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From Wikipedia (Accessed 1-20-14):
Shirley Ardell Mason (January 25, 1923 – February 26, 1998) was an American psychiatric patient and commercial artist who was reputed to have multiple personality disorder, now called dissociative identity disorder. Her life was fictionalized in 1973 in the book Sybil, and two films of the same name were made in 1976 and 2007. Both the book and the films used the name Sybil Isabel Dorsett to protect Mason's identity, though the 2007 remake stated Mason's name at its conclusion.
Mason was born and raised in Dodge Center, Minnesota, the only child of Walter Mason (a carpenter and architect) and Martha Alice "Mattie" Hageman. In regard to Mason's mother: "...many people in Dodge Center say Mattie" — "Hattie" in the book — "was bizarre," according to Bettie Borst Christensen, who grew up across the street. "She had a witch-like laugh....She didn't laugh much, but when she did, it was like a screech." Christensen remembers Mason's mother walking around after dark, looking in the neighbors' windows. At one point, Mason's mother was reportedly diagnosed with schizophrenia.[1]
In the early 1950s, Mason was a substitute teacher and a student at Columbia University. She had long suffered from blackouts and emotional breakdowns, and finally entered psychotherapy with Cornelia B. Wilbur, a Freudian psychiatrist. Their sessions together are the basis of the book.
From 1968-1973, she taught art at Rio Grande College, in Rio Grand, Ohio (now the University of Rio Grande).
Some people in Mason's home town, reading the book, recognized Mason as Sybil. By that time, Mason had severed nearly all ties with her past and was living in West Virginia. She later moved to Lexington, Kentucky, where she lived near Dr. Wilbur. She taught art classes at a community college and ran an art gallery out of her home for many years.[1][2]
Wilbur diagnosed Mason with breast cancer in 1990, and she declined treatment; it later went into remission. The following year Wilbur developed Parkinson's disease and Mason moved into Wilbur's house to take care of her until Wilbur's death in 1992. Mason died of breast cancer on February 26, 1998.[1]
Flora Rheta Schreiber's novel Sybil told a fictionalized version of Mason's story. The book stated that Mason had multiple personalities as a result of severe child sexual abuse at the hands of her mother, whom her psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur believed had been schizophrenic.[3] The book was made into a TV-movie, starring Sally Field and Joanne Woodward, in 1976. The movie was remade in 2007 with Jessica Lange and Tammy Blanchard as Sybil.
Mason's diagnosis has been challenged. Psychiatrist Herbert Spiegel saw Mason for several sessions while Wilbur was on vacation, and felt that Wilbur was manipulating Mason into behaving as though she had multiple personalities when she did not. Spiegel suspected Wilbur of having publicized Mason's case for financial gain. According to Spiegel, Wilbur's client was a hysteric, but did not show signs of multiple personalities; in fact, he later stated that Mason denied to him that she was "multiple", but claimed that Wilbur wanted her to "be" people. Spiegel confronted Wilbur, who responded that the publisher would not publish the book unless it was what she said it was.[4]
Spiegel revealed that he possessed audio tapes in which Wilbur tells Mason about some of the other personalities she has already seen in prior sessions. Spiegel believes these tapes are the "smoking gun" proving that Wilbur induced her client to believe she was multiple. Spiegel did not make these claims until after Schreiber, Wilbur and Mason were all dead.
In August 1998, psychologist Robert Rieber of John Jay College of Criminal Justice challenged Mason's diagnosis, citing the tapes and claiming she was instead an "extremely suggestible hysteric". He claimed Wilbur had manipulated Mason in order to secure a book deal.[5][6] In a review of Rieber's book Bifurcation of the Self, Mark Lawrence asserts that Rieber repeatedly distorted the evidence and left out a number of important facts about Mason's case, in order to advance his case against the validity of the diagnosis.[7]
Debbie Nathan's Sybil Exposed[8] draws upon an archive of Schreiber's papers stored at John Jay College of Criminal Justice[9] and other first-hand sources. Nathan describes the purported manipulation of Wilbur by Mason and vice versa, going into personal detail about the lives of Mason, Wilbur and Schreiber. Nathan ascribes Mason's physical and sensory issues to a lifelong case of pernicious anemia but mistaken at the time for psychogenic symptoms caused by stress. Nathan claims that Wilbur and Mason knowingly perpetrated a fraud. She cites a well-known 1958 letter by Mason (which is reprinted in Sybil) in which she claimed to pose as a multiple for attention and excitement. Wilbur believed this letter was an attempt by Mason to temporarily put off painful therapy. Nathan claims Schreiber wrote Sybil based on stories coaxed from Mason during therapy, and that this case created an "industry" of repressed memory.[10] The case remains controversial. Although Wilbur's papers were destroyed, copies and excerpts within the Flora Rheta Schreiber Papers at the Lloyd Sealy Library of John Jay College were unsealed in 1998.[9]
Nathan's writing and her research methods have been publicly criticized by Mason's family and by Dr. Patrick Suraci, who was personally acquainted with Shirley Mason. In addition, Suraci claims that Spiegel behaved unethically in withholding tapes which supposedly proved Wilbur had induced Mason to believe she had multiple personalities. Spiegel also claimed to have made films of himself hypnotizing Mason, supposedly proving that Wilbur had "implanted false memories" in her mind, but when Suraci asked to see the films Spiegel said he had lost them.[11][12]
In 2013, artist-journalist Nancy Preston published After Sybil, a personal memoir which includes facsimile reproductions of Mason's personal letters to her, along with color plates of her paintings. According to Preston, Mason taught art at Ohio's Rio Grande College, where Preston was a student. The two became close friends and corresponded until a few days before Mason's death. In the letters, Mason confirmed that she had had multiple personalities.[13]
References
1. Miller, M; Kantrowitz B (1999-01-24). "Unmasking Sybil". Newsweek. Retrieved 2012-04-16. )
2. Van Arsdale, S (2001-08-02). "Sybil: Famous multiple personality case was a stranger in our midst". Ace Weekly. Retrieved 2012-04-16.
3. Schreiber, Flora Rheta (1973). Sybil. New York: Warner Books, Inc. p. 460. ISBN 0-446-35940-8.
4. Borch-Jacobsen, M (1997-04-24). "Sybil-The Making of a Disease: An Interview with Dr. Herbert Spiegel". New York Review of Books 44 (7). Retrieved 2009-04-02. abstract
5. Rieber, R (1998). "Hypnosis, false memory and multiple personality: a trinity of affinity". History of Psychiatry 10 (37): 3–11. doi:10.1177/0957154X9901003701. PMID 11623821.
6. Schreiber, Flora Rheta; Rieber, Robert W. (2006). The bifurcation of the self: the history and theory of dissociation and its disorders. Berlin: Springer. ISBN 0-387-27413-8.
7. Lawrence, M (2008). "Review of Bifurcation of the Self: The history and theory of dissociation and its disorders". American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis 50 (3): 273–283.
8. Nathan, D (2011). Sybil Exposed. Free Press. ISBN 978-1-4391-6827-1.
9. Nathan, Debbie. "A Girl Not Named Sybil". New York Times. Retrieved 16 October 2011.
10. Smith, K (2011-10-16). "'Sybil' is one big psych-out". New York Post. Retrieved 2011-10-18.
11. Patrick Suraci, Sybil In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings. Abandoned Ladder, 2011.
12. Patrick Suraci, "Sybil In Her Own Words". Review of Sybil Exposed with commentary about Nathan and Spiegel. Huffington Post, December 15, 2011.
13. Nancy Preston, After Sybil: From the Letters of Shirley Mason. Infinity, 2013.
External links
Multiple Personality Controversies Links to many articles about the real Sybil, Shirley Mason.
Selected Sources from UK Libraries:
Stadler, Holly Barden., Michael. McGlone, and Films for the Humanities. The Multiple Personality Puzzle. Princeton, NJ: Films for the Humanities & Sciences, 2003.
AV-D5729, Young Media Library
Schreiber, Flora Rheta. Sybil. Chicago: Regnery, 1973. Print.
RC555 .S37 1973, Young Library - 5th Floor
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