Her father just did not believe that Sybil or her mother was ill. As scientists we do not want our hypothesis to wrong, but sometimes they are. She grew up in a very restrictive and religious environment, but that was the least of her problems. The mother would also defecate on neighborhood lawns. As a lawyer, I, like the author, have been appalled by the injustices wrought by recovered memories, sexual abuse hysteria and the like.
I went to multiple symposiums and trainings on the subject, many required, due to the nature of my work with perpetrators and victims of child abuse. And I remember watching it when it showed up as a rerun. If you're interested in Sybil, you'll like the book, as long as you take it as an opinion written without talking to any of the three principles. The resilient do their best and stick on, the less resilient fall down a couple of times. Sybil's parents were in their forties before Sybil was born after a series of miscarriages. The material has given me the needed educational material to begin researching the required information to apply into my own potential business.
I probably would have given it 4 stars, but I made the mistake of looking up details about this woman online prior to finishing the book which really changed my feelings about the actual author and doctor involved. On the recommendation of the family doctor, Sybil meets with Dr Cornelia Wilbur, a psychologist. I think I'm not going to touch this with a ten foot pole. A very well-done job looking at this iconic story with skepticism and evidence, something that was lacking in the first book when the trio of Dr. Cornelia Wilbur her Psychiatrist and Flora Rheta Schreiber the person who writes the book Sybil. I liked the book fine - although I struggled with the narrative. I do It started in the early '80s.
The message is still in the book 'Sybil'. Thank goodness for medical ethics and someone being conscientiously aware what is happening to you and why. Parents, teachers, daycare workers all eventually began to be prosecuted for these offenses. When Sybil is a young woman attending Columbia University she experiences a time lapse. So feel free to skip my review if that bothers you, or read on and take it from who it comes. So, the breathless sense of revelation that Nathan brings to her subject seems somewhat misplaced.
Unfortunately she goes way too far in her attempt to not be dry. I've never read the original book, but I have seen the movie a few times. Through all these years up until literally the day before she died, she verified the complete accuracy of the book, 'Sybil'. So this true story which happens to read a little too much like fiction for my tastes of a woman who possessed sixteen personalities was at the very least intriguing. She ends up in strange places without the slightest idea how she got there.
Some of the historic facts about the women are rather interesting if it is true. It just felt like, to me, that the author was doing the same thing Flora did while writing Sybil. That I barely write up things that I want to remember for a review? But Nathan says that Mason got magazines from other people sometimes and maybe one of them was that magazine and she maybe read that article. I actually had a hard time reading it at times, especially at night because I just got weirded out. More likely and based on very solid research, the story of Sybil is true, and it finally gave survivors the strength to tell someone. The book describes Sybil, a woman who has survived mind-bogglingly horrific physical and sexual abuse by her allegedly schizophrenic mother disturbingly dated notions of schizophrenia and the doctor's presumed ability to diagnose an unmet person are just the tip of the iceberg here , including episodes as a six-month-old infant and two-and-a-half-year-old toddler recounted by the author in detail. This book is one of the most disgusting books ever written.
I lost count of how many times Nathan referred to her that way. I love when authors come along and destroy what people tend to hold sacred, and this author did it in the most delicious way! If you haven't got a strong tolerance for unsanitised descriptions of extreme child and I mean toddler abuse there are a couple of chapters you should definitely skip - 14 and 15 will not be good for your mental health. I did learn something from it that I did not know in terms of how abusive Connie Wilbur was with respect to her patient s - and even in light of the times - how unethical. Sybil Exposed uses investigative journalism to tell a fascinating tale that reads like fiction but is fact. This book is a true story, but it reads like a science-fiction at times just because it is so so sad and horrible. Wilbur gives Shirley intravenous sodium pentothal or truth serum as well as other drugs and electroshocks under hypnosis which drums up her different personalities and so called memories of childhood abuse.
Arlington: American Psychological Association, 2000. This book is about Wilbur and Schreiber and their unfettered ambition and in exposing them, Nathan does a pretty good job. I go by the idea that if it's meant to be in my review, then I'm going to remember it without needing to write it down. It was kind of scary to be around her at times. Why did I read this book? It is not even considered a diagnosis in some countries.