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

Oh, don't worry, I just read that part. I'll be sure to ask first. Also, I very nearly booked a room at what is now a guesthouse but used to be his old owner the artist's house!

Guys

http://i.cdn.turner.com/trutv/trutv.com/graphics/photos/criminal_mind/psychology/multiples/3-3-Sybil-Shirley-K-Mason.jpg

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/_/26347737/Tears+for+Fears+tff73246.png

creeeeeeepy

Also the guy who wrote the book about Amityville ate my parents

^ misread as this, thought thread was about to take a horrifying turn

okay, am I missing something or is there a link on that site to the story behind the doll?

I have read almost all of these books (although I conflated a lot of Sybil and When Rabbit Howls (which one has the, um, button hook involvement?)) but somehow forgot about Debbie Nathan's book despite being super psyched to read it before it came out.

Rectifying that ASAP.

Robert? There was no story - I was confused too. I just googled him and found a wiki page.

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

x-post

Although I never read the book, I totally remember Truddi Chase, seeing her on Oprah and the Shelly Long movie. I was too afraid to watch it!

Thanks ENBB! That's what I was looking for.

okay wtf! tears for fears facial resemblance/album title reference is wigging my shit OUT.

I know, right??!?!?

Button hook is Sybil.

Sybil was the "I can't eat chocolate ice cream" book, too, right? God the effed up details that I remember from these books.

I don't remember anything about chocolate ice cream.
If you're thinking cold water bladder enemas while mom plays thundering classical piano, you're thinking Sybil.

I followed the link from the Wikipedia page on Robert the Doll to its homepage, where they have an animated gif of him wiggling his head, and now I am afraid.

Did Sybil ever meet up with Eve from the Five (or was it three?) Faces of Eve?

My first awareness of these things came from a fascinating UK TV documentary about this Hillside Strangler guy in Los Angeles, who when caught started manifesting multiple personality stuff. At one point psychiatrists were going to class him as guilty but insane, but eventually they decided he was faking it, basically using Sybil as his Multiple-Personalities-For-Dummies. The idea of multiple personalities still fascinates me, for all that I don't believe in them.

Go Ask Alice is also total fraud.

Book cover used to freak me out when I was a kid.

The ice cream thing (it might not have been chocolate) was that a therapist gave whomever it was a dish of ice cream, and the texture and shape of the scoops of ice cream reminded the poor MPD sufferer of testicles and she flipped out.

Go Ask Alice is also total fraud.

Is that true? The book/movie had a big effect on me in middle school--I've even shown the film to my own middle-school students.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zk_-u0wejk8

Yes, it is true! That book is a fraud!

Just read the Wikipedia page. Another illusion shattered.

Could I request that there be no mention of the Easter Bunny on this thread?

This has been a rough day for you, I understand.

Go Ask Alice movie is hilarious. Shatner! Matlock! special one-scene guest appearance by Mackenzie Phillips!

I like the part where she wakes up in a park unaware of how she got there, even though she's apparently been around for weeks

Sparks' second "diary" project, Jay's Journal, gave rise to a controversy that cast further doubt on Go Ask Alice's veracity. Jay's Journal was allegedly the diary of a boy who committed suicide after becoming involved with the occult. Again, Sparks claimed to have based it on the diary a patient. However, the family of the boy in question, Alden Barrett, disowned the book. They claimed that Sparks had used only a handful of the actual diary entries, and had invented the great majority of the book, including the entire occult angle.[2] This led many to speculate that "Alice's" diary—if indeed it existed—had received similar treatment. No one claiming to have known the real "Alice" has ever come forward.

obviously an upstanding member of the medical community

Michelle Remembers is now on its way to me.

To be 100% clear - I really really really do not want to make light of actual child abuse itt -- it's real and really really horrible and, logically, causes people to do all kinds of mental gymnastics to shield themselves from memories of it. Really I just was shocked at the cultural phenomenon of Sybil, LLC, the women involved, and the ripple effect Dr Wilbur's work had on the mental health field, the rise and fall of MPD as a popular diagnosis and the totally bizarre Satanic ritual abuse sex cult stuff that followed.

I also loved Go Ask Alice as a kid. I don't know which I loved more -- Go Ask Alice, Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, or Alice (the tv show). They're all v entertaining, all of the Alices.

Ha, we watched some of Go Ask Alice in Grade 8! All I remember taking away from it was hippie girls and Jefferson Airplane. I think it actually made drugs seem more exciting.

Maybe I should watch it again:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMM3X3hqj3w

Never knew about these other books btw, though I do remember the Satanism panic from childhood. I'm pretty stoked to check some of this out.

Scared me initially...soon got over it. The music really made an impression, though I later learned it was nothing but covers by hacky in-house musicians: "White Rabbit," "Dear Mr. Fantasy," "It Ain't Easy."

What was the overlap between the SRA panic, D&D panic, and heavy metal panic? (A Venn diagram might help.)

(Also WTF with people panicking in the 80s?)
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The music really made an impression, though I later learned it was nothing but covers by hacky in-house musicians

OTM

I think it overlapped a lot. D&D was Satanic, heavy metal was Satanic (backward masking!), Satanic ritual abuse was Satanic. Like, they hook you in with D&D, then get you into metal, and next thing you know your standing in a circle in the woods chanting over a pentagram.

I was too scared to ever read Go Ask Alice and by the time I was scared I was too old to care.

When I was 18 I got sort of into Wicca (shut up I was 18) and bought a pentagram ring and my mom basically had a shitfit and made me stop wearing it because it she thought it was evil.

standing in a circle in the woods chanting over a pentagram....naked, possibly smeared with sacrificial animal blood if you're really far gone

The woman who probably wrote Go Ask Alice, Jay's Journal, It Happened to Nancy, and other "true" diaries of troubled teens, Beatrice Sparks, died just a couple months ago:

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

She was a "Morman youth counselor."

Thank Whomever I got through my childhood before all these shitwaves passed through my woodland abode, which had been troubled only by (insert 50s/60s bummer headlines here). But the Manson case was the fountainhead. That got to everybody, even amid everyday disaster--"Awright, I've had enough/What else can you show me." Manson and those girls and guys seemed at first like the usual suspects in a way, til the evidence registered, and then lil Hobbit-gone-bad Charlie (I didn't even like the good ones) showed up in court with a shaved face and head (NOBODY outside of a z-movie had the latter), and those eyes and eyebrows, and it was like who and what is this guy Then the girls followed suit. Taking acid and finding youself thinking about that case was not good. Can imagine how Katy Perry's Dad did that and went from Timothy Leary to Jeeeeesus.

"When I was 18 I sort of got into Wicca"

inspiration?

ha Though the timing would have been right for that I don't think I even saw that movie until years later. It was just big then and got a lot of press. I never practiced or anything. Mostly I just read a lot and made up a silly name for myself. Please note, this phase did not last very long.

Stevie Nicks was supposedly way into Wicca or White Magic, if any diff

here's some sad sad heartbreaking shit i grew up with

http://daretodream-maggie.blogspot.com/2012/05/jackson-and-akki-judged-by-looks.html

http://www.utsandiego.com/news/2012/may/09/dale-akiki-reflects-historic-molestation-trial/

THE LSD KING

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Gu131f9Y30

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC0Cbc7i0dQ

they have this shit for that dude in colorado yet is what i'm wondering

x-post - Was too young at the time to actually remember that but I have heard of it because that's the county I grew up in. Acid King was maybe WSoS.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kHl83M4bmZE

oh you'll like this then i think