Warning: This review may contain a spoiler. Sort of.

Ever since I was a young adult I’ve always been obsessed with the story of Sybil, the young girl with multiple personalities. I don’t remember when I first heard about the story, but I’m pretty sure that I saw the mini-series on television and then ran out to buy the book. I was obsessed with it at first-not so much by the issue of multiple personalities, but for the horrible cases of sexual, physical and emotional abuse that a young girl suffered at the hands of her mother.

If you aren’t familiar with the story, it is about a patient by the name of Sybil (a pseudonym) who enters therapy after she finds herself in a strange town with no recollection of what happened to her. As a result of therapy, she uncovers horrible memories of abuse at the hands of her mother and discovers that she has multiple personalities. Sybil is finally cured after working with her psychiatrist and a book is written about her, although her true identity was kept secret from the public.

In the book Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case, Debbie Nathan embarks on an investigation to uncover the life and story of the real identity of “Sybil”. Her investigation uncovers a web of deceit and unethical practices that center around the lives of three women-an unscrupulous female psychiatrist, an ambitious female author, and an easily manipulated patient who may have been taken advantage of.

Debbie Nathan provides a minor historical context of the mental health profession’s treatment of women-it’s neglect, lack of formal ethics and over diagnosis of hysteria by male medical professionals. Nathan provides an argument that Shirley Mason, the patient also known as Sybil, was an impressionable woman who was oppressed by the rigid rules of her religion and suffered from unexplainable health problems. Nathan’s claims suggest that the entire story about her multiple personalities was manufactured by an ambitious female psychiatrist who provided addictive drugs to Shirley and implanted false memories of abuse that never actually happened.

‘Sybil Exposed’ has left me with even more questions and confusion, which is not necessarily a bad thing. Was Sybil even abused by her mother? Why wasn’t Debbie Nathan ever able to confirm any cases of abuse? Were Shirley/Sybil and her psychiatrist having a relationship? Why did they live together? Did Shirley/Sybil even have any multiple personalities? How were they able to suddenly disappear the moment that her psychiatrist told her that she needed to be cured so that the book could be written? Was Shirley/Sybil taken advantage of by her psychiatrist, cured by her psychiatrist, or was she in on the scam all along? Do multiple personalities even really exist??

Although the book is a bit slow in the beginning as it provides a background of Shirley Mason’s religion (i.e., Seventh Day Adventist) and provides a biography of the central characters in the book (Shirley, the psychiatrist and author), the storyline picks up and is an overall interesting and mysterious story. It’s a must read if you enjoy biography, nonfiction, mental illness, science and issues of feminism.

Have you read ‘Sybil Exposed’? What are your thoughts?

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