Lifestyle
Author Pens New Book Maintaining Sybil’s Personality Disorder Was a Lie
“Sybil,” written by Flora Rheta Schreiber in 1973, sold 7 million copies early on in its production and even sparked a television mini-series featuring Sally Field in 1976. People were fascinated by Sybil (her real name was Shirley Mason), a woman with 16 different personalities. The book thrust multiple personality disorder into the spotlight and according to NPR, “within a few years of its publication, reported cases of multiple personality disorder — now known as dissociative identity disorder — leaped from fewer than 100 to thousands.”
Now, NPR and the New York Post are reporting that a new book by Debbie Nathan debunks the whole story. In “Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case,” Nathan says that through uncovered letters she found that Mason wrote she was faking all of the personalities. In the meantime, Mason’s therapist, Cornelia “Connie” Wilbur, decided she wanted to make Mason the subject of a book. She dismissed Mason’s note and kept moving forward, gaining notoriety for her work, and eventually, she began working with Schreiber to make more money on the story.
NPR writes that Wilbur routinely injected Mason with sodium pentothal as a “truth serum,” which is when she would hallucinate the multiple personalities. Overall, Nathan’s exposé on “Sybil” is a far cry from the subjects the original book explored.
