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Sybil Exposed Essay

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Disorder or Deception? The book “Sybil Exposed” by Debbie Nathan is written as a retelling and explanation of young women named Sybil’s original true story, or so many thought. “Sybil” by Flora Rheta Schreiber contained what many thought to be an extraordinary true story of a young girl’s experience with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) released in the early 1970’s. The story of Sybil (Shirley Mason), was found out by Nathan in “Sybil Exposed” to have actually been fabricated and largely exaggerated. Nathan went to John Jay College of Criminal Justice and found Schreiber’s old papers and documents she used to write her story, and discovered a lot of interesting information. MPD was so rare that it was considered a “medical curiosity” …show more content…

Sybil was found out to never have any childhood trauma at all to be the cause of her splitting personalities. Rather, Sybil desperately desired to please Dr. Wilbur, which was found to be part of the true cause to the feeling of possessing various personalities. And as for all of the women who were diagnosed with MPD, they had never had any recollection of childhood abuse or feelings of multiple personalities in them until after they went through therapy with a psychiatrist (cite). This was eventually found out though, and patients began sueing their psychiatrists for malpractice. Nathan used detective work while looking through the old documents Schreiber left at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, clarifying what actually happened in Sybil’s story. The main point Nathan made was that the feeling of having multiple personalities inside of you is caused by dissociation, or the disconnection from one’s thoughts. An intense form of dissociation can lead to amnesia, depersonalisation disorder and dissociative identity disorder. These symptoms reveal why Sybil’s and many others not remembering how they ended up in a certain location, and the feeling of having multiple personalities. MPD is now referred to as Dissociative Identity Disorder. Some questions I had come

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