Was sybil a true story

She said, 'I'm Peggy,' and she proceeded to tell me about herself ... that Sylvia couldn't stand up for herself and she had to stand up for her. Sylvia couldn't get angry because her mother wouldn't let her, but she got angry. She knew it was a sin to be angry, but people got angry so she got angry.

Mason became increasingly dependent on Wilbur for emotional and even financial support. She was eager to give her psychiatrist what she wanted.

"Once she got this diagnosis she started generating more and more personalities," Nathan says. "She had babies, she had little boys, she had teenage girls. She wasn't faking. I think a better way to talk about what Shirley was doing was that she was acceding to a demand that she have this problem."

Wilbur began injecting Mason regularly with sodium pentothal, which was then being used to help people remember traumatic events that they had repressed. Under the influence of drugs and hypnosis, the very suggestible Mason uncovered her many personalities.

Reading through Schreiber's papers, Nathan says it becomes obvious that the writer knew that Mason's story was not entirely true. Memories of a traumatic tonsillectomy, for instance, morphed into a lurid story of abuse. And Schreiber seemed eager to pump up or even create drama where none existed. But if Schreiber had doubts, she suppressed them.

"She already had a contract and she already had a deadline," Nathan says. "She was in the middle of writing the book. So she had the dilemma all journalists have nightmares about — what if my thesis turns out to be wrong as I do my research but it's too late?"

At one point, Mason tried to set things straight. She wrote a letter to Wilbur admitting that she had been lying: "I do not really have any multiple personalities," she wrote. "I do not even have a 'double.' ... I am all of them. I have been lying in my pretense of them." Wilbur dismissed the letter as Mason's attempt to avoid going deeper in her therapy. By now, says Nathan, Wilbur was too heavily invested in her patient to let her go.

I do not really have any multiple personalities. ... I do not even have a 'double.' ... I am all of them. I have been lying in my pretense of them.

Shirley Mason, in a 1958 letter to psychiatrist Connie Wilbur

In 1973, Flora Rheta Schreiber published Sybil: The True Story of a Woman Possessed by 16 Separate Personalities. The book sold 6 million copies and, in 1976, was made into a TV movie.

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"She had already started giving presentations about this case," Nathan says. "She was planning a book. ... She was very, very attached to the case emotionally and professionally and I don't think she could give it up. But she had a very nice little piece of psychoanalytic theory to rationalize not giving it up."

As for Mason, she quickly got the message that if she raised questions about the veracity of her multiple personalities, she'd quickly lose her support network.

"She got the very, very strong impression when she went in and brought this letter of recantation to Dr. Wilbur that if she didn't go with the program she was not going to have Dr. Wilbur anymore," Nathan says. "Dr. Wilbur was giving her 14 to 18 hours of therapy a week. Dr. Wilbur was coming to her house and eating with her, giving her clothes, paying her rent ... so, how could you give up Dr. Wilbur?"

The book succeeded beyond anyone's expectations — it sold some 6 million copies around the world, and in 1976, it was made into a television movie starring Sally Field and Joanne Woodward.

As for the real Sybil, people began to recognize Mason as the patient portrayed in the book and the film. She fled her life and moved into a home near Wilbur. Mason lived in the shadows until her death in 1998.

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Who was Sybil? The true story behind her multiple personalities

The story of Sybil — a young woman who had been abused by her mother as a child and, as a result, had a mental breakdown and created multiple personalities — caused a sensation. Sybil was a bestselling book in the 1970s and was adapted as a 1976 television mini-series and a feature-length docudrama in 2007. Author Flora Schreiber and Sybil's psychiatrist, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, became rich and famous as a result. Sybil also profited, but her true identity remained a secret until after all three women were dead.

Much of the sensational story was fabricated, according to journalist and author Debbie Nathan. She reveals the truth about the case in her  book, Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case, which she discussed in on The Current.

In the original book, Sybil is portrayed as a young woman who started seeing a psychoanalyst in New York City in the early 1950s. Nathan described what happened after a few sessions, as detailed in the book: "She had a very dramatic moment when she started smashing windows, and split into another personality, into a little girl. And as she went into further therapy with the therapist, she developed many other personalities, a total of 16. The therapist assumed that something terrible must have happened to her when she was a child to create this kind of splitting in her consciousness. So she spent many years working with her. And ultimately Sybil remembered terrible, hideous sexual abuse and torture by her mother, and once she came to remember that, she reintegrated and was able to have a happy life after that. So the book had a happy ending."

Sybil's case generated widespread fascination both in the general public and the medical community, and a group of psychiatrists and psychologists successfully lobbied to have multiple personality disorder included in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). Once that happened, the disorder, which had been extremely rare, became a relatively common diagnosis. "In the entire history of Western civilization, there had been less than 200 [cases] over a period of centuries," Nathan said. "But after the book and film, suddenly there were hundreds and thousands. And by the late 1980s there were 40,000 cases diagnosed in the United States alone."

Sybil's real name was Shirley Mason, and she was brought up as a Seventh Day Adventist in rural Minnesota. The fundamentalist Christian sect taught that people shouldn't read fiction. But Shirley was a highly imaginative child, who loved to make up stories. "She lived in a fantasy world as a little girl," Nathan said. By the time Shirley was in college, she was having psychological problems, and she went to see Dr. Wilbur in the 1940s.

Dr. Wilbur had an interest in multiple personality disorder, and she recommended that Shirley read up on the subject; a mistake, in Nathan's view, as Shirley was so prone to fantasize. But it wasn't until a few years later, in the early 1950s, that Shirley returned to therapy and the multiple personalities emerged.

"One day Shirley just knocked on Dr. Wilbur's door and said, 'Hi, I'm Peggy,' a nine-year-old alter personality," Nathan explained. "Dr. Wilbur barely blinked an eye. She seemed very pleased that she now had a multiple personality disorder patient. She told Shirley she'd treat her for free, on credit, and she began giving her strong psychotropic drugs and barbiturates. Within a few weeks, [Dr. Wilbur] asked Shirley if she'd like to write a book with her about the case."

One of the drugs Dr. Wilbur administered was Thorazine, "an anti-psychotic that can have very, very strong side effects, including hallucinations," Nathan said. "And she gave her intravenous barbiturates, which can cause all kinds of fantasies which seem very real while the person's having them. They're like nightmares, but when you wake up from them, you believe that the material you fantasized really happened. "

Nathan discovered the truth by poring over the papers of Flora Schreiber, the journalist who collaborated on the book. Her papers, which included thousands of pages of therapy material between Dr. Wilbur and Shirley Mason, had been sealed until 2001, because it wasn't until then that it was known whether Shirley was alive or dead.

Though Sybil ends happily, the woman who inspired the story did not. Shirley became a barbiturate addict, and was heavily dependent on Wilbur, who paid her rent, gave her clothes and money, and supplied her with drugs. Nathan likened the relationship to that of a junkie to her pusher.

Nathan speculates that Dr. Wilbur's motivations were based on the fact that she never had children. "From the 1930s to the 1950s, in psychiatry and the popular culture, you were not a fully realized woman unless you had children," Nathan explained. "And I think Dr. Wilbur wanted a daughter. And I think that was the real dynamic of the relationship."

In therapy, Shirley would imply that the personalities were generated because something terrible had happened to her. "The doctor would ask leading questions, which quickly came to focus on her mother," Nathan said. "Eventually there was a very detailed story of sexual torture by the mother, and that torture was supposed to have been so horrifying that Shirley the child, or Sibyl, just had to encapsulate that in different parts of her consciousness so she wouldn't remember it."

Journalist Flora Schreiber got involved because although Dr. Wilbur believed the case would make her famous, she wasn't a good writer. Eventually, as Schreiber started fact-checking the story, she began to doubt its veracity. But by then she had already been paid an advance, and when she confronted Dr. Wilbur and Shirley, they stuck by the story.

At the time the book was published, it was considered shaming to go to a psychiatrist, so Shirley tried to keep her identity secret. But some people did realize that Shirley Mason was Sybil. "Flora did very little to actually disguise Shirley's identity," Nathan pointed out.

Shirley had gotten a job teaching art at a college in the Midwest. But when she was effectively "outed" among colleagues, she ended up going into hiding and depending on Dr. Wilbur for support. "It was a sad ending to a very, very glittery beginning with that book," Nathan said.

Nathan went on to say that the case created a stir because it touched on issues that many women were dealing with at the time. "This was a woman's book, and the diagnosis that developed was a woman's diagnosis — 90 percent of people who have multiple personality disorder, or get diagnosed with the new name, dissociative identity disorder, are women."

Many young women wrote to Schreiber to say that Sybil's story struck a chord with them. They felt torn between the traditional female role and new opportunities that were opening up as a result of feminism. "Reading about this poor girl, who had developed all these personalities, and vanquished them, and put them all together and learned how to use them, well, that's the inspiration that I got from reading Sybil, that I can take all of my different selves and put them back together and lead a full life," Nathan said.

In Nathan's view, there are more constructive options for dealing with that tension. "To medicalize the sense of splitting and say that you are a woman who's very, very ill, because you are the ultimate victim, I think didn't do women any favours. And continues not to do them any favours."

The diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder "clearly exists, when you have experts who are interested in finding it and they diagnose it," Nathan acknowledged. But she compares it to the Middle Ages, when it was assumed many people were possessed by devils. "Most women who went to the inquisitors during that period and said that they felt they had devils inside them weren't tortured to say that. They freely went to the inquisitors and the priests and said that they felt possessed."

Nathan added that it's not uncommon for people to "express their distress by feeling that there's something inside them, whether it's a demon or a spirit or a self, there's something inside them that doesn't really belong there. And depending on what's going on in the culture, and who's available to define that and treat it, you can get epidemics of that feeling, and you can get epidemics of diagnoses. So I think that that's what happened here."

She hastens to say that she isn't suggesting that people are faking their illness. "Once people get the diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder, they have that diagnosis, and they act that out, not consciously, necessarily, at all," Nathan said. "So I think that asking whether it's true or it's false is not the helpful way to think of it." 

"Sybil: a name that conjures up enduring fascination for legions of obsessed fans who followed the nonfiction blockbuster from 1973 and the TV movie based on it — starring Sally Field and Joanne Woodward — about a woman named Sybil with sixteen different personalities. Sybil became both a pop phenomenon and a revolutionary force in the psychotherapy industry. The book rocketed multiple personality disorder (MPD) into public consciousness and played a major role in having the diagnosis added to the psychiatric bible, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.

But what do we really know about how Sybil came to be? In her news-breaking book Sybil Exposed, journalist Debbie Nathan gives proof that the allegedly true story was largely fabricated. The actual identity of Sybil (Shirley Mason) has been available for some years, as has the idea that the book might have been exaggerated. But in Sybil Exposed, Nathan reveals what really powered the legend: a trio of women — the willing patient, her ambitious shrink and the imaginative journalist who spun their story into bestseller gold."

Sybil Ludington: Revolutionary teenager who beat Paul Revere

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“… Paul Revere's Midnight Ride. April eighteenth in 1975: hardly anyone is alive…” yadda yadda. Yes, the famous Paul Revere rode out on horseback on April 18, 1775, to sound the alarm that British troops were marching from Boston to Lexington.

Revere traveled about 20 miles through what is now Somerville, Medford, and Arlington, Massachusetts knocking on doors to rouse people to Lexington's defense. Another rider, William Dawes, was sent on a different route to do the same. A third, Samuel Prescott, was also involved. Only Prescott completed the night's work and reached Concord; Revere was captured and Dawes was thrown from his horse while evading British soldiers, forcing him to return to Lexington.

It was a good trip for Revere and for the revolution. But just over two years later, the 16-year-old has done even better with the Midnight Riders. Sybil Ludington traveled twice as far as Revere, herself over bad roads and outlawed terrain, to muster Patriot troops to fight at the Battle of Danbury and the Battle of Ridgefield in Connecticut. And did we mention it was raining?

Sybil was the eldest of 12 children of Colonel Henry Ludington, a militia commander in Dutchess County, New York. The Ludington Farm was the center of information gathering by the spies for America.

In April 1777, Colonel Ludington and members of his militia were at their homes because it was planting season. But around 21:00. on the evening of April 26, he received word that the British were burning Danbury. The man who brought the news had exhausted his horse and did not know the area. Ludington needed to stay put to help position the troops as they arrived.

Who could he send? He turned to his daughter, who knew the area and knew where the militia lived. Sybil rode her horse from her father's farm in Kent, then named Frederick. She headed south first to the village of Carmel and then down to Mahopak. She turned west to Mahopak Falls and then north to Kent and Farmers Mills. From there, she traveled further north to Stormville, where she turned south to return to her family's farm. In total, she traveled nearly 40 miles through what was then southern Dutchess County (now mostly Putnam County).

Sybil spent the night traveling down a narrow dirt road in the rain with nothing but a stick for protection. To add another element of danger, there were many British Loyalists in the area and more than a few "Skinners", a word commonly used then to describe a criminal or hooligan with no real loyalty to either side of the war. One account of her trip states that Sybil used her stick to hit Skinner, who approached her.

By dawn, Sybil returned to her family farm, where the militia gathered with her father. By this time the British had gone south from Danbury to Ridgefield. The Dutchess County militia, led by Colonel Ludington, marched 17 miles to Ridgefield and fought what some considered a strategic American victory.

what year was the training day

Sibylla's diligent ride earned her the congratulations of General George Washington, but it seems that few people recognized her feat after that. She married another revolutionary, Edmond Ogden, in 1784 and had a child. At one point she and her husband ran a tavern in Catskill, New York, but she spent the last 40 years of her life as a widow until her death in 1839. year. She is buried next to her travel itinerary in Patterson, New York. with a tombstone inscribed with her name Sibbell.

So why do we all learn about Paul Revere in our American history courses and not Sybil Ludington? Recently, Sybil has received a bit more recognition for the trip she has taken - books have been written about her, a bicentennial postage stamp honoring her, and even a board game that has players follow her at night. And in 1961, the local branch of the Daughters of the American Revolution installed a huge statue of her on her horse in Carmel, New York.

The Reverend is, of course, deservedly revered as a man who served the Revolution in many ways, including as a messenger and an engraver (he was an excellent silversmith by trade). Perhaps his place in history was secured by having Henry Wadsworth Longfellow as his publicist, Longfellow's famous (and notoriously inaccurate) poem - it leaves out both Dawes and Prescott - making Revere a legend. Sybil does not have such a legendary poem, there is no catchphrase "one if by land, two if by sea. " But perhaps as a child we should all hear about a teenager's midnight ride without fear.

All images courtesy of Valerie DeBenedette.

Blaze's True Story: How did Blaise Foley die? Where is Carey January now?

"Blaze" is a beautiful story about the life of a Texas musician. The main character is played by Ben Dickey and his love interest, Sybil Rosen, is played by Alia Shawkat. The indie film is the directorial debut of actor Ethan Hawke. It tells the story of the protagonist through three different periods of his life, and the musician's beautiful portrayal has definitely been acclaimed. So it's only natural to wonder if the eponymous character is based on a real person, and if so, what happened to him?

Is Blaze based on a true story?

Yes, the film is based on the life of Blaise Foley, whose real name is Michael David Fuller. Foley was born December 18, 1949 in Arkansas. The film's screenplay was adapted from a book about his life by Sybil Rosen (his muse and lover) titled Life in the Treewood: Remembering the Flames.

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Sybil Rosen on her time with Blaze in the Georgia Pine Forest Treehouse: “When I try to figure out what happened in that treehouse, I come up with this: we saw each other. It sounds simple, but it's actually a powerful thing to see. For the first time, our sensitivities were understood as opportunities rather than obligations.” #blazemovie

A post shared by BLAZE (@blazemovie) on July 26, 2018 10:59 AM PDT

Blaze Foley is often considered the unsung hero of the Texas country music movement. Some of his most popular songs include "Clay Pigeons", "Small Town Hero", "If I Could Only Fly" and "Election Day". As to why Hawke chose him as the subject of his film, the actor said "I have long loved Blaze's music and, like many, was moved by the events of his life, but after reading the excellent memoir of Sybil Rosen, this project became a priority. Now we hope to bring its heartbreaking story and musical brilliance to a much wider audience."

How did Blaise Foley die?

The musician died on February 1, 1989. A man weighing 6 feet and 280 pounds was shot dead with a .22 caliber gun. It snowed on the day of his funeral, but it was still full of people. Guitarist Mickey White also provided the lyrics to 'If I Could Only Fly'. His box was also covered with duct tape. It was his favorite "accessory" that he used on his shoes to imitate the new country singers.

The years after his death cemented Foley's legacy in a way that never happened during his lifetime. Although his loved ones recognized his compassion and kindness, Foley was also considered an alcoholic with a penchant for whiskey, and he died with little to no money to his name. After his death, some previously unreleased songs were released to his fans, and since then, many musicians have started writing songs in honor of him.

Who killed Blaise Foley?

The fatal shot was fired by Cary January, son of Concho January (friend of Foley). Blaze and Carey no longer loved each other, but the musician had a great relationship with Concho. When Blaze overheard Cary talking to his father in complete disrespect, he refused to accept such behavior and turned against the man. The musician even called Carey when he thought that his son was stealing wealth and veteran income from Concho. It should be noted that Carey was an ex-prisoner who had already served a four-year sentence for delivering heroin at 1975 year.

On August 9, 1988, an incident occurred in which Foley was charged. It so happened that the police received a call at 706 W. Mary Street. A very drunk Foley and a neighbor were sitting on the steps with ax handles in their hands. The songwriter confessed to police officers that he hit Carey, but only did so to protect Concho from abuse by his own son. Blaise Foley received 180 days' probation and a court order to attend at least two Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a week.

The last quarrel between them resulted in Foley's death. In February 1989, the songwriter was on a drinking binge and landed at Concho's house at 5:00 am. Concho also had a girlfriend and the three of them drank together. Carey then left the bedroom and shot Foley around 5:30 am. When the police arrived, the victim was lying outside and said he did not know what had happened. Within minutes he lost consciousness and died three hours later at Brackenridge.

Where is Cary January now?

Although Carey January was charged with first-degree murder, he was acquitted for it, to the extreme disgust of Foley's supporters. January claimed that he shot Foley in self-defense, and during his testimony even stated, "He was walking on me. I saw fire in his eyes. & hellip; I've seen that look before when he hit me with an ax handle." Concho testified against his own son at the trial and said that Carey had shot Foley in cold blood and without provocation, but the old man was simply written off as another drunken fool.

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