Sybil exposed : the extraordinary story behind the famous multiple personality case / by Debbie Nathan.

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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, 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--Sybil's psychiatrist often brought an electroshock machine to Sybil's apartment and climbed into bed with her while administering the treatment-- to calculated business decisions (under an entity they named Sybil, Inc., the women signed a contract designating a three-way split of profits from the book and its spin-offs, including board games, tee shirts, and dolls), 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 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 examined all of it and provides 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.

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

While this book lacks elegant prose, it more than compensates for this shortcoming by its captivating subject and Nathan's (Satan's Silence: Ritual Abuse and the Making of a Modern American Witch Hunt) clever presentation-it is riveting. This book uncovers facets of Sybil's history even more bizarre than her spectacular multiple personalities. Nathan explores the upbringing and early psychological problems of Shirley Mason, who was later memorialized by Flora Schreiber in the best-selling Sybil. In seeking psychiatric treatment, Mason became a lifelong patient of Dr. Connie Wilbur, a psychiatrist who supposedly cured Shirley/Sybil by integrating all 16 disparate personalities. In the end, the confluence of characters-Mason, the ambitious Dr. Wilbur, and the equally ambitious author Schreiber-creates a story even stranger than that of "Sybil" herself, as their interpersonal dynamics hurtle well beyond dysfunctional. VERDICT Excellent for general readers interested in psychiatry, especially those fascinated by Truddi Chase's When Rabbit Howls or, of course, by Sybil herself.-Lynne F. Maxwell, Villanova Sch. of Law, PA (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

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. (Dec.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

Much continues to be written about multiple personality disorder (MPD), now renamed dissociative identity disorder. Without much effort, readers can find information about the clinical phenomenology of MPD. It is the cases the personal stories that have etched MPD into the popular culture. Although the book Sybil was published in 1973, the name Sybil is still synonymous with this disorder. Now, award-winning journalist Nathan meticulously turns the iconic case on its head. To some degree, this is investigative journalism at its best. After all, who among us isn't fascinated by the myths, controversies, and comments that continue to accompany the story of Shirley Ardell Mason, aka Sybil ? Readers interested in popular culture and in the mental-health profession will not be disappointed. Neither will readers interested in following an unusual story back to its roots. Nathan does not attempt to provide a broad grounding in the recognition and treatment of MPD. Regardless, this much is clear: research evidence shows that MPD is quite common, and dissociation is a common feature of many other psychiatric disorders.--Watstein, Sarah Copyright 2010 Booklist

Kirkus Book Review

Nathan (Pornography, 2007, etc.) claims that the subject of the 1973 international bestseller,Sybil by Flora Schreiber, and the blockbuster film that followed, was a deliberate fabrication that not only fooled a mass popular audience but shaped the practice of psychiatry, opening the door to mass hysteria and misdiagnosis.The author first made her mark in 1995 with Satan's Silence,an expos of hysterical complaints that young children were being abused by Satanists and false charges of ritual child abuseallegations that were apparently substantiated but proved to be false. Her latest book illuminates how the American cultural climate that made the claims seem credible had been shaped by the earlier mythological account of a young woman with 16 alternate personalities, who suffered from a multiple personality disorder brought on by her mother's brutally abusive treatment. Before the publication ofSybil, the number of diagnosed cases was in the hundreds, while afterward the number jumped to around 40,000. While the Sybil story began to come under attack in the '90s despite attempts to hide the subject's real name (Shirley Mason) and disguise her hometown, the strength of this book is the way in which Nathan re-creates the context in which this blatant literary fraud succeededthe frustrations faced by ambitious young women postWorld War II and the drugs then used to treat mental patients in the '50s, many of whom were women. The author explores the co-dependent relationship between Mason and her exploitative psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur, which began in 1947 and continued intermittently until their death. While Mason became increasing disoriented by drugs administered by Wilbur, the psychiatrist claimed that she was revealing multiple personalities. Her collaboration with Schreiber, to whom she gave falsified clinical records, brought her celebrity while continuing the victimization of Mason.A nuanced, not-entirely-unsympathetic account of the women who perpetrated a sensational literary fraud.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.