Read More: Sybil Exposed

Update: Well, what a horrifying book. This poor kid has pernicious anemia, she gets dizzy and woozy and acts strange, and instead of getting treated she falls into the hands of a mad psychiatrist and ends up drug addled with a multiple personality disorder diagnosis!

I can totally picture Elliot making up lies about me after I die, just like Sybil did about her mom. So I hope all of you are ready to stand up for me! You'd better defend my reputation, so people don't think I sneak around the town at night doing witchcraft and defecating in people's yards.

As I read this, especially the descriptions of the insane professional meetings where psychiatrists reported on their patients, describing things that no sane adult could believe, it reminded me of similar things going on today. Like child bipolar diagnoses... maybe even scarier, because it's defenseless kids who are getting drugged into oblivion, and mostly poor kids with no adults to stick up for them at that. I wonder if we ever learn!

-Kristin


Kristin always finds the best books in the new section at the library. Whenever I browse the shelf there's never anything good. She found Sybil Exposed by Debbie Nathan on the shelf the other day. I was surprised. I thought for sure when I got around to requesting it there would still be a wait list a mile long. But thankfully, lucky hands Kristin has no need for wait lists. La-Ti-Da.

I'm sure everyone knows the story of Sybil, but if you need your memory refreshed she's that girl with all the multiple personalities. When you think about the story with a rational mind it's pretty obvious that it is bogus. But it was so sensational and interesting you couldn't help but want to believe such crazy things are possible.

This book investigates Sybil (Shirley Mason) and her upbringing. I learned some about Seventh Day Adventists. For instance, they developed special foods to keep sex temptations at bay. One of these foods was the graham cracker, invented by a minister by the name of Sylvester Graham. I wonder how this Graham would feel if he were to read my match.com profile where I list S'Mores as a major turn on? (Just kidding. Sort of. Potential wooers take note: S'Mores and mashed potatoes are two keys to this girl's heart.) They also invented more food that are staples in this girl's diet: peanut butter, soy milk, fake meat! Yay for the Adventists! As you can imagine, living in a uber religious household was not the most fun childhood you could imagine, but far from the horrors that Sybil told of. So what's the deal?

Enter Shirley's psychiatrist, Dr. Wilbur. She injected Shirley with a drug called Pentothal, that puts patients into a trance state where they are highly sensitive to suggestion and for some reason Dr. Wilbur hates mothers. And out come Shirley's personalities. Many of them. Dr. Wilbur doesn't suspect / want to suspect that any of these personalities and claims could possibly be fake. Poor Shirley becomes addicted to Pentothal and the myriad of other drugs the doctor prescribes for her. It's a wonder that Shirley was even able to function at all on so many things.

Then comes in Flora Schreiber, the journalist who wrote Sybil. Unlike Wilbur, she does fact check and finds that things are not adding up. But what is she to do? She's already spent the advance the publishing company has given her and signed a contract to have the story ready in six months.

The book delves deeper into the relationships between these three women as well as some interesting tidbits about their personal lives to help understand them a bit more. It goes into what became of all them in the end, which was interesting and pretty sad. And updates us on the status of Multiple Personality Disorder in psychiatry today. Although the revelations in this book weren't surprising or shocking, it was still an interesting read.

- Megan Leigh