Field's 'Sybil' was a lie: Best-selling child abuse and split personality author exposed as a fake

It was a best-selling 'true story' that planted the notion of repressed memory syndrome in the American consciousness.

The shocking account of Sybil, a girl with 16 separate personalities that developed as a result of horrendous childhood abuses, sold seven million copies, and even spawned a recognised syndrome, 'multiple personality disorder.

The 1973 book told the story of Sybil Dorsett, later revealed to be Shirley Mason, whose personality had been splintered into more than a dozen distinct characters including a baby and two males.

But the titillating tale, serialised across the nation, has now been exposed as a fake, concocted by three women as a calculated money-making invention

A new book 'Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case' denounces the account as a fiction.

According to the author, Debbie Nathan, the memoir was cooked up by three individuals hungry for fame and fortune: Mason, her therapist Cornelia (Connie) Wilbur and journalist Flora Schreiber.

Mason had indeed had a troubled upbringing. She had come from a strict Minnesota Seventh Day Adventist family and had a nervous disposition, the New York Post reported.

She had been abused as a child and had also suffered from OCD tendencies.

As a graduate student in New York in the 1950s, Mason was in therapy.

But in treating her patient, therapist Connie Wilbur prescribed a cornucopia of wonder drugs: Seconal, Demerol, Edrisal and Daprisal, including several that have now been discredited.

Yet another, Pentathol, hailed at the time as a truth serum, is now believed to encourage patients to describe fantasies or experiences that could never have happened.

After one pivotal session, in which Mason described episodes in which she became different people, with multiple names and personalities, Wilbur saw an opportunity, Nathan claims.

She suggested that her patient become the subject of a book.

In return, Wilbur would cover the costs of the young student's medical school tuition and living expenses, the New York Post reported.

The two later aligned with writer Schreiber to concoct a story packed with sexual perversion and abuse that thrilled and titillated their readers.

Schreiber specialised in 'real-life' women's magazine stories and correctly predicted that with the right focus, grotesque child abuse including 'scenes of Sybil's mother defecating on lawns, conducting lesbian orgies and raping her daughter with kitchen utensils' the book would captivate the masses, writes Nathan.

In a 1958 letter held in the archives at New York’s John Jay College, Mason confessed that she didn't 'have any multiple personalities, ' the New York Post reported.

In the letter uncovered by Nathan, Mason writes: 'I am all of them. I have essentially been lying… as trying to show you I felt I needed help.'

She added in the letter: 'Quite thrilling. Got me a lot of attention.'

Nathan's book claims that Schreiber and Wilbur together drew the astonishing tales, out of willing collaborator Mason.

Some of the more incredible incidents included a war-time excursion to Nazi-occupied Holland.

Questions over the book’s authenticity have remained decades after it was published, not least because all three protagonists are now dead.

Shirley Ardell Mason died of breast cancer in 1998. Wilbur had died in 1992 and Schreiber in 1988.

The book's enduring legacy has been to create multiple personality disorder as an officially recognised illness.

As thousands of readers, convinced they too had repressed memories of childhood abuse, an almost unknown affliction snowballed into 40,000 reported cases.

Now in the past decade, science has started to question the syndrome itself.

Two film adaptations of the book were made in 1976 and 2007, with Sally Field starring in the title role in the first and Tammy Blanchard in the latter.

[Elihu]

i and many other US public school children saw it prior to the 7th grade.

In the school. is that school material? who makes those decisions? how is sally's prime-time show doing in the ratings btw?

[brekin]

Interesting that The Exorcist was published in 1971 and Sybil followed in 1973.

[Project Willow]

The unnecessary and incessant cruelty of human beings never ceases to amaze me. We are already so marginalized, silenced and defeated. Why?

Why?

The 3 women are dead and can't defend themselves.

I hope one or more of the estates sues the bloody hell out of Nathan.

Wilbur did ground breaking work. My friend, a psychologist, knew her. I hope she and everyone who knew these women, and the clinical community will strongly condemn this book.

Besides, Sybil is not the first documented case of multiple personality. In western medicine, the first was described back in the 18th century. Nathan should consider claiming those people are liars too, along with Pierre Janet and a significant number of the founders of modern psychology.

[sw]

[Simulist]

Sally Field's 'Sybil' was a lie: Best-selling child abuse and split personality author exposed as a fake

By Daily Mail Reporter

Last updated at 3:14 PM on 17th October 2011

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article ... z1bFpdV7er

[...]

The book's enduring legacy has been to create multiple personality disorder as an officially recognised illness.

If I had written shit like this, I wouldn't want to put my name on it either, "Daily Mail Reporter." Best to lie anonymously, like you do for the Daily Mail.

Oh, and by the way: fuck you, "Daily Mail Reporter." Fuck you to hell.

[DeltaDawn]

and yet one more way to discredit, what no one wants to hear!!!.........sad!!

[DrEvil]

Here's a four page NYT article about this case written by Debbie Nathan herself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/magaz ... WkY/tR4aVw

I have personally met a schizophrenic girl with a very unpleasant second personality (basically a full-blown sociopath), so I know for a fact that people with multiple personalities exist. That still doesn't automatically mean that the above article (or the daily mail piece) are untrue (even if it is the Daily Mail ).
Just saying..

[Simulist]

Here's a four page NYT article about this case written by Debbie Nathan herself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/magaz ... WkY/tR4aVw

I have personally met a schizophrenic girl with a very unpleasant second personality (basically a full-blown sociopath), so I know for a fact that people with multiple personalities exist. That still doesn't automatically mean that the above article (or the daily mail piece) are untrue (even if it is the Daily Mail ).
Just saying..

Really, DrEvil? The Daily Mail piece is a lie, at least partially, and here's why.

Among other things, the article states, "The book's enduring legacy has been to create multiple personality disorder as an officially recognised illness." The book, Sybil, managed to do that, did it? All by its lonesome self? After all, that's what "its enduring legacy" means when coupled with the assertion that it "create[d]" (note: not "helped to create," but "create") "mulitple personality disorder as an officially recognised illness."

Bullshit. That is a lie. There were many other factors that led to this — most specifically: real PEOPLE who have the condition!

Just saying…

[Project Willow]

That still doesn't automatically mean that the above article (or the daily mail piece) are untrue (even if it is the Daily Mail ).
Just saying..

And you have no idea what you're talking about.

Every single survivor of extreme abuse I have ever met has gone through not one but numerous denial stages. I have an entire team of alters who do nothing but deny the abuse. That is their job. It was necessary for my survival.

Is this what Nathan is basing her thesis on? She is an absolute monster.

Just heard from my friend about the article. She said you can't change the truth. Maybe, but you sure can cover it with a pile of bullshit.

The more conspiratorial side of me just thinks they really don't want this tech out. They really don't want it out.
Filming starts on a Sybil Frontline special staring Paul McHugh in 3, 2, 1...

[Wombaticus Rex]

Gross, gross, gross. The fact there is so much writing like this in circulation says something about the derrangement of language itself.

[Simulist]

Gross, gross, gross. The fact there is so much writing like this in circulation says something about the derrangement of language itself.

I'm not understanding your point, Wombaticus Rex — partially because shit like this article makes me see red (and smell brown) and partially because I really don't see how this matter really concerns "the derangement of language" nearly as much as I think it is about a deranged culture that will not tolerate certain facts that don't mesh with its officially-sanctioned narrative.

The officially-sanctioned narrative in this culture allows less and less for the already-marginalized. And I can think of few groups of people who have been marginalized more than trauma survivors who have Dissociative Identity Disorder.

[DrEvil]

Let me clarify what I was trying to say :
I'm not disputing the fact that people with multiple personalities exist (as I clearly said in my previous post), or the causes of it (childhood abuse etc.).
I merely pointed out that someone at some point in time (for instance "Sybil" & Co.) might have cooked up a story for the sole purpose of advancing their careers/make lots of money.
Just because someone actually has multiple personalities doesn't mean that no one, ever, will lie about it for personal gain.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Simulist: what you said, yes. Ed Zachary.

[Searcher08]

In a few weeks time there will probably be an expose from the Daily Mail going into the living hell of a mum with a teenage DID daughter and talking about the issues in having it treated seriously etc etc.

When I read this article I burst out laughing. Why? Because the Daily Mail as a paper HAS total MPD.
You can read articles on pages 5-6 railing against benefit scroungers then 6-7 about the hell of being unemployed. It features some of the worst fascistic eye-rollin toot printed and some hardball real journalism. I have a friend who campaigned against it cos of this shit
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/artic ... ath--.html
as reported here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/200 ... ok-twitter

Lynn, FWIW, I think as many people far more will be drawn to finding out more about this
subject because of this - and often on the Comments section "Daily Mail Reporter" by-lines are greeted with howls of disdain and cowardice. Take one side of a story and make shit the fuck up about it - anonymously mostly, or just print howlingly biased copy and print truth later as a 'balance'.


For lighter relief laugh remember those fabulous 1990's?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mediamo ... -mail-tory

Here is some beauty for your day...