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Sybil Exposed

The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case

Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
1 of 1 copy available
SYBIL: A name that conjures up enduring fascination for legions of obsessed fans who followed the nonfiction blockbuster from 1973 and the TV movie based on it—starring Sally Field and Joanne Woodward—about a woman named Sybil with sixteen different personalities. Sybil became both a pop phenomenon and a revolutionary force in the psychotherapy industry. The book rocketed multiple personality disorder (MPD) into public consciousness and played a major role in having the diagnosis added to the psychiatric bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
But what do we really know about how Sybil came to be? In her news-breaking book Sybil Exposed, journalist Debbie Nathan gives proof that the allegedly true story was largely fabricated. The actual identity of Sybil (Shirley Mason) has been available for some years, as has the idea that the book might have been exaggerated. But in Sybil Exposed, Nathan reveals what really powered the legend: a trio of women—the willing patient, her ambitious shrink, and the imaginative journalist who spun their story into bestseller gold.
From horrendously irresponsible therapeutic practices to calculated business decisions, the story Nathan unfurls is full of over-the-top behavior. Sybil's psychiatrist, driven by undisciplined idealism and galloping professional ambition, subjected the young woman to years of antipsychotics, psychedelics, uppers, and downers, including an untold number of injections with Pentothal, once known as "truth serum" but now widely recognized to provoke fantasies. It was during these "treatments" that Sybil produced the rambling, garbled, and probably "false memory"–based narratives of the hideous child abuse that her psychiatrist said caused her MPD.
Sybil Exposed uses investigative journalism to tell a fascinating tale that reads like fiction but is fact. Nathan has followed an enormous trail of papers, records, photos, and tapes to unearth the lives and passions of these three women. The Sybil archive became available to the public only recently, and Nathan is the first person to have examined all of it and to provide proof that the story was an elaborate fraud—albeit one that the perpetrators may have half-believed.
Before Sybil was published, there had been fewer than 200 known cases of MPD; within just a few years after, more than 40,000 people would be diagnosed with it. Set across the twentieth century and rooted in a time when few professional roles were available to women, this is a story of corrosive sexism, unchecked ambition, and shaky theories of psychoanalysis exuberantly and drastically practiced. It is the story of how one modest young woman's life turned psychiatry on its head and radically changed the course of therapy, and our culture, as well.
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    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from September 19, 2011
      Journalist Nathan (Satan’s Silence) has spent much of her career writing about child sex abuse panics and debunking “recovered memory syndromes,” in which adults—aided by over-zealous therapists—suddenly “recalled” episodes of childhood abuse. Here, she tackles one of the most famous of these cases: that of the multiple-personality sufferer known to the world as “Sybil”—the subject of the 1970s bestseller and a TV special starring Sally Field and Joanne Woodward (who starred in Three Faces of Eve, an earlier film of multiple personality). In this startling exposé, she examines the records author Flora Rheta Schreiber left with the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, detailing Schreiber’s research into the unusual case of the frail, troubled Shirley Mason—the real Sybil. The extensive therapy transcripts reveal that Mason’s psychiatrist, Dr. Connie Wilbur, may have cued “memories” of horrific childhood abuse during marathon hypnotherapy and electroshock sessions supplemented with mind-altering drugs. Nathan traces the paths of the three women—the patient, the doctor, and the author who publicized the case—who formed “Sybil Incorporated.” Along the way, she reasons that the concept of the multiplicity of selves—and the subsequent popularity of the diagnosis—may have become the perfect idiom of distress for a generation of women who, rocked by the feminist revolution, felt confusion at their new and conflicting roles. Leveling a steady eye on her oft-sensationalized subject, Nathan serves up a tale just as shocking as the famed original.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      April 30, 2012
      Made famous by the publication of Flora Rheta Schreiber’s Sybil, Shirley Mason (aka Sybil) allegedly possessed 16 unique personalities, a condition for which she was treated by psychoanalyst Cornelia Wilbur. This book by Nathan suggests that Mason may have been far less disturbed than initially reported—and that, in fact, her “illness” was the product of a collaborative fabrication, dreamed up by Wilbur, Schreiber, and Mason herself. Marguerite Gann provides this audio edition with strong, declarative narration that suits the thorny subject matter. When inhabiting one of Mason’s personalities or capturing the fraught relationship between Mason, Wilbur, and Schreiber, the narrator shines, varying her vocal tone and creating significant drama. However, during more straightforward passages, Gann’s performance is markedly less compelling. Still, this is a fascinating audiobook that will interest listeners fascinated with the human psyche. A Free Press hardcover.

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