Allegations: Sybil was a hoax

BDBoop

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Jul 20, 2011
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Don't harsh my zen, Jen!
The Leonard Lopate Show: Sybil Exposed - WNYC

The name Sybil brings to mind the 1973 nonfiction book and the TV movie based on it, about a woman named with 16 different personalities. The story became both a pop phenomenon and a revolutionary force in the psychotherapy industry, and now journalist Debbie Nathan looks at the true story behind it. In Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case, she reveals how three women created what may have been an elaborate fraud.

I would be dumbfounded if there were no such diagnosis (as is being alleged).
 
I listened to that on NPR today.

sounded quite possibly like it was a hoax. Book deal in the works, Shrinker fully vested in the case being Valid. The "sybil" getting the attention and such she desired.
 
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That diagnosis is now Dissociative Identity Disorder. It is rare. Very rare. I've seen two genuine in 22 years and many many wannabes!
 
Bullshit. It IS true. I know I'm married to her. Oh wait....hmm...sorry, my Sybil has only 15 personalities!
 
I can say I never gave that any credence. Where would all those personalities derive from, when an individual only has one set of experiences?
An active imagination? How do you think actors do it?

I play at being an earthling.
Lots of people play at acting like they know politics and economics.
 
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I can say I never gave that any credence. Where would all those personalities derive from, when an individual only has one set of experiences?

Escape.

As a survivor, it made sense to me. Somebody went through more than I did, and they shattered. Compartmentalized.

It's easy to conceptualize an alter ego to which one could escape or flee to as a means of deceit, as with the psyhchopath. But that person is concealing hinself, using the second persona as a device and is not actually split into multiple personalities. There seems to be no sound basis for that to occur. The mind is attached to the brain/body through experience, and experience is what shapes our mind/personality complex.

It's easy to imagine a poorly adapting individual to be a scattered personality, but not to coelesce into separate free standing personalities.
 
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