Was Sybil a psychiatrist's creation?, page 1
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Topic started on 21-10-2011 @ 11:49 AM by Maxmars
As a young man, I watched a movie, Sybil. This movie both shocked and surprised me. The harrowing and tortuous experiences of a patient with multiple-personality disorder (now known as "dissociative identity disorder") and the implied causes of the disease were distressing to watch; but fascinating nevertheless. A schizophrenic and brutal mother causes a plethora of personalities (16) whose existence torments the young patient.

I was never able to find the time to read the book upon which the movie was based, but I recently discovered an article which I found equally surprising.

Was Sybil a psychiatrist's creation?

In the article, which is intended to spark interest in a new book, "Sybil Exposed" by Debbie Nathan; exposes a rather interesting perspective; namely that it was fiction.

(Emphasis mine)

But according to investigative journalist Debbie Nathan, the story of Sybil has one big problem: it's mostly bunk.

In Sybil Exposed, Nathan, famous for her exposés on "recovered memory syndrome", goes through the story, claim by claim, with a fine-toothed comb. It's a massive undertaking of research that teases apart fact from fiction to reveal an even more interesting and educational account of, not 16, but just three personalities: the author, Flora Schreiber, the psychiatrist, Cornelia Wilbur, and "Sybil", Shirley Mason.


Apparently, what we may have in the story of Sybil is one of the earlier cases of creative medical reporting and Hollywood re-engineering of events to make a compelling (and Emmy-winning) tale.

What Nathan found among the archives was "shocking but utterly absorbing", she says. Mason's 16 personalities had not appeared spontaneously as they do in the book and movie, but were "provoked over many years of rogue treatment that violated practically every ethical standard of practice for mental health practitioners", she writes.

This is quite a firebomb to throw into a heated battle that started in the late 1990s and is still being fought today. The lines are drawn between whether MPD, since renamed dissociative identity disorder, exists as an artefact of post-traumatic stress disorder, as its own unique illness, or if it is merely the product of wishful, reinforcing therapy and willing clientele.


Now we all know the popularity of hypnotic regression therapy and it's prominent place in other 'alternative' topics. This story has many ramifications for that entire field of applied hypnotherapy.

Nathan uses direct quotes from the actual psychoanalysis session transcripts, excerpts from Mason's diaries, and Schreiber's author notes to provide fascinating insights into how these three women turned sickness and desire into a business.

When Wilbur, an ambitious female psychiatrist in a field packed with men, found Mason, an attention-starved and admiring patient, it was not long before they were engaged in a twisted parent-child kind of relationship. Nathan shows how Wilbur supplied her patient with attention and affection, and Mason eagerly performed whatever dance seemed to please Wilbur most.


Apparently, even the central character in real life seems to indicate that the reality differs greatly from the story as it is commonly held by the 'viewing/reading public.

At one point Mason wrote a letter attempting to confess to Wilbur that she had invented these personalities. She also asked that they stop "demonizing" her mother - who Wilbur had cast as a vicious abuser but who Nathan suggests was just religiously strict and emotionally unpredictable. Wilbur dismissed the letter as a defence mechanism, and her patient, desperate not to lose the doctor's interest, continued the charade. Soon after, the two women met Schreiber, who spun their story into the profitable and sexy legend we know today.


I hope you find this as interesting as I did.

Thanks for reading.
edit on 21-10-2011 by Maxmars because: (no reason given)



reply posted on 21-10-2011 @ 12:50 PM by supine
reply to post by Maxmars


I do think it's a result of suffering from PTSD.

A person who has been extremely abused has to be able to adapt to whatever an abuser throws at them, thus becoming a very good at acting, or playing a role to keep the peace, or themselves out of harms way. It's a defense mechanism to deal with abuse. Abusers aren't always apparent, and if anybody would be good at it, I think that a psychiatrist would be the best at playing mind games, especially with an already fragile person.

I think the psychiatrist in this case, took the ball and ran with it, to the point of being an abuser too, because it seems to me that Sybil just told her whatever she wanted to hear, just for the attention factor alone.


reply posted on 21-10-2011 @ 02:07 PM by chasingbrahman
I was first made aware of the controversies surrounding DID (back then it was just MPD) while in a 9th grade class on human behavior (a light introduction to psychology). This heated debate, continuing 20 years later, is what got me interested in pursuing psychology in my undergraduate studies.

The classic elements of defense mechanisms are firmly in place in the handful of "proven" DID cases. There is always a history of severe abuse. Identity is a fluid concept, particularly during childhood, and may allow for victims to compartmentalize abusive situations. The idea behind these personalities is that they are formed in an attempt to protect the victim's identity, thereby allowing the victim to have no conscious memory of abuse, and forming a new identity who copes with the abuse for them. Typically presenting by the age of four, it's representive of a child's tendency to create a fantasy world.

What I found particularly persuasive in contemplating this as truly existing is the phenomena of physical changes a DID patient undergoes when moving from one personality to the next, often called the "switch". When alters (the different personalities) appear, they may change from being right-handed to being left-handed. Their vocabularies change - and as important as these changes is the fact that they're consistent. Lying is taxing, and the body always leaks a lie.

On the flip-side, the mind is powerful (which I realize can argue both sides). Children aim to please authority figures (and if they don't, hell there's even a diagnosis for that called "oppositional disorder") - and I can see a child being easily influenced by a caretaking figure with several degrees. It could become the child's self-fulfiling prophecy to personify a therapist's "diagnosis". Want a kid with behavior trouble? Tell them they're bad over and over. Works like a charm. The self-fulfilling prophecy may even be what's behind the increase during the 80's in this diagnosis - it was first included in the DSM-IIIR during that time as a legitimate psychological state. Reminding you of autism yet?

I always wondered why someone diagnosed with this disorder wasn't hooked up to an MRI to determine which areas of the brain were activated during a switch, whether the changes were consistent, and how often the right hemisphere is accessed during a switch (indicating the employment of creativity, as opposed to objective recall which would light up the left hemisphere). Neuroimaging has been used to determine certain commonalities among sufferers, but I want to know how much they're accessing the creative centers of the brain during a switch. IMO, this is where the answer lies. I'm not so comfortable relying on patient/therapist perception - I'd leave this to old-school science. Therapists/psychologists/counselors are some of the most disturbed individuals I've ever come across.


reply posted on 21-10-2011 @ 02:24 PM by Maxmars
reply to post by chasingbrahman


Brilliant! I will be scouting around for right-left brain activity changes during 'episode onset'..... I hope I can find something. Fascinating input.... thank you.
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