The case of Shirley Mason ("Sybil") and her alleged multiple personalities

Today, she certainly would have added non-binary to her c.v.

OP, I’m not sure the people who have multiple personalities are the ones claiming it.

My former partner had 2 distinct personalities separate from his deeply wounded, dysfunctional/functioning core personality. So that was 3.

Dissociative disorder certainly exists, but it seems unlikely that severely mentally ill brains would have the creativity or coherence to create multiple well-defined personalities.

As far as fucked-up MPD memoirs go, When Rabbit Howls is a doozy.

I'm reading When Rabbit Howls right now r3!

I need a way to waste time today ...

R4 I had to stop reading that book. It was too much for me

I think I remember seeing Truddi Chase on Oprah

Wasn’t it established that she kept inventing personalities due to the influence of the therapist, who had made a name for herself on the case?

This documentary explores how multiple personality disorder became a fad diagnosis in the 70s

When Rabbit Howls is written in plural pronouns ("We wrote this book ...")

Lol, I'm already getting turned off

Being a Gemini, it's just business as usual.

R6 me too when I was a kid

Roseanne said she was diagnosed with MPD. I sort of believe her.

Sometimes I feel like I’ve got multiple personality disorder because sometimes I’m real wholesome and normal and sweet natured and other times I’m real horny as hell.

Why is everyone looking at me?

The Truddi miniseries!

r11, she also claimed she was later somehow "cured."

Given Roseanne's tremendous propensity for attention at any cost, I do not believe at all she had MPD.

The American Psychiatric Association doesn't believe it's a real condition.

I don't believe it exists.

So much of psychiatry is bullshit. Yes, depression is real, and I guess schizophrenia.

r17 = Thomas Szasz

Truddi on Oprah

There’s an interview with AnnaLynn McCord of “90210” who talks about her Disassociative Identity Disorder. One thing she makes very clear, it’s NOT multiple personalities. But she does describe it as feeling like there are other parts of her separate and distinct from her.

I think it is like today where if someone has interests or traits that are more commonly associated with males or females, many told they need to switch genders. Gender dysphoria exists, but too often it’s just plain old homophobia. “Feminine” men and “masculine” women have always existed, but society won’t leave people alone if they don’t meet heteronormative expectations.

I think people need to explore their own mental and emotional well being before jumping to surgery. Multiple personality disorder became a fad diagnosis and many people jumped on board, like they have with gender dysphoria. Both conditions exist, but I am wary of how truly common they are.

It’s proof professionals can be duped into things that really need to be addressed differently.

R20, Link please.

Lizzie

This was a great story out of Wichita -- a woman with dissociative personality disorder who did all kinds of terrible things to herself while dissociating.

Besides the Oprah show, there's a good book on it and a so-so tv movie.

I don't buy into multiple personalities. Sorry. I think it's BS. I think you can have schizophrenia and not remember what you're doing or disassociate from what you have done or are doing but you won't be aware of it.

Here, R22.

Attention whores.

All of them.

I eat enough for three.

Does that count?

It has been a fad, media-driven diagnosis on and off over the decades. It's back now as a social media trend among young affluent white girls and women, bored with pretending to have multiple "genders".

Another weird detail is that Shirley Mason and Cornelia Wilbur lived together.

Wilbur had zero professional boundaries.

My favorite Shirley Mason personality was the lead singer for Garbage.

My views on the MPD thing:

I think Shirley Mason DID have something really wrong with her. And I think she was abused by her mother. But MPD? Probably not. Cornelia Wilbur was very weird; I think she did manipulate Mason and tried to make her into a spectacular case study.

I didn't much like Debbie Nathan's "Sybil Exposed." Nathan was not an objective reporter; she had an agenda. She was hellbent on smearing Shirley Mason, Connie Wilbur, and Flora Rheta Schreiber, the author of "Sybil." From reading the book it's obvious that she loathes these women and even disparages the way they look. She depicts them all as liars and says that the whole MPD diagnosis was just something that was "cooked up" by the three of them for fame and material gain.

Nathan insists that Mason was NOT abused and that her mother was a "nice", if eccentric, woman. I disagree, from what is known about her mother, "Mattie" Mason, her behavior was strange and bizarre she seemed quite capable of doing harm to her child. But Nathan, incredibly, believes that child abuse does not exist unless somebody reports it or there are witnesses who actually see it. Actually, child abuse frequently goes unreported and people frequently witness child abuse and do nothing about it. Also a lot of child abuse goes on behind closed doors. I guess Nathan never thought of that.

Nathan believes that all of Mason's lifelong mental and physical problems were caused by "pernicious anemia", a type of vitamin B deficiency. She also strongly hinted that Mason and Wilbur had lesbian love for each other. I don't put much stock into anything Debbie Nathan has to say about the Shirley Mason case. Her hatred for Mason, Wilbur and Schreiber makes anything she says about them suspect, although she probably does get some basic facts right.

MPD, if it does indeed exist, is incredibly rare. But after "Sybil" thousands of people were getting diagnosed with it. They'd go on talk shows and switch back and fort between "alters." It was all a load of bullshit. MPD became a fad in the 80s. A fad that, like all fads, burned itself out, thank God. Looking at tv movies like "Voices Within: The LIve of Truddi Chase" now it all seems quite hilarious.

Before there ever was a Sybil, there was a Three Faces of Eve.

r32 no matter how you slice it, neither Cornelia Wilbur nor Flora Rheta Schreiber come out of the Sybil story looking good.

Mason was also an artist. I remember seeing a website of her paintings, and supposedly people could discern which personality was painting it based on style, subject, etc—but it was often just amateur analysis. I’m skeptical, though. I think Sybil was the MPD version of The Amityville Horror—take some facts and spin it into a lucrative and sensational tall tale people want to believe—or something they can’t help rubbernecking.

“Shirley, became a highly regarded and commercially successful artist, signing only those works that she recognized as her own. Other earlier works of art, presumably created by one or more of the alternative selves, were many times not signed or signed by others, providing the only tangible evidence of Shirley’s dissociative states, in which she created art but did not acknowledge the works as her own.“

I was diagnosed as a sex addict by my shrink in the 80s. Since then, the American Psychiatric Association has dropped sex addict from its list of disorders, instead considering sex addiction to be merely a sign of a healthy libido. My point is that many conditions become trendy and are overdiagnosed by professionals when they may ultimately be a nothingburger.

I think they consider sex addiction a process addiction, akin to gambling. It’s not a psychiatric condition per se. It’s usually a symptom of another underlying problem.

I know I used to use sex as a coping mechanism for anxiety, because it’s was the only thing I could do that completely got my mind of things. People use alcohol and drugs to cope with their feelings as well, but ultimately it’s just trading one problem for another.

I think a healthy libido and regular sex is good, but self awareness about habits and how you use them is good as well.

Isn't porn addiction a sex addiction?

Both the DSM and the APA recognize various forms of dissociative disorders but there has always been enormous disagreement among psychiatrists and psychologists whether DID is a separate disorder, a variant of one of the recognized ones, or just symptoms displayed by crazy, fucked up people. The DSM has given the condition various names over the years, most notably Multiple Personality Disorder and Dissociative Identity Disorder.

I remember watching Sybil and the mother’s actions felt very familiar. My mother was weird.

When Sybil aired there were still people in Dodge Center,MN who remembered the Mason family. They recognized the mother's weird behavior and knew Sybil had to be Shirley Mason.

Martha and Shirley Mason. I find it it interesting that in Shirley's drawings her mother's eyes are always closed or her face is turned away.

I actually like some of Shirley's paintings.

Boy, that photo at R42 certainly says a lot about THAT mother and daughter. They look like they're joined at the hip and seem immensely uncomfortable and grim. Supposedly Mattie Mason would walk Shirley to school, holding her hand, even when Shirley was a teenager. How sick. And how humiliating it must have been for Shirley. No wonder Shirley turned out to be a mental and physical train wreck.

Ten years ago, a psychiatrist named Colin Ross wrote a book alleging that Chris Costner Sizemore, the inspiration for [italic]The Three Faces of Eve,[/italic] was similarly exploited by her doctor, Corbett Thigpen. Ross claims that Thigpen coerced her into signing over the rights to her story, pressured her to have sex with him, and forced her to have an abortion during which she was also sterilized. (Incidentally, Ross has also been accused of misconduct and abuse by his patients.)

r44 = Christina Crawford

Was their ever a straight male patient who did wild gay sexual acts while under the control of an alter?

Is r47 writing porn?

I swear to you Michael, it wasn't ME hoovering cocks and loads on Atlantis Cruise. I don't know who that person is. I told you I was visiting my sister and as far as I know, that is how I spent the week. If she can't vouch for me, I'm at a loss. But the man in those videos is NOT me, even though he looks just like me.

Poor Shirley.

I prefer Lisa Bright and Dark. Now there was a disturbed girl.

[quote] Was [bold]their[/bold] ever a straight male patient

Oh, [italic]dear.[/italic]

R36 is a WHORE!

For some reason Sybil and Rachel, Rachel conflated in my 8 yr old head and all I remember is a jumble of crazy and people being half naked.

When I was a child I loved half naked crazy people. Still do.

[quote]I'm already getting turned off

Pics please.

lol r56

Surely one of them is gay

When the MPD fad was at its peak people where claiming to have 40, 50, 100, 300 different personalities. They were all liars.

All of the people, or all of the personalities, r59?

[quote] All of the people, or all of the personalities

At some point during the MPD hysteria there were some who claimed to have dozens or even hundreds of alter personalities. It was ridiculous. They were all full of shit.

MPD was once used as a criminal defense: "My client didn't rob the bank! Mr. Bunny Wunny was the one who did it!" I don't know if MPD is still used to help criminals get off. I would hope not.

... r60 was in jest, r61

[quote]Roseanne said she was diagnosed with MPD. I sort of believe her.

She also said her father molested her.

She also thought the bitch was white.

She also said she was on Ambien.

Now she claims to be mentally retarded (which I believe is the truest statement).

The t.v. movie had great casting. Sometimes people upload it to YouTube. Brad Davis was sexy in it and played his role very naturally and realistically. But, whoever got Joanne Woodward to play Dr. Wilbur to Sally Field's Sybil did really well because it was, in a fashion, stunt casting which worked out great. "The Three Faces of Eve" meets "Giget" were golden in their scenes together.

I'm not of the era of the t.v. movie but I've seen uploads of it before and the first time I saw it Sally Field scared the hell out of me. I only knew her from "Soapdish" and such but those people from her "Giget" and "The Flying Nun" probably tripped the hell out because Sally Field annihilated her girl next door stereotype punk rock style with "Sybil."

I still get creeped out by the scenes with the mother in the kitchen and playing the piano. That was brutal.

In 2015, Barr revealed she had been diagnosed with both macular degeneration and glaucoma, and thus was gradually losing her eyesight and expected to eventually go blind; she was consuming medical marijuana to decrease her intraocular pressure that is a feature of these diseases.[73] Barr later revealed that she was misdiagnosed and that her vision problem is really due to a mole resting behind her eye, which can be corrected through surgery.[74] In November 2018, Barr was said to have had a heart attack, but she later went on social media and said she was not suffering from any medical issues.[75]

In 1994, Roseanne announced she suffers from Dissociative identity disorder caused by childhood abuse. She had personalities named Baby, Cindy, Evangeline, Fucker, Heather, Joey, Kevin, Nobody, Somebody, and Susan as well as her main personality, Roseanne.

By 2001, her personalities had mostly fused into one personality after ten years of hard work.

She still had a great sitcom, r66

The movie scared the shit out of me as a kid, but was very moving, though still horrifying, when I saw it as an adult. It's horrifying now to hear that she may have been taken advantage of by her therapist.

If the poster upthread is right about the author Nathan, she doesn't sound much better. I'm amazed at how so many people don't believe that abuse is occurring in a family just because the members present well in public. That IS the face of abuse, more often than not.

I wonder what Mason's true diagnosis would have been.

[quote] I wonder what Mason's true diagnosis would have been.

One doctor who saw her said she was "a brilliant hysteric."

Well, I wonder what her DSM-5 diagnosis would be ...

The actress who played Sybil’s mom was terrifying. She was even terrifying in Splendor in the Grass.

Shirley Mason is so good in the band Garbage.

Are r31 and r73 multiple personalities?

Did Shirley Mason invent the Mason jar?

All those personalities...and all of them cisgender...hmm.

Someone should write a 2022 version of Sybil.

[quote]Someone should write a 2022 version of Sybil.

They could call it "Roseanne."

Leave it to r21 to drag trans people into a conversation that isn't about them

And, by the way, chalking "gender dysphoria" up to homophobia is silly since many trans people identified as straight before coming out as trans. The conservatives who hate trans people AND gay people are the homophobic ones

[quote]Someone should write a 2022 version of Sybil.

[quote]They could call it "Roseanne."

They would call it Datalounge.

Today she would be simply genderqueer.

I always thought it would be fun to have a 2nd personality that was a cheap whore, like Niki Smith on One Life To Live, and a 3rd personality that was a cold cunty control freak, like Jean Randolph on One Life to Live.

I would prefer an identical cousin like Patty Duke, or an evil lookalike impostor like Krystle Carrington.

The saddest part is the St Paul Pioneer Press debunked Sybill in the 70s but it was never picked up nationally and only reprinted in England.

MPD or DID is a culture bound syndrome with few, if any true cases existing.

The book Sybil is full of outright lies, that wouldn't have been gotten away with today because it's would be too easy to check.

Shirley Ann Mason was finally diagnosed in the late 80s with pernicious anemia, which causes the symptoms she had and explained how in the 40s when she was given hog liver shot, (full of vitamin K) that she got better. But back then doctors didn't really distinguish one kind of anemia from another.

Apparently the only thing Shirley Mason was adamant about was in the original book she had premarital sex with Ramon but because o her strict Seventh Day Adventist beliefs she would not allow that.

We’ve done this thread a million times. She did not have multiple personalities. She was an hysteric. The audio cassettes were released. Her doctor put all this shit into her head in order to sell books.

Read the book “Sybil Exposed”. It exposed the entire case as a fraud.

[quote] I wonder what Mason's true diagnosis would have been.

Trans.

I love posters like r87/r88 who can't be bothered to even read the OP

It’s like people that refer to themselves as “paranormal experts” and other pseudoscientific titles that appear to be something but are really nothing. Pop culture gives these things collective credibility they don’t deserve. The MPD diagnosis is another pop psych phenomenon that ultimately lacks credibility.

[quote]For her part, Shirley Mason claimed until she died to have suffered from multiple personalities.

No that is not true. She said, her "personalities," were names Dr Wilbur told her to use for certain feelings. She never considered them distinct people.

[quoteDr. Cornelia Wilbur was more or less predatory and violated all sorts of professional ethics.

Not really, Dr Wilbur was out to disprove her father's claims that she was "only a woman," and couldn't be a doctor. She considered herself a maverick and definitely got caught up in her own hype. At one time she ran a West Virginia mental institution and her clinic in Lexington, KY was a well known disaster.

She most definitely hated a woman being defined as wife and mother and her second marriage seemed to be a marriage of convenience (both gay) or she married him for his money, which was a lot.

Dr Wilbur did a report on homosexuality in the 60s claiming it could be cured and one of her patients was Roddy McDowall.

I don't think Dr Wilbur set out to fool anyone but got caught up in her own success and just overlooked anything that would go against it.

Wilbur my pussy hair needs you.

[quote] Read the book “Sybil Exposed”. It exposed the entire case as a fraud.

I didn't like that book. It was shrill and self serving. And Debbie Nathan adamantly believes that Shirley Mason was NEVER abused by her very strange mentally disturbed mother Mattie. Nathan portrays her as a somewhat odd, eccentric, but "nice" woman. I really don't believe that. I think she was extremely abusive, sometimes physically, but especially psychologically. And what about Shirley Mason's father? He's barely mentioned in the book at all. At any rate Shirley Mason was a mental train wreck and I don't think it was due to "pernicious anemia." I think her strict religious upbringing and her fucked up parents screwed her up big time.

I read Cameron West's book after seeing him on Oprah and although he became a doctor or some shit I always wondered if his belief that he suffered from MPD was because he had those gay affairs and in his own head needed an explanation for them. There was just something about him that seemed off. He definitely seemed gay to me.

"Dr Wilbur did a report on homosexuality in the 60s claiming it could be cured and one of her patients was Roddy McDowall."

WTF!!!!

It would be a relief to know that the abuses depicted in the book didn’t happen. They were stomach churning. But I don’t know what to think.

I agree that the book Sybil Exposed was not good. It was too biased to be fully believable itself.

i have always loved Sally Field going back to Gidget, but her portrayal of a multiple personality seemed false and overly dramaticized to me. Do they really slide into and out of personalities that quickly? I'm going back to my recollection of watching only one episode when it first ran so I need to watch a scene now, is it on YouTube?