When the book SYBIL was published in 1973, fewer than 200 people worldwide had ever been diagnosed with what would come to be known as Multiple Personality Syndrome.
By 1980 – a mere seven years later – Multiple Personality Syndrome would earn its official stamp of approval and be listed for the first time by the American Medical Association as a recognised psychiatric condition.
Soon mental health professionals would be diagnosing thousands of cases a year.
Still in print today, the book and a 1976 made for tv movie (aired over 2 consecutive nights in November of that year and watched by one fifth of the then American population) became a cultural phenomena and briefly chganged the course of psychiatric history.
According to Debbie Nathan however, author of the 2011 book SYBIL EXPOSED, the claims of multiple personality existing within the real-life person SYBIL was based on, a young woman named Shirley Mason (1923 – 1998), were fabrications, created largely by therapist suggestion and encouraged to take hold by Shirley’s psychiatrist Dr Connie Wilbur.
These fabrications, exaggerations and false memories were then packaged together to make a sellable story by writer Flora Schreiber (1918 – 1988) author of the 1973 bestseller (sales in excess of six million copies) SYBIL.
Together the three woman – patient Shirley – psychiatrist Dr Wilbur – and journalist Flora Schreiber – according to investigative writer Debbie Nathan – formed an unholy sisterhood to manufacture and market a fresh face for ‘mental illness’ the 1970’s public could not look away from and which became a cashcow on the most monumental of scales – one that kept on giving right up until the 1990’s.
Multiple Personality Syndrome became a dangerous fad. By the early 1990’s there were thousands of people, in every sizeable community in the United States and Canada in treatment for MPD.
‘Memoirs’ written by ‘multiples’ began appearing in bookstores –
There were SYBIL t-shirts, SYBIL dolls, SYBIL the Musical and SYBIL board games. Magazines like MANY VOICES to which multiples could contribute poems and artwork appeared.
The movie and book became so iconic, the educational publisher SCHOLASTIC even developed a SYBIL lesson plan for use in High Schools.
Teenagers were instructed to “Write a discussion in dialogue form between two or more sides of your personality. Name them as Sybil named hers. Try to indicate why you are more ‘together’ than Sybil”.
Talk show queen Oprah Winfrey devoted numerous shows to the MPD phenomena.
Courts even began admitting testimony from people’s ‘alters’ and celebrities like Roseanne Barr jumped on board claiming to have multiple personalities.
For a while, near on two decades infact, the Multiple Personality Disorder ‘industry’, if you could call it that, went literally ‘gangbusters’; gathering steam and credibility as thousands of psycho-therapists signed up to diagnose tens of thousands of patients and literally millions of words were devoted to discussing psychiatry’s ‘next big thing’ .
That was until the big pushback against MPD. Eventually the floodgates would open and skeptics worldwide would gain a voice.
When that happened, MPD’s days as the ‘in vogue’ mental illness Hollywood had found so easy to dramatise and unwittingly glamorise, were numbered.
Miss the first three installments? You can find them HERE – HERE – and HERE
Well, I didn’t think it could get any worse, Glen, beyond the psychiatrist breaking all rules of professionalism due to ego and greed. But then a journalist joined in?! No wonder we have no idea who’s telling the truth. Did we ever?! lol I love how they had “Sybil lessons” in schools and told the kids to write from their other personalities. OMFG! lol Thanks for relitigating Sybil and highlighting all these fascinating insights and facts!
It is pretty fascinating, isn’t it! Could it happen again today? One would think there are so many more checks and balances and rules and regulations governing the professions now that something like this could never take place again. But I’ve learnt from experience to, as the old saying goes, never say never. Final instalment coming tomorrow!