Sybil Exposed Quotes

“Debbie Nathan’s thesis is that Shirley Mason was a vulnerable hysteric and was manipulated by her therapist into iatrogenic DID and false memories of child abuse. Nathan says that this is generally true of DID, except for perhaps a small number of genuine cases. One problem with this thesis is that it is based on a stereotypically male chauvinist view of women as impressionable hysterics who do not know, and are not in control of, their own minds or histories; this demeaning view of women is presented as a feminist thesis.”
― Colin A. Ross

“Debbie Nathan blames the early symptoms on pernicious anemia yet explains their supposed remission by Shirley’s being out of contact with Dr. Wilbur for those 9 years. But Dr. Wilbur never diagnosed a dissociative disorder in 1945. Nathan does not seem to recognize the implausibility of Dr. Wilbur creating via suggestion a complex dissociative disorder in five sessions, particularly when the doctor herself did not diagnose it. Nathan attributes Shirley’s postintegration improvement in functioning to being out of contact with Dr. Wilbur rather than to the therapy. But the pernicious anemia continued to be undiagnosed and untreated during that time period, so any symptoms due to it should have continued rather than showing an improvement that coincided with psychotherapy with Dr. Wilbur. Debbie Nathan’s thesis is self-contradictory.”
― Colin A. Ross

“Debbie Nathan also puts a great deal of weight on a letter from Shirley Mason to Dr. Wilbur stating that her MPD was made up. Dr. Wilbur’s explanation was that the letter was based on resistance. Debbie Nathan takes the letter as a statement of the real truth. But if Shirley Mason was such an unreliable historian of her own trauma and mental health history, why should we take this single letter as the truth? If a person with a long history of treatment for alcoholism wrote a letter to her psychiatrist, in the middle of treatment, saying that she did not have a drinking problem, what would we conclude?”
― Colin A. Ross

“The story of Sybil is true, not fictional or fraudulent. One early commentator actually suggested that Sybil and Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, her treating psychiatrist, were a case of folie à deux, or shared psychosis (Victor, 1975). Having met Dr. Wilbur, listened to her presentations on multiple personality (now known as dissociative identity disorder), and read the many critiques and reviews of Sybil, I have concluded that Sybil was not iatrogenically created by Dr. Wilbur.”
― Philip M. Coons

“A problem is that Nathan documents Shirley Mason as suffering from a variety of symptoms of a complex dissociative disorder prior to her first contact with Dr. Wilbur, although Nathan denies the dissociative nature of these symptoms. The symptoms described as real by Debbie Nathan include fugue states; blank spells; spending hours playing with imaginary companions with names far beyond the age when this occurs in nontraumatized children; pretending to be “Vicky,” one of her “imaginary companions” at times; her mother calling her by the same names of alter personalities later identified in adult therapy; talking in a high, childish voice when she was no longer a child; numerous symptoms consistent with somatoform dissociation throughout her childhood and adulthood; going downtown to bars to drink with men and not remembering afterward; suddenly becoming comatose in public; and suddenly acting dramatically out of character. All of these symptoms were described to Debbie Nathan in interviews with people who knew Shirley Mason well. Thus, Debbie Nathan’s book actually inadvertently provides documentation of a range of psychological and physical symptoms that would be expected beginning in childhood for someone with a burgeoning dissociative disorder.”
― Colin A. Ross

“As a single case from half a century ago, Sybil Exposed cannot tell us anything about the reliability, validity, etiology, epidemiology, or typical treatment outcome of a mental disorder.

Nathan’s alternative theory of pernicious anemia is implausible and supported by no corroborating evidence; Debbie Nathan advocates a hypothetical explanation of Shirley’s pre-1945 symptoms that is less evidence based than the trauma dissociation theory she rejects.”
― Colin A. Ross

“In 1973 Flora Schreiber wrote SYBIL, a case history of a person with DID. After Schreiber’s death in 1988 there have been several unsuccessful attempts to prove this case was a fraud. Some of these people, enflamed by the success of the book, have falsified and distorted documents in Flora Schreiber’s archives to prove their theories. Furthermore, some did not engage in logical thinking. If the three women in "SYBIL" were clever enough to dupe the whole world, would they would not be clever enough to destroy so-called incriminating documents which Flora Schreiber bequeathed to John Jay College?

Some people, who never engaged in any research about DID, claim that there is no connection between child abuse and DID. Then they unwittingly contradict themselves by stating DID doesn’t even exist.”
― Patrick Suraci