the totally insane true story behind the 1970s film and book Sybil

while she was suspended from the kitchen's light fixture.

I feel like light fixtures cannot actually withstand this? I guess it depends.

xp - yes, indeed. i can't wait for my friends and family to see my amazon wish list when they buy me birthday presents this year.

here is the most well known of shirley mason's paintings

http://www.hiddenpaintings.com/uploads/Entrapment_s.jpg

laurel, she was a slight child

I don't think there's a single sum-up but there are a lot of individual books & documentaries that I basically can't resist every time I see one

That's why I wanted to read Debbie Nathan's book. I think it is that book.

Satan's Silence

I mean who can resist SATAN'S SILENCE?!

i read "sybil exposed" too and it is nuts

http://www.youtube.com/embed/6pdRbfVLO6g

Worst Mother in Film: Now with Laugh Track!

1973 Nervous Breakdown is a far better book but this goes deep into the culture-wide dread that fueled the satanic ritual abuse epidemic

http://ebooks-imgs.connect.com/product/400/000/000/000/000/087/529/400000000000000087529_s4.png

Jenkins also wrote a book about cults - Mystics & Messiahs - but it's not that great. he's kind of neo-conservative and middlebrow, a bad combo

I used to listen to this dude's comedy albums when I was a Christian, he is a pathetically tragic figure in the whole Satanic Panic era, being mostly a fraud who was exposed by a Christian magazine, Cornerstone.

man, "Unsolved Mysteries" and "20/20" were obsessed with satanic panic

Warnke's exposure in Cornerstone is one of the all-time great moments in evangelical culture, so amazing

Although I am now more than two decades removed from it, I remain fascinated by the ephemera of evangelical culture. Warnke, Bob Larson, Carman, Mylon LeFevre, DeGarmo & Key, Kerry Livgren's A/D . . . endlessly amazing stuff.

Oof that's a good story. I love fallen frauds, esp if they had followers.

I just want to clarify that there were clearly other factors influencing the Satanic panic/MPD mania of the 80s/90s, BUT a major foundation of the argument supporting it came from the research and promotion of Dr Cornelia Wilbur, who started the "repressed sexual childhood memories" aspect that formed the foundation of SRA evidence.

aero we should start a thread on ILM on CCM music of the 80s/90s. Wonder how many people would participate?

I'd be in.

(I remember Warnke clearly. btw...saw him live at least twice. Had already secularized myself by the time Cornerstone blew the lid off his "ministry," though.)

I was not a Christian, so I don't know anything about that music at all. Kinda freaks me out tbh.

I would like a signet paperback covers thread.

My parents used to get all these Christian music mailorder catalogs and I would read them cover-to-cover the same way I would w/ Columbia House & BMG and the one thing that always astounded me was that Petra had a seemingly endless discography and yet I have never, ever heard their name mentioned anywhere other than those catalogs.

Are there any threads about 60s-70s hippie Jesus folk-rock?

My 7th gr math teacher had a daughter who loved Petra! That is the only way I ever heard the name.

WmC, I think so -- it's a hot commodity among collectors iirc?

Private labels, small pressings, etc

as is generally known I am the biggest Amy Grant fan on ilx

Contemporary Christian Music: 70s, 80s, 90s and beyond

wow, this is something http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/False%20Religions/Wicca%20&%20Witchcraft/anton_lavey.htm

Kinda want to see Amy Grant get in a boxing ring against somebody and see if the the combo of aero's 2 biggest fandoms makes him essplode.

As long as she doesn't fight that dude from Bulgaria in the Olympics bout from Saturday. That guy was fierce.

Had no idea Sybil had been debunked!

My step-mother had all these books. She was an Irish Catholic who had lost a son to crib death. I remember Helter Skelter, The Eyes of Laura Mars, these book covers with slack-jawed children being threatened by some sinister being above the book title. So many Stephen King books…

She made a mean cheese dip, I do give her that.

I am seriously looking forward to seeing people's "Sybil's been debunked!" reactions!!

There's even a major point that I will not mention because you will just have to read the book.

Unless someone injects me with powerful substances and elicits the information from me, that is.

All that's missing from that Anton LaVey thing is a connection to Jack the Ripper and the Knights Templar. They've got everything else.

what was nuts to me was how long and completely symbiotic the relationship was between the doctor and "sybil." like this was something that went on for decades, and they were totally dependent on each other. also some pretty serious self-deception going on on both sides - they both had to be aware that there was fakery going on, but i don't think either thought they were doing something wrong or cynical or self-serving.

right -- like with all the hospitals they worked at together, and how she got sybil all these jobs as an art therapist, and encouraged her to go to school to be a psychiatrist?!

they went on vacations together

yet shirley mason still owed her for the therapy?

shirley's religious background was interesting too. i didn't know much about 7th day adventists.

I keep thinking you're talking about the woman from Garbage.

So has MPD been debunked or just Sybil/Shirley?

That is a good question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dissociative_identity_disorder

from the History wiki section, take it fwiw

Before the 19th century, people exhibiting symptoms similar to those were believed to be possessed.[49] The first case of DID was thought to be described by Paracelsus in 1646.[55]

An intense interest in spiritualism, parapsychology, and hypnosis continued throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries,[6] running in parallel with John Locke's views that there was an association of ideas requiring the coexistence of feelings with awareness of the feelings.[56] Hypnosis, which was pioneered in the late 18th century by Franz Mesmer and Armand-Marie Jacques de Chastenet, Marques de Puységur, challenged Locke's association of ideas. Hypnotists reported what they thought were second personalities emerging during hypnosis and wondered how two minds could coexist.[6]

The 19th century saw a number of reported cases of multiple personalities which Rieber[56] estimated would be close to 100. Epilepsy was seen as a factor in some cases,[56] and discussion of this connection continues into the present era.[57][58]

By the late 19th century there was a general acceptance that emotionally traumatic experiences could cause long-term disorders which might display a variety of symptoms.[59] These conversion disorders were found to occur in even the most resilient individuals, but with profound effect in someone with emotional instability like Louis Vivé (1863-?) who suffered a traumatic experience as a 13-year-old when he encountered a viper. Vivé was the subject of countless medical papers and became the most studied case of dissociation in the 19th century.

Between 1880 and 1920, many great international medical conferences devoted a lot of time to sessions on dissociation.[60] It was in this climate that Jean-Martin Charcot introduced his ideas of the impact of nervous shocks as a cause for a variety of neurological conditions. One of Charcot's students, Pierre Janet, took these ideas and went on to develop his own theories of dissociation.[61] One of the first individuals diagnosed with multiple personalities to be scientifically studied was Clara Norton Fowler, under the pseudonym Christine Beauchamp; American neurologist Morton Prince studied Fowler between 1898 and 1904, describing her case study in his 1906 monograph, Dissociation of a Personality.[61]

In the early 20th century interest in dissociation and multiple personalities waned for a number of reasons. After Charcot's death in 1893, many of his so-called hysterical patients were exposed as frauds, and Janet's association with Charcot tarnished his theories of dissociation.[6] Sigmund Freud recanted his earlier emphasis on dissociation and childhood trauma.[6]

In 1910, Eugen Bleuler introduced the term schizophrenia to replace dementia praecox. A review of the Index medicus from 1903 through 1978 showed a dramatic decline in the number of reports of multiple personality after the diagnosis of schizophrenia became popular, especially in the United States.[62] A number of factors helped create a large climate of skepticism and disbelief; paralleling the increased suspicion of DID was the decline of interest in dissociation as a laboratory and clinical phenomenon.[60]

Starting in about 1927, there was a large increase in the number of reported cases of schizophrenia, which was matched by an equally large decrease in the number of multiple personality reports.[60] Bleuler also included multiple personality in his category of schizophrenia. It was concluded in the 1980s that DID patients are often misdiagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia.[60]

The public, however, was exposed to psychological ideas which took their interest. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and many short stories by Edgar Allan Poe had a formidable impact.[56] In 1957, with the publication of the book The Three Faces of Eve and the popular movie which followed it, the American public's interest in multiple personality was revived. During the 1970s an initially small number of clinicians campaigned to have it considered a legitimate diagnosis.[60]

Between 1968 and 1980 the term that was used for dissocative identity disorder was "Hysterical neurosis, dissociative type". The APA wrote in the second edition of the DSM: "In the dissociative type, alterations may occur in the patient's state of consciousness or in his identity, to produce such symptoms as amnesia, somnambulism, fugue, and multiple personality."[63] The number of cases sharply increased in the late 1970s and throughout the 80s, and the first scholarly monographs on the topic appeared in 1986.[18]

In 1974 the highly influential book Sybil was published, and later made into a miniseries in 1976 and again in 2007. Describing what Robert Rieber called “the third most famous of multiple personality cases”,[64] it presented a detailed discussion of the problems of treatment of “Sybil”, a pseudonym for Shirley Ardell Mason. Though the book and subsequent films helped popularize the diagnosis, later analysis of the case suggested different interpretations, ranging from Mason’s problems being iatrogenically induced through therapeutic methods used by her psychiatrist, Cornelia B. Wilbur or an inadvertent hoax due in part to the lucrative publishing rights,[64][65] though this conclusions has itself been challenged.[66] As media attention on DID increased, so too did the controversy surrounding the diagnosis.[55]

With the publication of the DSM-III, which omitted the terms "hysteria" and "neurosis" (and thus the former categories for dissociative disorders), dissociative diagnoses became "orphans" with their own categories[67] with dissociative identity disorder appearing as "multiple personality disorder".[18] In the opinion of McGill University psychiatrist Joel Paris, this inadvertently legitimized them by forcing textbooks, which mimicked the structure of the DSM, to include a separate chapter on them and resulted in an increase in diagnosis of dissociative conditions. Once a rarely occurring spontaneous phenomena (research in 1944 showed only 76 cases),[68] became "an artifact of bad (or naïve) psychotherapy" as patients capable of dissociating were accidentally encouraged to express their symptoms by "overly fascinated" therapists.[67]

"Interpersonality amnesia" was removed as a diagnostic feature from the DSM III in 1987, which may have contributed to the increasing frequency of the diagnosis.[18] There were 200 reported cases of DID as of 1980, and 20,000 from 1980 to 1990.[69] Joan Acocella reports that 40,000 cases were diagnosed from 1985 to 1995.[70] Scientific publications regarding DID peaked in the mid-1990s then rapidly declined.[71]

In 1994, the fourth edition of the DSM replaced the criteria again and changed the name of the condition from "multiple personality disorder" to the current "dissociative identity disorder" to emphasize the importance of changes to consciousness and identity rather than personality. The inclusion of interpersonality amnesia helped to distinguish DID from dissociative disorder not otherwise specified, but the condition retains an inherent subjectivity due to difficulty in defining terms such as personality, identity, ego-state and even amnesia.[18] The ICD-10 still classifies DID as a "Dissociative [conversion] disorder" and retains the name "multiple personality disorder" with the classification number of F44.8.81.[1]

A 2006 study compared scholarly research and publications on DID and dissociative amnesia to other mental health conditions, such as anorexia nervosa, alcohol abuse and schizophrenia from 1984 to 2003. The results were found to be unusually distributed, with a very low level of publications in the 1980s followed by a significant rise that peaked in the mid-1990s and subsequently rapidly declined in the decade following. Compared to 25 other diagnosis, the mid-90's "bubble" of publications regarding DID was unique. In the opinion of the authors of the review, the publication results suggest a period of "fashion" that waned, and that the two diagnoses "[did] not command widespread scientific acceptance".[71]

All those stories of how a person could be a housewife by day, but then "turn into" some Bavarian count inthe afternoon always seemed a little fishy.

I'll bring Billy Milligan back -- he was the landmark legal case for MPD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billy_Milligan

William Stanley Milligan (born Feb 14, 1955), known as Billy Milligan, was the subject of a highly publicized court case in Ohio in the late 1970s. After having committed several felonies including armed robbery, he was arrested for three rapes on the Ohio State University campus. In the course of preparing his defense, psychologists diagnosed Milligan with multiple personality disorder. His lawyers pleaded insanity, claiming that two of his alternate personalities committed the crimes without Milligan's being aware of it. He was the first person diagnosed with multiple personality disorder to raise such a defense.[1]

One day I will fight aero for title of biggest Amy Grant fan on ilx, and then when we are all scuffled and mussed we'll call a truce and agree never to fight again and seal the deal with a duet of "Sharayah."

Have I posted this recently?

Dating a split personality

I had an ex who had some trauma previously in her life, blamed herself for a death, heard her asking forgiveness (of the deceased person) all the time. Sometimes would sleepwalk and try to leave the room, wake up screaming, crying, etc.

Anyway, at some point I found out that this girl had multiple personalities. One would usually wake up about ten minutes before the other (normal) girlfriend. Problems were thus...

Early riser knew who I was, which is why it took me a little bit to catch on

Early riser was a genuinely happy person, who I honestly liked better than my actual gf.

Early riser was always horny.

These were problems because, my actual girlfriend, waking up in the middle of... stuff, was none to happy to discover it happening. Luckily, she apparently knew about this, so it didn't take much explaining to get the situation sorted out. From then on she just let me know that I should make absolutely sure she was awake.

Early riser started showing up more often. Eventually I became rather good at differentiating between the two by just looking at their smile. My SO's smile was usually fake, it hurt me to see. Early riser was always happy. However, I learned that early riser didn't take no for an answer when it came to morning time intimacy, which was obviously a problem. I figured out that by pretending to go along with it, and brushing her hair behind her ear as if I was about to kiss her, I could wake my gf up. For some reason behind her ear was like a wake up button. I employ this technique effectively for a while.

I'd like you to understand that all of this so far has been the build up, what comes next is what gives me an adrenaline rush to this day. Up until this point I didn't actually know that early riser was a separate individual, I had just assumed it was my girlfriend being half-asleep and carefree in the morning.

One day early riser wakes me up trying to get some sexy times. I roll over smiling and begin to brush her hair back. She grabs my wrist... really hard. I stop. "What's wrong?"

"I don't wan't you to touch behind my ear"

slightly freaked out "Why not?"

"Because then you go away"

Cue realization crashing down around me. I got less adrenaline bungee jumping, I kid you not. I fumbled around stalling for time until my girlfriend woke up.

Every time early riser would show up after that she would grab my wrist if I tried to go near her ear. Usually managed to find away to sneak my hand back there anyway. One day she didn't try to grab my wrist. I touched behind her ear... nothing. She smiled at me like she knew, I felt like my heart had stopped. I panicked a little bit and just shook my gf awake at that point. Didn't see as much of her (early riser) after that.

(I copied and pasted that from somewhere. Not my testimony.)

wtf is that

She's still alive but declined to be interviewed for the film.

xxp I actually knew a couple punkers who worked at that DC pizza place years ago

And I think there was a video circulating of Ian Svenonius wearing a hooded robe at that pizza parlor, trying to summon Curtis Mayfield's ghost or something like that... might have added to the shooter's suspicions about the place

I had thought the concept of recovered memories was controversial within the research psych community because there was evidence that many of these were false memories?

― stank viola (Neanderthal)

idk. it's interesting. i didn't think repressed memories were a real thing either until i found out that i had them.

to be clear i wasn't ritually abused by a satanic cult or anything like that. there were just things that it was easier to... not think about for a while. then in my 40s i started dealing with gender stuff and i was like... why has none of this ever come up before?

and then i realized it had. again, we're not talking about anything wild or outrageous. i had friends who were like "oh yeah, i remember you telling me something like that", when in my head i'd told no-one my secret. it was easier to not think about it, to compartmentalize it somewhere out of the way. there was nothing i could do with that information, no useful purpose it could serve.

for some people their past is a rational logical narrative and for me, i've been told so many different things, some of which aren't true, by people i learned to trust that... it's confusing what to believe sometimes. i kind of try to piece things together from fragments of things i remember, and sometimes i put it together wrong, i draw conclusions that aren't correct, i misremember. i guess it's easy to categorize them as "false memories", i'm trying to figure things out and i do it wrong. and then when i do sometimes people will say "see, you're always remembering things wrong", and dismiss everything i remember, but i'm not "always" remembering things wrong. sometimes one person remembers things one way and me and my sibs all remember things in a very different way.

sometimes... one is pressured to believe a narrative that doesn't hold up to scrutiny if you examine it. and that narrative can be satanic ritual abuse, or it can be "perfectly normal child".

I like your last paragraph a lot there...You should look for this film. I think you would, at the very least, agree that this particular case was fraudulent.

i haven't seen the film, but from what i've read i have no doubt of that... i guess what i'm interested in is the way that narratives of "satanic" or "occult" abuse are perpetrated by hegemonic institutional forces (in this case mainly christianity) while at the same time genuine instances of abuse perpetrated by these same institutional forces is dismissed as indicative of things like "false memory syndrome". particularly given the tendency christianity has to portray queerness as demonic! i'm thinking here of things like the D&D panic ignited by the disappearance of james dallas egbert iii. his parents hired a pi named william dear to investigate the case... dear says that egbert's disappearance has a lot more to do with his homosexuality than dungeons and dragons...

that said dungeons and dragons is something that does have great resonance with queer people... one of the things parents found most dangerous about dungeons and dragons was the way it encouraged its players to take on alternate personae... it's extremely common for players to use this as a way of exploring sexual or gender identities that would otherwise be taboo. d&d is a tremendously queer game today, and has spawned explicitly queer successors like "thirsty sword lesbians".

one can also see the way something like "false memory syndrome" was created by paul mchugh, the conservative catholic who shut down the gender affirming surgery program at johns hopkins because of his personal beliefs... personal beliefs which then led him to defend vigorously priests accused of the serial sexual assault of children, a crime which was covered up by the ecclesiastical hierarchy...

this sentence from lawrence pazder's wikipedia page stood out to me...

Pazder considered himself to be a devout Catholic.

the archbishop of portland earlier this year issued an edict forbidding teachers in catholic schools in portland from calling trans kids by their names or gendering them correctly... christians call us "groomers" when the actual people abusing children are far more often youth pastors... christianity's long, shameful legacy of child abuse continues, all the while claiming to "protect children".

hail satan. baphomet is goals.

SATAN WANTS YOU (the Michelle Remembers doc) is 100% worth the rental on prime. Debbie Nathan is in it!!
Well made and the ending satisfies. When someone besides me watches it we can discuss "baby candles"

Oh thank you thank you will totally watch

I assumed this thread was bumped because of the growing popularity of the multiplicity online subculture! Whenever I see someone talking about their supposed dissociative identity disorder I can’t help but think about my fascination with Sybil when I was a teenager.