Dr. Cornelia Wilbur was a sociopath – unfortunately undiagnosed. There have now been two movies on the subject of “Sybil,” the abused girl with “dissociative identity disorder” (once MPD got trashed). I would like to see Sally Field redeem herself by playing Dr. Wilbur in the inevitable movie about the movies.
How many lives were ruined by “repressed memory” diagnosis? How many falsely accused of abuse by therapist-generated “memories?” How many people who needed real help didn’t get it?
Nevertheless, Mason did at one point attempt to jump off Wilbur’s train, writing her doctor a long letter confessing that all the multiple-personality stuff — the lost time, the named “alters” and the grotesque tortures supposedly inflicted on Mason as a child by her supposedly psychotic mother — had all been made up. Wilbur briskly dismissed this as a “major defensive maneuver” designed to derail the “hard work” of therapy lying ahead. The pitiably vulnerable Mason soon caved.
Wilbur should have been jailed for life.
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October 24, 2011 at 3:25 pm
Anonymous
Actually this is another attempt to obfuscate and misdirect from the facts.
Extreme child abuse is only too real, and “MPD”, now termed Dissociate Identity Disorder, is the documented result as the young victim dissociates, escapes into mental fantasy as a survival mechanism. Even tribal cultures recognize that symptoms can be the result of “soul loss”.
We would rather that it not be real and want to believe the latest revelation of fraud or undiagnosed this or that. But it’s a real phenomenon, I assure you.
October 24, 2011 at 4:42 pm
gpf
I have seen it happen in my family. Child abuse, especially sexual abuse, if not reckoned with by the child/adult, leads to a shortened and unhappy life.
My observation is that child abuse untreated is far more common than false accusations. Only a fortunate few recieve real help.
October 24, 2011 at 6:13 pm
Fred Mangels
But it’s a real phenomenon, I assure you.
But real cases probably so far and few between to be insignificant to any real world application.
October 24, 2011 at 7:35 pm
Harvey Dent
Part of me thinks she should be put in jail or at least disciplined for violating ethics. But another part is sympathetic to the seduction of a potential big money book and speaking career.
October 24, 2011 at 7:47 pm
Ben Schill
I have seen a few situations where I believe the therapist steered the client into memories of incest, etc. Very damaging to the families involved. However, I have known far more situations where the abuse was genuine… and the outcome tragic.
October 25, 2011 at 7:14 am
McKinleyville Kris
Psychology is not science. From what I understand from friends in the field, hoping to score big on a “theory” supported by a best-selling book is pretty much par for the course. The field doesn’t pay all that well otherwise.
October 25, 2011 at 9:07 am
Eric Kirk
I have no doubt that child abuse has detrimental, even extreme, impact on a person’s psychological health. I have no doubt that there are children who act up in all different ways, including pretending to be someone besides him/herself. I am skeptical of the claims that these “personalities” actually have a life of their own which takes over an individual and behavior of which the individual is not cognizant, and since the seminal case has been debunked as fraud, I would suggest that if psychology wants to be regarded as a science that some of the old ideas, before we actually started learning how the brain really works, need to be tossed – maybe even entire bedrock concepts such as the “subconscious.”
I’m not blaming Freud or his contemporaries. They were in fact scientists in that they tried to identify and categorize phenomena they observed with the tools they had. I mean, at one point it completely made sense that the physical universe was made up of four basic elements which existed in layers and that all of the motion of the universe involved the substance of each layer being moved out of its layer and thus tries to return to its layer. Fire went up. Water went down. And so on. But we moved beyond that, just as we moved beyond the Cartesian view of the universe with relativity, and so on.
This is a little different in that the “scientist” knew she was perpetuating fraud, or was too psychotic to recognize it. And it took root not only in popular culture, but even in the peer-reviewed literature, although it was slammed by many peers.
October 25, 2011 at 7:47 pm
Ben Schill
I highly recommend “A General Theory of Love” by Lewis. Aimini and Lannon. An excellent and readable description of what we now know about the workings of the mind, both rational and emotional. One of those books that can produce a sudden “Ohhhh” of understanding.
October 26, 2011 at 9:12 am
Anonymous
So author D.ebby Nathan writes a book on a very controversial topic, thereby claiming fame and fortune. Her topic is a skeptical inquiry into another controversial book, which she claims was written by a woman for purposes of fame and fortune.
And then you suggest that we should throw out the “concept” of the subconscious mind? This story is a SCRIPT for the subconscious mind.
Simply put, the subconscious mind is the accumulation of habit, memory, and physical sensations, that make up the bedrock of individual felt experience. Body-mind studies show the subconscious mind to be associated with the autonomic nervous system.
At least it did when I was in school 20 years ago.
This kind of pop psychology makes for good copy though, a blip in the news cycle. A quick search shows it has caught the attention of the blogger corps.
A further search turned up a Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting story about how theauthor has been accused of libel by the website Salon.com in a separate but related instance.
http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=3052
So my argument here is to be careful of your sources and to do your homework, Because I am not convinced by the veracity of your opinion, finding it to be somewhat uninformed.
October 26, 2011 at 10:33 am
Eric Kirk
Simply put, the subconscious mind is the accumulation of habit, memory, and physical sensations, that make up the bedrock of individual felt experience. Body-mind studies show the subconscious mind to be associated with the autonomic nervous system.
At least it did when I was in school 20 years ago.
Well, part of the problem of the “subconscious” is the variety of definitions. Freud defined it as suppressed thoughts and memories which bubble forth into such theoretical phenomena as the “Oedipus Complex” upon certain triggers.
The only empirical evidence for what you describe is being referred to as the “unconscious mind” to differentiate from the pop psychology. They’ve identified the accumulation of frequencies and co-variations of occurrences – recognizing patterns and applying them outside of the conscious process.
But that’s it, and it’s not really what Freud was talking about. Everything else is theory without solid foundation, and the Sybil “case” was supposed to be ground breaking. Now it turns out, unless the author is lying about everything, that the whole thing was fraud. The burden is upon the proponent of the theory, and too often psychologists have relied on what is “self-evident” and focused on the motives or influences on those critiquing their theories, rather than actually defend their theories empirically, which they can’t do. We just all “know” the “truth,” and if we claim otherwise, we are in defensive denial.