Another Gifted Artist Who Has DID

December 9, 2011

More on the Sybil Defamation Campaign

December 8, 2011

Update: Although the Diva was already aware of Nathan’s political agenda and affiliations, it is gratifying to find that professional journalists have also made these observations. Here is an article by David Folkenflik that exposes Debbie Nathan’s biases and lack of ethics. From Seizures Hurt Memory, Ex-’Times’ Reporter Says.

Nathan is an advocacy journalist who argues that federal laws on child pornography and child sexual abuse are too strict. “Sex is such a highly charged issue in our culture that — particularly when it comes to child sex abuse — people are very irrational,” Nathan says. “Many people are convicted who are innocent, in my opinion.”

But Nathan’s stories about Eichenwald for New York magazine’s Web site and for CounterPunch failed to disclose a key affiliation: She is a board member and donor for the National Center for Reason and Justice, a not-for-profit group that distributes money to help the legal filings of people it says have been wrongly convicted of child sexual abuse. The center distributes about $100,000 a year to their legal defense. Among the recipients of this aid: Father Paul Shanley, the most notorious figure in Boston’s Catholic Church sexual abuse scandal.

…

While there are many passionate and informed reviews on the Amazon site for the book attacking Sybil, I wanted to highlight a few here as they cut to central issues that discredit the work. This first is one of my favorites.

Fiction or Non-Fiction, October 25, 2011

By Lori King
This review is from: Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case (Hardcover)
This book begins:

“MANY YEARS LATER, THE WORLD would come to know her as Sybil. But, in 1933, the little girl with the colored pencils in her hand was simply Shirley Ardell Mason, a sensitive and confused fifth grader in the tiny town of Dodge Center, Minnesota. She was quiet and slender back then, with crisp clothes, dark hair trimmed in a Dutch-boy bob, and skin so milky that the veins stood blue on her forearms. She had no….”

And it continues on through the next several chapters – written in third-person omniscient – commonly used in fiction, but when used in non-fiction, the author reports not only what is presented as facts, but also relates them to the characters’ thoughts and feelings and from there – conclusions. This is often seen in persuasive writing or `rhetoric’.

“In short, rhetoric is a mode of altering reality, not by the direct application of energy to objects, but by the creation of discourse which changes reality through the mediation of thought and action.” (The Rhetorical Situation, Lloyd Bitzer, 1968).

I would have thoroughly enjoyed the story that follows had I not already been alerted by all of the media coverage that this book was written with a preconceived agenda – to discredit the book “Sybil”. The narrators’ use of colorful language and style of `telling the story’ is truly brilliant – mesmerizing – enough so that the unsuspecting reader becomes so removed from the narrator as to forget that this book is no more than rhetoric meant to persuade the audience to believe, not only what they are reading, but in this case, to trust the facts given us as truth. We all know that no writer can ever know the intentions, feelings, thoughts of any character, but a truly gifted writer can use this tactic to influence the readers’ beliefs – to control their ideas. Nathan is amazing and, for me, her ability to persuade discredits this book.

Though, I did enjoy watching the story and newly created character unfold, I wasn’t persuaded that this all actually happened. The more I read, the more entertained I became until, I was nearly laughing. I was reading it out loud in a dramatic voice to my grandson, prancing around my brightly lit room, my long dark hair flowing behind me as I imagined the next dramatic scene I would read in the book.

I read “Sybil” many times and have looked at the research of Dr. Wilbur. I never felt like “Sybil” was written for any other reason but to inform the public of the work that was being done. It wasn’t nearly as entertaining. I understood that the `alters’ did need to be exaggerated in order that the reader could get a sense of them. Clearly, it would be very difficult, and I think still is, for writers to share with readers such a subjective experience as dissociative identity disorder. The fact that they must have discussed this was not surprising to me at all.

The last couple chapters were just more irritation and confirmation to me that this was a piece of work meant to persuade us of Nathan’s political point of view about false memories, ritual abuse, and dissociative identity disorder. I did not see the connection of “Sybil” with any of that.

I think that Nathan is a wonderful writer. She may persuade many readers that her story is pure truth. She is talented enough to possibly bring enough questions to the mind of the public to slander the name of these three women who are no longer here to defend themselves. I am hoping to see her write a good novel – where her talent of writing fiction can be truly recognized.

Quote to remember:
“[Rhetoric,] that powerful instrument of error and deceit.” (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, John Locke, 1690)

In response I commented:

It makes sense that Nathan used that style, it exhibits a lack of respect for personal boundaries, as if she executed a kind of postmortem mental rape. That would be my rhetorical description of what the false memory people have done to survivors of extreme abuse in the public sphere since they began their campaign.

. . .

In a reflection of her character, apparently Ms. Nathan has been ridiculing, on her Facebook page, survivors of extreme abuse, and other people who have given her book a bad review.

From a commentator named James to a news article about the book:

Let’s just let people read the book as the cash-cow it is.
Let’s not call it “scientifically solid” and watch people die in the wake of its destruction.
Let’s not associate the atrocities of psychology in its infancy to today’s practice and watch ongoing research collapse under political debate.
Let’s not start diagnosing DID patients as schizophrenics again at the extra cost of another $2.8 billion to society.

. . .

Publisher Simon & Schuster has agreed to delete from the dust jacket in future editions of the book “Sybil Exposed” the words “first person’” in the sentence: “The Sybil archive became available to the public only recently, and Nathan is the first person to have examined all of it….” as this was proved untrue.  A letter furnished by the executor of Sybil’s estate proved Dr. Suraci, author of Sybil, In Her Own Words, had prior access and the records were made public in 1998. I expect this correction will neither be the last nor the most surprising.

. . .

And finally, but by no means least, there is this from the closest living relative to Sybil, Naomi Rhode, posted here: http://sybilandmpd.blogspot.com/2011/11/from-sybils-closest-living-relative.html?spref=fb

As Shirley Mason’s (Sybil) closest living relative, I was close to her for the 30 plus years through the saga of her life journey. In fact, I was with her for several days during the week of her death, at her request, and was one of the only people that was in constant contact with her over those 30 years. I kept her identity confidential at her fervent request. Through all these years up until literally the day before she died, she verified the complete accuracy of the book, ‘Sybil’.

Debbie Nathan claims that she contacted me for an interview in 2008 and that I declined. Over the years many people have contacted me for information about Shirley’s life. Not knowing their intent, always, I have declined all such interviews. If Debbie was one of those people, I do not recall the call, as I do not keep records of every call in a busy business life. I apologize for this, but I do not recall her calling.

Knowing Dr. Connie Wilbur, and Flora Schreiber, also, the book concerns me greatly. It is an attack on their credibility, their research, and their professionalism. And, the book is a complete attack on the person I loved, Shirley Mason.

Shirley did not die a recluse. Shirley was a loving, and productive woman until her final,lengthy bout with cancer. She painted, and taught painting. She sold her paintings. She corresponded with friends, and regularly with us. She was a woman of strong spiritual faith in God, loved her books and her music, and loved our family greatly. She chose, however, to live carefully and confidentially because she was adamant that her identity not be known. She was very protective of our family and any recourse her life and story may have on us.

Naomi Rhode

Sybil was not a Fraud

October 23, 2011

Sybil was not a fraud. Imagine if someone took a few facts about your life and wrapped an entirely false narrative around them making you out to be something that you never were, and destroying your reputation. Everyone should be concerned about this kind of activity. Every one of us should stand up against it.

Nathan’s work and her PR campaign are an attack not only upon the 3 dead woman she targets who cannot defend themselves, but upon all survivors of extreme abuse.

From a concerned clinician:

I collected a range of sites to show what a major push this propaganda is getting:
New Scientist?!
From Rush to NPR, now that’s coverage. Meanwhile, complete blackout on that fact that Tokyo is more radioactive than the Chernobyl evacuation area (http://enenews.com/)
http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/culturelab/2011/10/was-sybil-a-psychiatrists-creation.html
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2049789/Sybil-Best-selling-child-abuse-split-personality-author-exposed-FAKE.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/magazine/a-girl-not-named-sybil.html?pagewanted=1&_r=2&sq=sybil&st=cse&scp=1&adxnnlx=1319040193-l5jQUewHImByWkY/tR4aVw
http://www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141514464/real-sybil-admits-multiple-personalities-were-fake
http://www.wnyc.org/shows/lopate/2011/oct/19/sybil-exposed/
http://www.salon.com/2011/10/16/sybil_exposed_memory_lies_and_therapy/singleton/
http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2011/10/17/sybil_was_hoax_that_became_accepted_science_sound_familiar

Wanda Karriker’s review from Amazon books:

According to the product description of SYBIL EXPOSED, “Nathan gives proof that the allegedly true story was largely fabricated.”Although Nathan did a good job of constructing a narrative of how and why she believes the book SYBIL came to be, neither the patient (Shirley Mason aka Sybil, the psychiatrist (Wilbur), nor the author (Schriebner) are alive to defend against Nathan’s interpretations of their interactions and their motivations to produce the book.

On p. 396 (Kindle), Nathan states that Wilbur “used her medical credentials to aggressively promote a diagnosis [multiple personality disorder] that, ultimately, hurt women far more than it helped them . . .”

As a journalist Nathan has a right to use her research findings to impugn the motives of Dr. Wilbur; however, she offered no research to support her contention that the diagnosis “hurt women far more than it helped them.”

Wanda Karriker, Ph.D. Morning, Come Quickly

Sybil, The Nathan Defamation

October 21, 2011

I regret that this may only be the first among many posts on this topic. If you are a supporter, loved one, or caregiver of an extreme abuse survivor, a little additional support might be helpful as this controversy plays out in the media.

Shirley Mason is most commonly known as Sybil Dorset, one of the most famous of all DID cases. This  beautiful, brave woman, her caregiver, and a dedicated journalist are being defamed in a smear campaign.

Debbi Nathan, an academic and former proponent of the now thoroughly repudiated False Memory campaign, has put Sybil in her cross-hairs in a new book. The New York Times and several other media outlets have jumped upon this potential new controversy, which from all appearances at this point, springs from a single statement in one of the letters Sybil wrote early on in her treatment.

Therapy for extreme trauma involves a long and repeated grief process. Denial is a natural part of grief. Denial is also a central feature of dissociation. In DID cases, alters actively cultivate denial of the trauma so that the child can perform in normative life.  Of course these aspects present in therapy, not only at the beginning, but over and over again, as the process of awareness and then grief repeats itself until all the traumas are confronted.

Sybil’s early declaration that she is not a multiple is a normal and expected part of the therapeutic process. Nathan, and those who have covered her work, have cynically highlighted it as a singular proclamation of truth. This is the very definition of propaganda, suggesting an alternate meaning of a fact in service of an agenda.

Child pornography and domestic child trafficking are mutli-billion dollar businesses. There are networks of people who have high stakes in keeping survivors silenced and out of treatment. Confusing the public about the natural responses to this kind of abuse, like DID, and engendering distrust of trauma therapists are integral to those aims.

I have no evidence that Nathan is tied to any such criminal network, but neither are any of the targets of her attacks here to confirm or deny her insinuations. I have no doubt if Shirley, Connie or Flora were alive today, Nathan could not publish this book.

Dr. Patrick Suraci on Sybil

Here is a link to the Facebook page for Dr. Patrick Suraci’s recent book on Sybil. In a wall posting dated October 19th, he refutes some points in Nathan’s book.

Statement from Dr. Patrick Suraci

I went to the Special Collections Library at John Jay College of Criminal
Justice to verify statements made by Debbie Nathan in her book SYBIL
EXPOSED.

1. On pages 99-100 Nathan writes: “Connie would carry her apparatus to
Shirley’s apartment and climb in bed with her. She would clamp the paddles to
Shirley’s temples, twirl the dials, and press the buttons. Connie’s gadget
was an old electro-convulsive machine she had retired years earlier.”

Nathan cites the evidence for this in her “Notes: Chapter 8, No.38.. FRS
Box 37, Files 1081, Tape 124.” In this document on January 26, 1955, Shirley
writes about “electric shock” along with her other treatments. There is
absolutely no documentation of Nathan’s outrageous claim.

2. On page 71 Nathan writes: “Completely inexperienced with men, she had
little idea of how to take Gene’s (O’Neill) measure. He noticed her
ignorance and didn’t like it. Too‘girlish’ he called Flora, particularly when it
came to sex. In a sheaf of notes she wrote to herself, she described feeling
pain at having his finger inside her, let alone his penis. ‘Be an animal,’
Gene would urge her, and he blamed her reticence on the fact that she had
a profession. ‘You bring Adelphi College into the bedroom. It is not that
career women don’t want to go to bed – it is that they don’t know how,’ he
scolded Flora.”

To prove this Nathan cites in: “Notes: Chapter 6, No.11, FRS Box 34, File
1051″ In this document Schreiber writes about Eugene O’Neill: “His
complaint – Be an animal – give – you bring Adelphi College into the bedroom –
we’re close friends in the living room and the moment we go into the bedroom
you become a stranger…he says that it is not that career women don’t want
to go to bed – it is that they don’t know how. Outcome might have been
different if she had gone to bed with him on the last Saturday after he told her
about _____” Schreiber at no time writes about O’Neill’s “finger” or
“penis.”

3. On page 232 Nathan writes: “…She (Shirley Mason) died quietly in her
home, surrounded by nurses, on February 26 of that year. She was seventy-five
years old. It was early evening when she died.”

In my book SYBIL in her own words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her
Multiple Personalities and Paintings. On page 261 I write:

“The penultimate time I phoned Shirley’s home was on February 26, 1998, at
12:07 PM. In the background I heard her weak voice pleading to Roberta
,(Guy) ‘Tell him I’m sorry. I’m sorry.’ Roberta informed me that Shirley was
too sick to speak on the phone. I mumbled, ‘Please tell her that it’s okay,
it’s okay. I’ll call later.’ …

“When I called later that day at 3:01 PM Roberta stunned me with the news
than Shirley had just died.”

Dr. Suraci has the telephone records of that day, September 26, 1998.

Information about Dr. Suraci:

“SYBIL In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple
Personalities and Paintings” by Patrick Suraci, Ph.D.

Perhaps a productive way to counter Nathan is to purchase Dr. Suraci’s work.

Finally!

February 26, 2011

A Little Help rather than Hindrance from The Media…

If you are so inclined, please send a comment to the author.

Can a Ballerina Make Out With Her Alternate Self? An Expert Debunks Multiple-Personality Movie Tropes

By Gwynne Watkins
2/25/11 at 12:45 PM

On Sunday, Natalie Portman is expected to take home the naked statuette for her portrayal of Nina, the ballerina who confronts her dark Ukranian sitcom-star side in Black Swan. While the disease known as Movie Multiple Personality Disorder has been a staple of films and soap operas for years, never before has it been so well honored: Halle Berry got a Golden Globe nomination for playing a stripper with dueling personalities — one of whom is a white Southern racist — in the “based on a true story” film Frankie and Alice. And Toni Collette collected an Emmy this past fall for her multiple-personality mama in Showtime’s United States of Tara. In their portrayals of MMPD, these actresses, like Joanne Woodward and Sally Field before them, distinguish their different “alters” with accents, wardrobe changes, and occasional violent showdowns. But how do these symptoms compare with people who suffer from actual Dissociative Identity Disorder (the preferred term for Multiple Personality Disorder)? To find out, we called Dr. Marlene Steinberg, author of the book The Stranger in the Mirror, who has done groundbreaking work in the field of DID, demonstrating that the disorder is both more common and less extreme than we’ve been led to believe. We went through all of the symptoms that we’ve seen in movies like Sybil, Fight Club and Black Swan and engaged her in a vigorous round of fact-checking.

Many people associate Dissociative Identity Disorder with the cases in movies like Sybil and The Three Faces of Eve. What are the most misleading ideas that we’ve gotten from those movies?
In real life, the symptoms are very subtle. Patients in real life are concealing the symptoms because it was an elaborate way that they could survive. And so often, they are unaware that they’re suffering from multiple personalities. In the movies, the most common symptom is they’re switching from one personality to another. Well, that’s the least common symptom that people ever present with. That’s not a complaint that people are aware of. They complain of having mood changes; they complain of feeling very depressed; they complain of feeling anxious or panic-stricken. So that’s really a very large misconception that results in misdiagnosis.

Natalie Portman’s character in Black Swan has signs of dissociative identity disorder, but the other personality doesn’t emerge until she’s in her twenties. Is it possible for a second personality to come out that late in life, as a result of intense stress?
Yes — that is, assuming she was predisposed to dissociating when under stress. If she had split into alters as a child, she would be at increased risk of creating new alters as an adult when under severe stress. The “good girl” versus “bad girl” struggle is common in D.I.D.

Portman and Mila Kunis have possibly hallucinatory sex in the movie. Could one personality believe that it has intimate or romantic relations with another?
This is absolutely possible! People with dissociative disorders are extremely creative. I had a male patient with D.I.D. who reported that he had a female alter inside of him who functioned as his girlfriend. His inner girlfriend would get jealous whenever he dated other women.

In The Three Faces of Eve, there’s a famous scene where one of Eve’s three personalities does a nightclub act. Could one personality just decide to go into show business?
It certainly is possible that different personalities take over for different talents or skills — a musical talent, a writing skill. But only 5 percent of cases have different personalities that have dramatically different appearances or talents. It’s usually much more subtle.

Read the rest of the article at the link:  http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/02/black_swan_multiple_personalit.html

Shall We Discuss This?

February 24, 2011

There are 120 comments on the article, the majority of them lambasting Stevens for attempting a DID defense.  What are your thoughts?

Stevens: I didn’t know alter ego was stealing

Jan. 21, 2011

Written by
TOM WITOSKY

Phyllis Stevens says she first learned she embezzled nearly $6 million from her employer on the day Aviva USA officials confronted her about it, court records say.

That claim is contained in a psychiatric report filed this week as defense lawyers asked U.S. District Judge Ronald Longstaff for leniency when he sentences Stevens and her spouse, Marla, today on charges related to embezzlement.

“I didn’t know about the computer fraud at all until I talked with Aviva,” Stevens told Dr. David Drake, a Des Moines psychiatrist, during six hours of interviews. “They told me I had been stealing money and ‘we know you did it.’ As the core person, I didn’t know that.”

Stevens faces a maximum prison term of 48 years and fines totaling $1.75 million after pleading guilty to six counts of wire fraud, computer fraud, aggravated identity theft, conspiracy to commit money laundering, money laundering concealment and filing false tax returns.

The rest is at the link… http://www.gannettonline.com/external/scripts/momslikeme/?siteid=6171

And yet more Art, Art, Art…

February 24, 2011

Ray Caesar, the Canadian artist who turned down Madonna

AMY VERNER

From Saturday’s Globe and Mail

Ray Caesar requests that we meet at a Starbucks in Toronto’s PATH, a system of bland subterranean walkways beneath the city’s financial district, where a sea of people in dark suits creates an energy that is at once frenetic and mind-numbing.

He’s wearing a black turtleneck sweater. His eyes are soft, his smile is gentle. At 52, his hair is more salt than pepper. You might mistake him for a mid-level office hack grabbing a coffee on casual Friday.

Could this really be the artist behind the eerily beautiful, otherworldly and rather disturbing canvases (dames with spider legs, girls eating flies) hanging on the walls of such boldface buyers as shock rocker Marilyn Manson? The same guy who corresponds with Madonna? Who was recruited to work with fashion demigod Riccardo Tisci? Shouldn’t he look more like Edward Scissorhands? Or at least Karl Lagerfeld?

Don’t be fooled.

Ceasar acknowledges head-on just how complex he is. He’s chosen the seemingly uninspired venue for our meeting, he explains, because he’s “slightly agoraphobic,” and his anxiety about being outdoors is eased when he can sit down to sketch at various points along this vast web of underground corridors. He also struggles with dissociative identity disorder: more commonly known as multiple personality disorder. He also insists he was born a dog.

More at the link… http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/arts/ray-caesar-the-canadian-artist-who-turned-down-madonna/article1886463/page1/

Artwork by Shirley A. Mason, aka Sybil on view

February 23, 2011

Exhibit gives Lexington its first real look at artwork by ‘Sybil’

By Candace Chaney Contributing Arts Writer

For almost a quarter of a century, a simple home on Henry Clay Boulevard secretly housed a celebrity, unbeknownst to Lexingtonians.

Even friends and neighbors did not know the true identity of Shirley Mason until she died in 1998, when it was revealed that Mason was not just the quiet, pleasant lady next door who sold art out of her home and enjoyed gardening and prayer.

She was Sybil Dorsett, the subject of a 1973 book by Flora Rheta Schreiber and a 1976 TV movie, starring Sally Field, about Mason’s struggle with dissociative identity disorder.

Suffering cruel physical and emotional abuse at the hands of her mother, Mason coped by developing 16 distinct personalities, all which were successfully integrated after working with psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur for more than a decade.

After Wilbur moved to Lexington to join the psychiatry faculty at the University of Kentucky, a healthy, integrated Mason followed, living the remainder of her days in peace.

Headley-Whitney Museum

Headley-Whitney Museum

Doves in Flight is part of the exhibit of work by Shirley A. Mason, aka Sybil.

Details:

The Hidden Art of Sybil & Her Other Selves: Shirley A. Mason

When: Through March 27. Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tue.-Fri.; noon-5 p.m. Sat., Sun.

Where: Headley-Whitney Museum, 4435 Old Frankfort Pike

Admission: $10 adults, $7 ages 62 and older and students, free for ages 5 and youngerInfo: (859) 255-6653, Headley-whitney.org

Art Show: DIDiva & The Mirror Looks

January 26, 2011

Lynn Schirmer, detail: “It’s a Contest” Acrylic and pastel on paper, 80″ H x 144″ W, 2010

Yes, the Diva is having a show… from the Press release:

Center on Contemporary Art Presents:

DIDiva & The Mirror Looks

New Work by Lynn Schirmer

Curator: Joseph C. Roberts

February 8 – March 6, 2011
Artist’s Reception, Thursday, February 10, 6 – 9 pm

CoCA Ballard, 6413 Seaview Ave NW, Seattle, WA 98107
On View Weekdays 10 am – 5 pm, February 8 – March 6, 2011

Lynn Schirmer’s figures overlap, blend features, and braid limbs suggesting complex relationships and boundary conflicts. Her groupings hint at formative struggles frozen in motion in memory. Schirmer produces her flat work spontaneously and draws exclusively from interior sources. The result is psychological self-portraiture, thought form rendered corporeal.

DIDiva & The Mirror Looks is the second in a series of Schirmer’s exhibits carrying the DIDiva brand. DID stands for Dissociative Identity Disorder and Schirmer has the condition. DID was formerly and perhaps more commonly known as Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD).

Schirmer says: “DID is greatly misunderstood and overly sensationalized. Hollywood and the media are major culprits. A recent example is Showtime’s appalling The United States of Tara. I have seen editors of prestigious news outlets conflate DID with schizophrenia. The clinical community might be of assistance but complex political and social processes hamstring it and the disorder is unfairly labeled “controversial”. So the lay public remains woefully misinformed and anyone with the condition lives in unnecessary isolation or faces painful stigma. In answer to these outrages, I brought DIDiva to life.”

With her DIDiva activities, Schirmer joins the ranks of those who’ve “come out” as having the condition. Some notables include football player Hershal Walker, writer Matthew Branton, and former president of the Asia Society, Robert Oxnam.

Lynn Schirmer is a Seattle artist, activist, and web designer. She is the former Studio Coordinator and Curator of Corridor Gallery at the Tashiro Kaplan building. She exhibits nearly as frequently in New York as she does in Seattle. In 2010 she was awarded a certificate of merit from the New York State Assembly.

More information:
http://LynnSchirmer.com
http://DIDiva.com
CoCA Seattle

Lynn Schirmer, Detail: “Bridge” Acrylic and pastel on paper, 72″ H x 108″ W, 2010

Trish Fotheringham Video

January 9, 2011

I know Trish to be a brave and well spoken survivor of extreme abuse. Below is a clip both she and psychologist Ellen Lacter produced of Ellen’s 3 hour interview with her. In the interview, Trish goes into great detail about her recovery process and what it’s like to live with DID.

The 3 DVD set is available on Trish’s website:
http://morethananidea.wordpress.com/dvd-interview/