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Erin Reads: Sybil Exposed
Had an attack of morbid curiosity, and decided to read this book.
(It’s the big exposé of how Sybil, supposedly a therapy memoir that became one of the most-publicized cases of MPD/DID, was a pack of lies. Discussion of trauma and medical/therapy abuse ahead.)
…It would be better titled Sybil’s Psychiatrist Exposed, because that’s the heart of the problem. And, listen, props to the book for understanding that! Because I’ve seen similar things try to blame the patients, but this never left me feeling like “Shirley Ann Mason’s doctor drugged, manipulated, and controlled her in all kinds of ways” was supposed to be anyone’s fault except the doctor’s.
One thing that really stuck out, though. The writer, Debbie Nathan, comes down on the side of DID itself being a sham…but she did a ton of in-depth research on Mason, including personal interviews with people who knew her growing up…and she includes anecdotes like this:
Soon imaginary friends started visiting Shirley—Vicky, whose family was Catholic but gentle and honest, and little Sam, whose name came from Shirley’s initials: S.A.M. Immersed in fantasies, she forgot the long, grim hours of her family’s day of rest.
While still in her fantasy world, she often heard scolding outside. It came from [her mother] Mattie, who was angry that Shirley had just done or said something objectionable. Shirley came to, unable to remember doing anything wrong. “I did not!” she would protest, and Mattie grew angrier. “I stood right there and heard you, young lady!” she would yell, and warn Shirley about “talking back to your mother like that.” Shirley would slink off, confused and angry. Her parents would laugh at her “pouting.” (10)
Would Mason have gotten a DID diagnosis after all, if she was being treated in 2025 by a qualified, ethical therapist? No way to know.
Did she have some kind of Dissociative Thing going on, that existed long before she met Dr. Wilbur, and that a qualified, ethical psychiatrist could’ve helped her with? Sure sounds like yes!
(Bonus note: There are cases of Dr. Wilbur elevating things like “Mason having mood shifts without describing herself as a separate person” into “actually, surprise, that’s a new alter you just got.” But Nathan didn’t find evidence of that being the case for the first few. Peggy Lou and Vicky both spontaneously showed up to appointments in place of Shirley, and introduced themselves.)
The big memorable feature of Sybil-the-book is the all the abuse, recounted in lurid graphic detail, which Mason supposedly recovered during sessions of being dosed with sodium pentothal. Some sessions were taped; Sybil Exposed includes some transcripts. There’s a painful amount of Dr. Wilbur just going “I bet that symptom means your mother did X. When did she do X? Now, did she also do Y? Ah, you said a couple vague words, that’s a description of how your mother did Y.”
So that’s awful.
And: when Nathan is writing up her fact-based, well-corroborated alternate account of Mason’s childhood…she talks about things that sound genuinely painful, even traumatic! There’s a harrowing experience of being restrained and sedated at the dentist, there’s religious abuse, there are deaths in her close family, her mother has some kind of undiagnosed-but-severe Depression Thing, she herself has chronic physical symptoms from a vitamin deficiency that doesn’t get properly treated for decades.
Would all that have left the adult Mason with ongoing trauma-induced dissociation? Maybe, maybe not. Would it have left her with some messy emotional struggles that an ethical psychiatrist could’ve helped her work through? Probably, yeah!
I bet it even would’ve made a good, compelling, highly-readable memoir.
It just wouldn’t have made Sybil. Which means it wasn’t salacious enough, or profitable enough, for this terrible, terrible doctor.
no subject
I too tried to read this book and was kinda taken in by it... but I’m not sure how much I can trust Debbie Nathan since she’s on the National Center for Reason and Justice, which argues, IIRC, that most accusations of child abuse are trumped up and fights for the release of even people whose crimes are well-documented, like Father Shanley. I have no trouble believing there was therapeutic abuse involved with Sybil, but Nathan herself has lied and distorted enough in other works that I would want to go over her claims really thoroughly. (It’s actually why I didn’t finish the book: the level of fact-checking I felt obliged to do was Too Much, similar to the Colin Ross problem.)
The NCRJ website doesn’t work on my broken old smartphone, but I can dig through my stuff and find other records for this on paper if you want; I own a miserable academic 500-page bookslab originally made to refute one of her other books, Satan’s Silence.
no subject
And there was one point where I knew offhand that she was wrong on the facts. (She thought that all the headmates in The Dissociation Of A Personality were adults the same age as their body, even though one was a 14-year-old.)
So with all that, it was really noticeable when Nathan included details that didn't forward her agenda. If Sybil had childhood traumas and dissociative-sounding symptoms that even the "child abuse and DID don't real" journalist is acknowledging...that much of Sybil's backstory is probably true, you know?
I'm not going to end up reading a 500-page bookslab (I don't plan on reading Satan's Silence itself, either), but if you have any shorter things on the topic to rec, I would check them out!
no subject
Will dig into my sources when I get a chance. I admit, it gets all tangled and sucked into the Memory Wars stuff, so it’s possible I’m giving her a bad shake. She DID comment to me once online, which was weird.
Thank you for finishing the book so I don’t have to! :p
no subject
Happy to be of service XD
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Also I am sorry, two disasters have cropped up within two days of each other and I am not up to digging through Debbie Nathan stuff on top of that.
no subject
No pressure at all, best of luck wrangling that!