Sybil (70's mulitple personality story) was a complete fabrication (Salon)

[banned from Kos]

http://www.salon.com/2011/10/16/sybil_exposed_memory_lies_and_therapy/singleton/

Anyone that grew up in the 70's knows this story. The book sold 7 million copies and spawned a series starring Sally Field.

This news is about a week old so it may have been covered here - but its shocker for someone who lived in that time. Maybe you've seen this - maybe like me you hadn't.

[seabeyond]

1. good. i read it as a fiction back then, when i was a kid... nt

[KansDem]

2. I had not heard this news. My other personalities might have though...

I'll check with them...

[proud2BlibKansan]

3. lol!!!

[RebelOne]

9. I thought it was fiction also. Even the movie. n/t

[Luminous Animal]

4. When my mom gave me the book to read she told me that it was fun fiction!

I remember her arguing with some of the neighborhood women about it. I wish I could tell my mom that she was right!

[bananas]

5. The Patty Duke Show?

[kestrel91316]

6. Oh dear. That's shameful. Buncha con artists.

[loyalsister]

7. I believed it at the time

But when I studied Psychology in college, I realized it was fiction.

[nebenaube]

20. Was it fiction when the same techniques Sybil was subjected to showed up

in the Church Committee report on CIA activities surrounding the MK-Ultra program?

[Riftaxe]

23. Which tenet of that soft science did it violate?

Half the fun of a soft science is making it up as you go along.

Now the profit$ come from getting some gullible fool to believe it.

[loyalsister]

26. well

I discovered the tendency to sensationalize mental illness and how that has led to the derisive ignorance that demeans people who have mental illnesses.
No psychologist or psychiatrist with any sense of ethics would have written a book so demeaning that it led to a desperate soap opera plot line.

[dragonlady]

8. The author was on NPR's Science Friday yesterday

Very interesting. There were also two other psychiatrists who strenuously defended the work of the doctor who was portrayed in the original book. It sounded as if they might come to blows with the author if they hadn't been on the telephone.

http://sciencefriday.com/

[spanone]

17. i heard that. made me question the credibility of the author.....???

[MrMickeysMom]

37. I listened to it, too... I felt there was an agenda against science and MPD

People should listen to it, and I think they'll pick up on who had the agenda here. I thought the guy was a believer in Scientology, which would insist MPD was non-existent.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

10. Sheesh. Anything for a buck, huh? nt

[BlueIris]

11. I was shocked to find this out. And I really hope it doesn't damage

the credibility of the MPD/DID diagnosis, which I think is a real, valid mental health issue that brings its victims a lot of suffering.

How can people...fake such serious things?

[KittyWampus]

14. the doctor perscribed sodium pentathol and one other addictive drug>

both of which the woman was getting way too much of.

The story is, she recanted the whole thing as fabrication but didn't want to get cut off from the doctor.

[BrendaBrick]

16. It is VERY REAL

thanks for your post BlueIris.

[BlueIris]

18. I know it is. I also believe it to be far more widespread than is currently known.

http://www.amazon.com/STRANGER-MIRROR-Dissociation-Hidden-Epidemic/dp/0060195649

[Warren DeMontague]

22. I think it's widespread on DU.

I've witnessed it in action.

[Mimosa]

12. It sounds like the 'Sybil Exposed' author also has an agenda

There are some things mentioned in the Salon article which make me doubt whether Sybil's MPD was completely fabricated. I don't feel like going into it in detail here.

Perhaps Ms. Mason's doctor encouraged an exaggeration of the multiple personalities. I don't think we can know for certain based on a few papers. From what I'd studied, severely bused children have often coped with the torment of abuses by dividing themselves and developing a protective alter personality. I'd sort of seen it in the case of a distant relative who grew up in a chaotic home with substance abusers.

[woo me with science]

13. Glad this is getting press.

Many, many families devastated by this garbage.

[Warren DeMontague]

15. multiple personalities ARE REAL!!!

I get into arguments with em all the friggin' time.

[aikoaiko]

24. In all fairness, many psychiatrists and psychologists have been making the case against widespead...

...MPD and DID diagnoses.


I'm glad that journalism is doing its job to document the outrageous exaggerations and fabrications.

[aikoaiko]

25. In all fairness, many psychiatrists and psychologists have been making the case against widespead...

...MPD and DID diagnoses.


I'm glad that journalism is doing its job to document the outrageous exaggerations and fabrications.

[Ikonoklast]

28. Which one of you posted that?

:hide:

[MedicalAdmin]

30. I wonder if one ofthe symptoms is that they NEVER answer questions.

They only ask them and make acusations.

I'm going to town with one right now in another thread.

[Warren DeMontague]

32. there are people (individuals, presumably) with that debating 'style'

but there is definitely some funny bunny bizness that goes on too.



Every once in a while you'll see someone defending an outnumbered position that has widespread, general opposition and numerous well-thought out philosophical arguments presented against it, suddenly being flooded with 'backup; as if, say,

a hive has been whacked. :think:

[MedicalAdmin]

33. Good point.

And great pics. I love the sock bunny. Are they from google pics?

[Warren DeMontague]

35. yep.

google image search. I don't know what I did before it.

[undergroundpanther]

19. well my case

Of DID isn't fake,in fact it's a very hard way to live,it's scary ,painful and it makes functioning in life harder. I forget shit, it takes me around 6 months to connect names to faces on and on.Flashbacks are terrifying.My body has been hurt from the levels of stress I deal with.

It is a psychiatric injury. Stress injuries can show up in an MRI. And the Jokes that demean people with this problem on this thread are not funny they're cruel.
--
Recent studies have shown that victims of childhood abuse and combat veterans actually experience physical changes to the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in learning and memory, as well as in the handling of stress.(5) The hippocampus also works closely with the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain that regulates our emotional response to fear and stress. PTSD sufferers often have impairments in one or both of these brain regions. Studies of children have found that these impairments can lead to problems with learning and academic achievement.

Other typical symptoms of PTSD in children, including fragmentation of memory, intrusive memories, flashbacks, dissociation (or the unconscious separation of some mental processes from the others, e.g., a mismatch between facial expression and thought or mood), and pathological ("sick") emotions, may also be related to impairment of the hippocampus.(6) Damage to the hippocampus, which processes memory, may explain why victims of childhood abuse often seem to have incomplete or delayed recall of their abusive experiences.(7)
--
http://www.thedoctorwillseeyounow.com/content/stress/art1964.html
http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/dissociative-identity-disorder-multiple-personality-disorder

It's very hard to be in a place where you can just say "It doesn't matter." But, really, I think this is the answer. If we can trust in our own experience and keep working at trying to make sense of it, then this is all we can ask of ourselves. It's not for others to judge our experience or tell us it isn't so. There is a lot of suffering that those of us with dissociative disorders have to come to terms with; but the suffering doesn't lessen by forcing yourself to believe that your internal experience isn't real. Just because it doesn't manifest itself in a simple blood test, doesn't mean it's not real. I like to think our job is to work at becoming more whole. We can have a chance at doing this only if we acknowledge our internal reality. Our internal truth.

Others will debate it for many years to come. Let them do that. And let us heal!

http://www.mindparts.org/2010/01/is-dissociative-identity-disor.html

[BrendaBrick]

29. I believe you.

And you are right about the MRI: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhM0xp5vXqY&feature=related

Also, I would like to add this:

In one of his most unhinged rants yet, hate radio show host Rush Limbaugh argued that the revelation that a famous book about multiple-personality disorder is a hoax means that “nothing is real,” including global warming. “Sybil” was an influential 1973 book written for a popular audience that told of a psychiatrist’s client with “multiple personality disorder.” The book influenced the field of psychoanalysis for years. By the 1990s, questions were raised about the veracity of the tale, and a new book by Debbie Nathan, Sybil Exposed, fully debunks the story, after thousands of people were mistreated.

In today’s show, Limbaugh took this news to mean that all institutions are part of a global “liberal” conspiracy, including climate science:

Rest of this nonsense here: http://www.nationofchange.org/limbaugh-says-global-warming-occupy-wall-street-part-sybil-conspiracy-nothing-real-1318947479

Yeah, right. Nothing is real!

[Warren DeMontague]

21. that 'recovered memory' industry fucked up a lot of lives

I mean, except for the people who really WERE involved in ritualized childhood satanic abuse involving Elvis, Aliens, and Louie the XIVth.

[BrendaBrick]

27. Documentary: Multiple Personality Disorder by Michael Mierendorf

Collaboration with Gloria Steinem. Part of the "American Undercover" series which is an original production of HBO.

I would respectfully ask those who doubt this disorder to watch this documentary with an open heart and mind:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1078314996890815904

Some information about Michael Mierendorf:

http://www.mierendorf.com/productions.htm

Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of overcoming it ~ Helen Keller

[SheilaT]

31. Interesting. I had thought that it was only

partially fabricated.

When I first read the book I was totally taken in by it, but have long since had various questions in my own mind about it.

[BrendaBrick]

36. I don't think you are alone on that...

about the skepticism. It IS a hard thing to try and wrap your head around...the enormous lengths and measures that are had in trying to handle or cope with abuse so horrific that the mind develops these creative mechanisms in which to try and survive.

For those that actually undergo this, it is hard enough to try and comes to terms with this in and of itself and it saddens me when a book such as Nathan's get such widespread attention as to try and debunk what is truly a reality for some on the issue of MPD/DID as a whole.

It is interesting to note her reviews thus far on Amazon:

15 Reviews:
5 star: (6)
4 star: (1)
3 star: (0)
2 star: (1)
1 star: (7)...interesting comments made by some.

For me, I think the larger question is that childhood abuse DOES HAVE long-term, long-lasting affects and that is not really a subject that gets much attention or credence...more along the lines (to quote Al Gore) "An(other) Inconvenient Truth".

[Skidmore]

34. I wouldn't call it a shocker now. This has been public information

for at least a decade. I remember reading article about it quite a while back.