Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case
Language: English
Published by Free Press, 2011
- Hardcover
- New
Seller: BennettBooksLtd, Los Angeles, CA, U.S.A.BennettBooksLtd
AbeBooks seller since April 17, 2008
Condition: New
£ 57.95
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
Seller Inventory # Q-143916827X
- Title
- Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case
- Author
- Nathan, Debbie
- Publisher
- Free Press
- Publication year
- 2011
- Condition
- New
- Binding
- hardcover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 143916827X
- ISBN 13
- 9781439168271
- Item weight
- 18 ounces
- Dimensions
- 6x1x9
But what do we really know about how Sybil came to be? In her news-breaking bookSybil Exposed, journalist Debbie Nathan gives proof that the allegedly true story was largely fabricated. The actual identity of Sybil (Shirley Mason) has been available for some years, as has the idea that the book might have been exaggerated. But inSybil Exposed, Nathan reveals what really powered the legend: a trio of womenthe willing patient, her ambitious shrink, and the imaginative journalist who spun their story into bestseller gold.
From horrendously irresponsible therapeutic practicesSybils psychiatrist often brought an electroshock machine to Sybils apartment and climbed into bed with her while administering the treatment to calculated business decisions (under an entity they named Sybil, Inc., the women signed a contract designating a three-way split of profits from the book and its spin-offs, including board games, tee shirts, and dolls), the story Nathan unfurls is full of over-the-top behavior. Sybils psychiatrist, driven by undisciplined idealism and galloping professional ambition, subjected the young woman to years of antipsychotics, psychedelics, uppers, and downers, including an untold number of injections with Pentothal, once known as truth serum but now widely recognized to provoke fantasies. It was during these treatments that Sybil produced rambling, garbled, and probably false-memorybased narratives of the hideous child abuse that her psychiatrist said caused her MPD.Sybil Exposed uses investigative journalism to tell a fascinating tale that reads like fiction but is fact. Nathan has followed an enormous trail of papers, records, photos, and tapes to unearth the lives and passions of these three women. TheSybil archive became available to the public only recently, and Nathan examined all of it and provides proof that the story was an elaborate fraudalbeit one that the perpetrators may have half-believed.
Before Sybil was published, there had been fewer than 200 known cases of MPD; within just a few years after, more than 40,000 people would be diagnosed with it. Set across the twentieth century and rooted in a time when few professional roles were available to women, this is a story of corrosive sexism, unchecked ambition, and shaky theories of psychoanalysis exuberantly and drastically practiced. It is the story of how one modest young womans life turned psychiatry on its head and radically changed the course of therapy, and our culture, as well.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
Review
"Debbie Nathan's fine, insistent mind will stop at nothing to get to the truth behind Sybil, no how many walls are put up-- Her research is beyond compare"."" --Susie Bright, author of "Big Sex Little Death"
"I've long considered Debbie Nathan to be the most important and unsung writer working in America today. "Sybil Exposed" affirms her brilliance. Using a fierce blend of investigative journalism and cultural criticism, she exposes multiple personality disorder as yet another lurid myth cooked up by the collective unconscious of our popular culture. The book is an astonishing achievement." -- Steve Almond, author of "Candyfreak" and "God Bless America"
"Debbie Nathan's "Sybil Exposed" is a first-rate historical detective story recreating the lives of the three protagonists of one of the most popular accounts of a psychiatric patient in American history. The sixteen personalities ascribed to "Sybil" set the medical and legal tone for discussions of the 'epidemic' of child abuse at the end of the 20th century as well as the psychological damage done to its survivors. Nathan shows how the subject of the study, her psychiatrist, as well as the author of the book invented a biography to explain something that never existed: the multiple personalities of the patient as well as their cause. Any reader captivated by our contemporary "first-hand" accounts of mental illness, should read this account that illustrates how the demands of the readers at any historical moment shape such accounts and make them seem truer than true." --Sander L. Gilman, author of SEEING THE INSANE Distinguished Professor of the Liberal Arts and Sciences; Professor of
"A compelling account of the creation, packaging, and selling of this case of medical and journalistic malpractice." --"Science"
"A massive undertaking of research that teases apart fact from fiction to reveal an even more interesting and educational account..."Sybil" remains a good book and movie, but perhaps Nathan's version of the story is the one worth telling in classrooms. " --"New Scientist"
"What forces cause a diagnosis like Multiple Personality Disorder to rise and fall within less than a generation? Debbie Nathan broke the story 20 years ago and now, in "Sybil Exposed", she's finally putting all the puzzle pieces together. Unless we learn the lessons in this journalistic masterwork, we are doomed to fall victim to the next fad and the next caring healer who claims to have our best interest at heart." -Ethan Watters, author of "Crazy Like Us"
"In this dazzling expose of a manipulative psychiatrist, an author who'd do anything for fame and a vulnerable girl caught in the middle, journalist Nathan reveals how these three women changed the psychiatric landscape by raising questions of identity that resonated with a generation. The result is a cautionary tale about the ways in which science, in the wrong hands, can capitalize on our collective fears. " --"More" magazine
"Throughout "Sybil Exposed", Nathan traces the winding path from truth to falsehood"--Salon
"A gripping history of crackpot psychiatry" --"People" magazine
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