Was the Story of Sybil Made Up?

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.This week’s item focuses on psychology and is from the Associated Press, date line: San Francisco with a headline “Psychologist says new evidence shows Sybil’s story bogus.”A psychologist says that tape recordings that lay forgotten in his desk for 25 years show that the popular story of Sybil, the woman with 16 personalities, is bogus.In a best selling 1973 book, later made into a movie, Sybil was portrayed as developing alternate personalities who did things without her knowledge.The account blames the problem on abuse Sybil suffered as a child and says she overcame it with therapy.The new found tapes suggest these personalities were actually created during therapy through suggestions to a highly pliable young woman says psychologist Robert Reiber of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.Reiber said that tapes between Sybil’s psychiatrist and the book’s author show they were not totally unaware that the story they told was wrong.

Tom:

Now Martin and Deidre what do you think about this.Many of our listeners, I am sure have seen the film or films that also dealt with multiple personality disorder.What do you guys think?

Martin:

Well there are a variety of factors involved in this.First factor, MPD was almost non-existent, let’s say 20 years ago and then all of a sudden there’s a whole proliferation of MPDs around.In fact, they have changed the MPD to DID which is Dissociative Identity Disorder and that’s one facet of it.How come all of a sudden we’re having so many of these when in the past we didn’t have hardly any or any at all.Another factor has to do with this whole area of suggestibility in therapy.Suggestibility is a very, very powerful ingredient in a relationship.In fact, one of the key ingredients in hypnosis is the suggestibility of the person doing it and the person that’s receiving it, how highly suggestible that person is.So when you get into a therapeutic setting and you have a therapist who is suggesting things and a person who’s hearing these suggestions and being suggestible in following them, you can end up with not only a multiple personality, you can find out inside of you is another person or persons, but you can also conjure up false memories.So you can conjure up false persons, identities, false memories and particularly when you get back to early life when the suggestion is made something must have happened to you.So this whole area of MPD is rife with all kinds of problems and it’s actually severely criticized by those people who are the professionals in the field.

Deidre:

Yes, some people can go into therapy, they are having problems, they are looking for the source of their problems, they go into the past and if the therapist believes that there are alters there, the suggestions, the leading questions will be the “say the name of the person” and so forth.And the best way to create multiple personality disorders is through therapy and the best way to get rid of them is suggested by one researcher who says, “Ignore the alters, stop talking to them, taking notes on them and discussing them at staff conferences, pay attention to the real present problems and conflicts rather than fantasy.If these few simple familiar rules are followed multiple personalities will soon wither away.

Tom:

We were talking earlier about Christian psychology.They’ve gotten into this big time and some of the documentation is incredible to me, because some are recommending that these individual personalities be led to Christ and be converted to resolve the problem.What do you think of that?

Deidre:

Well this is all fantasy, but people believe this fantasy.The therapists, who do this, really believe this.They believe that they are by their questions, bringing this out and I must say that this of course is connected a lot with the false memory syndrome as well. Sad to say Christians have been involved in this big time.

Tom:

To the destruction of many lives and families.

Deidre:

It is the destruction of lie upon lie, upon lie, upon lie.In therapy by the way, in psych therapy they don’t consider what would be factual, they don’t try to corroborate things outside of therapy because what is true as far as facts, as far as history, is not as important as what is psychically true for the person.So you aren’t dealing with truth any more, you are dealing with fantasy.