Reviewed by Ed Lengel

During the 17^th and 18^th centuries, Bethlem Royal Hospital in London—popularly known as “Bedlam,” was notorious for mistreating its mentally disturbed patients. The public was permitted to visit the “inmates” and gape, but eventually, the humiliation subsided, the hospital was relocated, and a “movement” away from the barbaric practices was begun. Still, by the time Sybil was published in 1973, arguably—not much had changed.

America’s treatments for mental medical maladies did not match the established trajectory in Europe, or in other parts of the world. Sigmund Freud may have been Viennese, but European psychiatrists and psychologists had shifted from Freudianism as a framework for a cure; in the United States, Freudian psychoanalysis remained relevant and pervasive well into the late twentieth century. Books and movies with Freudian themes were popular and lucrative from the 1930s to the 1970s. “Insanity” continued to carry a stigma—and—an accompanying public allure that has bred exploitation.

In 1973, journalist Flora Rheta Shreiber, and psychiatrist Cornelia B. Wilber published Sybil, a book which chronicled the abusive life—and complicated medical history of Shirley Ardell Mason—a victim of childhood physical and sexual abuse, who exhibited intense agoraphobia, memory loss, suppressed memories, and an inability to interact with others. Today, a physician would likely say she had complex post-traumatic stress, with myriad manifestations. Under extended psychoanalysis and hypnosis (ever a subject of public fascination), however, it was determined that she had multiple-personality disorder, with at least sixteen different identities; 2 male, 14 female, most of who “lived” in the 1920s, when (Shirley) was a child.

Sybil’s sixteen psyches, badly fragmented, pulled her in such conflicting directions that achieving a unified consciousness was nearly impossible. But, for people unfamiliar with the intense suffering involved in such conditions, her story was—almost—entertaining. So it is, no surprise, that when the book was released, it sold nearly 500,000 copies in its first printing, engendered two film versions, and other adaptations. The drama, tied together by Wilbur, merged the personalities cohesively, and proved to be emotionally satisfying; it seemed to vindicate psychoanalysis and hypnosis as methods that could take on—and conquer—any affliction, along with certain medications such as the anti-psychotic Thorazine, and hallucinatory barbiturates.

But scandal was not far behind; book excerpts quickly appeared—ubiquitously—in various formats, culminating—at last—in Debbie Nathan’s 2007 Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case. Among the many accusations leveled in these exposés was Wilbur’s apparent coaching of Sybil to believe she either had multiple personalities, and/or that the idea that the whole story may have been fraudulent from the get-go, a cynical money-making scheme propagated by the patient, doctor, and journalist. Inevitably, secondary attention to the book garnered as much media buzz as the original work.

Regardless of whether or not the revelations were viable—and some were fraudulent, the larger tragedy—was that after Sybil’s release, diagnoses—correct or not—of multiple personality disorder, or dissociative personality disorder—ramped up in the United States and generated more sensationalism—sought or not—and diminished the patients to spectacles. More broadly, the obsession with Sybil, and comparisons to it, obscured— rather than drawing attention to—real life struggles—particularly as more medical understanding emerged. Today, the concept of multiple personalities incites more interest than post-traumatic stress. Ironically, understanding of this painful condition may proceed farther without the kind of celebrity that was activated by Sybil.

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Ed Lengel is an author, a speaker, and a storyteller.