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

much deeper focus on the UK aspect, and how it moved from the US to the uk

v interesting so far

What I found fascinating(and disturbing) was the psychology professionals interviewed who still refuse to countenance the idea that that the ritual abuse scares were anything other than genuine. I mean, this isn't like hack writers making up phony devil worship bullshit to sell some trashy paperbacks, they really believe it with a frightening amount of conviction. I just can't even think how you could begin to consider yourself fit to judge the mental health of others, while also believing that secret societies of Satanic murderers are a real threat to our way of life.

Honestly, I could've shaken that bloody woman Joan Bakewell was talking to. Delusional, dangerous idiot.

Currently reading After Sybil, the collection of Shirley Mason's letters from her former student/penpal. It's sheer pleasure if you enjoy reading between the lines, as the book's compiler/author seems to have bought the entire Sybil story wholesale. She also added these sad/charming little quotations at the bottom of every page, and some of them are from about.com and wikipedia.

omg

their relationship is pretty weird. many of shirley's letters begin with at least a paragraph of apologies for taking so long to write. this whole story is a pileup of extremely weird personal and professional relationships between women.

i may have to read this

Huh, Pizzagate appears to be this now. Except without the need for anyone to claim to be victims.

There is a strange rabbit hole of case in the UK that seems to focus, at least in part, on a branch of Pizza Express - possibly in Highgate iirc.

Similar rumours of satanic abuse, etc.

More info please!!

Hampstead!

I think Sword And Scale did an episode about it. A woman coached her children to lie about satanic abuse organised by her estranged husband as part of a custody battle - and put videos of the children up on Youtube. They were supposedly taken to rituals at a branch of Pizza Express - which is possibly where some of the Pizzagate stuff originated.

It's all completely ridiculous and obviously made up but there is a hardcore of a couple of dozen people who strongly believe a satanic cult is operating and harrass / stalk the supposed members.

Yeah, Hampstead - there's a lot more than a dozen believers now (don't know about stalkers), it's one of the bases for "this shit happens all the time so the FBI must investigate this mountain of circumstantial evidence", along with the Franklin Credit Union case and Marc Dutroux.

Marc Dutroux obviously did actually kill children and may have been an enormous coverup*, but there was some "people came forward to claim he was part of a satanic network" as well.

*willing to be corrected on this

And remind me what this has to do with the 2016 election and Hillary? I only know the name Pizzagate because I remember people were somehow believing that she was involved in some way?!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pizzagate_conspiracy_theory

. 'cheese pizza' is a codeword for child porn (this may be an invention of 4chan)
. John Podesta gets his mails hacked.
. The codeword 'pizza' appears a lot in the mails.
. There are some turns of phrase which may seem odd if you, for example, immerse yourself largely in one argot.
. Therefore John Podesta is a paedophile.
. David Brock's ex runs a pizza shop with ping-pong-tables and live music.
. He has an instagram - he and his friends have an edgy sense of humour.
. Therefore they are paedophiles, and the shop is where fucking and murdering kids happens.
. John Podesta and Hillary Clinton have contact with Marina Abramovic.
. Marina Abramovic is, obviously, an enormous satanist.
. Therefore so is everyone else.
. After this it gets a little dumb.

It does seem to be largely a rerun of the 80s - an assault on art, an assault on queerness, an assault on non-approved senses of humour.

As a result one of the few dark lols is seeing how this was down one end of the_donald from the alt-right as such, and now they've fled to a board largely hosted by the alt-right, so you have the Christians being largely unbothered by the new leads being researched by IHateN*****s, who is however a little freaked out by the threads just checking that "we're all praying about this".

one of the key points with the spirit cooking thing is that the conspiracy theorists behind pizzagate are huge rubes, so they actually think that marina abramovic is a satanist, and not a shitty but entirely predictable and normal celebrity conceptual artist that rich people like john podesta would enjoy

also cheese pizza as code word apparently was actually used on 4chan and from that alt-right idiots that read 4chan thought that podesta irl used such code in emails

the fact that podesta "left a handkerchief" at the restaurant was a huge part of the conspiracy. when you know, he legit left some fancy handkerchief at a restaurant

I appreciate the details and analysis. Thank you
The simultaneous assault on all those things via satanism as it intersects with something as innocuous as pizza/cheese pizza is fascinating

So like who is the person who genuinely believes Podesta/Clinton are pedophiles? They're being preyed upon by a syllogism right? Who benefits from people believing this?

I can only follow this stuff from a distance so I appreciate the added context.

The handkerchief is interesting because it is the... not least crazy but hardest to explain. Give me a minute.

So - there is an email, from a realtor, to friends of John Podesta, saying "Nice to show you around the properties yesterday, we found a black & white handkerchief". And the friend forwards it on to Podesta saying "Hey they found a handkerchief, I think it has a map that seems pizza-related, is it yours?" and he says "It's mine, but not worth worrying about".

This is in a different class from the other "smoking gun". The Podestas have some friends who are another elderly couple with a family (and also, you know, billionaires), and they meet up occasionally and amongst other things play dominos. They sometimes give gifts around Christmas (because Christmas), the Podestas tend to send pasta and sauce because John loves Italian cooking, I guess?

So, one year, they get a mail from their friends saying:

I think you should give notice when changing strategies which have been long in place. I immediately realized something was different by the shape of the box and I contemplated who would be sending me something in the square shaped box. Lo and behold, instead of pasta and wonderful sauces, it was a lovely, tempting assortment of cheeses, Yummy. I am awaiting the return of my children and grandchildren from their holiday travels so that we can demolish them.

Thank you so much. I hope you and your gang are well.

I miss you both

Best wishes fro a merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Herb

Ps. Do you think I’ll do better playing dominos on cheese than on pasta?

And when Pizzagate finds this, they goes nuts, because this is clearly code! This can't be anything else because... you can't play dominos on cheese or pasta!

(well, 90% are engaged in this Nigel Tufnel impersonation - there's 10% saying "He just said he was going to demolish his children and grandchildren! What more are we waiting for?")

So yeah, the pizza map thing is their best lead - it sounds a little odd, and it's not some incredibly common turn of phrase that the folks at PG just haven't heard of. As far as I can tell, they're hoping that some brave citizen journalist will at some point ask John Podesta on camera what it means, and then they'll get the 5% chance that he will hiss and turn away, like a vampire from light. The other option, which would happen 100% of the time if he's innocent and 95% if he's guilty (nb these are not equally weighted possiblities), is that he will say "well, I don't remember what that means, to be honest, probably just an in-joke", and it's not clear what their backup plan is.

LL: I think some of it may be what aero was talking about above, reframing personal abuse in terms of a grander moral scheme. Some of it is I guess a similar reframing of edgelordness - I can't in my social structure revel in thinking about horrible things, but I can revel in thinking about vanquishing them.

Something that may be specific to this is people thinking "Well, I wasn't certain what to do but in the end I voted for Trump instead of Clinton (and maybe I don't want to think about why at the last I couldn't vote for her). And now he appears to be a monster. So.... she must be a BIGGER monster!"

Or, I could be full of shit.

Too bad the vigilantcitizen.com Pizzagate article isn't still up - it returns a 404 now. That was some OTT through the looking glass occult shit.

interesting new wrinkle in the saga:

sally field recently released a memoir in which she reveals that her stepfather abused her as a child. i was just listening to an interview that touched on that and she described an ability to dissociate ('walk out of the room" as she put it) and she used this to her advantage as an actor, particularly in playing Sybil. she related to her but, acc to Fields herself, it didn't dawn on her that she was able to relate because she had also experienced trauma and had a similar dissociative reaction to it.

and this relatability i think is something that draws a lot of people to the book/movie/saga of sybil...even though the story as we know it (the Shirley/Dr Wilbur/Flora Schreiber version) has been revealed to be an elaborate knot of lies. weird!

whoa, thanks for that

What is the Sybil DVD situation at this point? I don’t suppose any of the streaming services have it?

i haven't checked -- i feel like it was on DVD at some point but idk about streaming

wow that is a fascinating layer to the story.

this is my favorite boookmarked thread imo fyi

What is Debbie Nathan working on next?

She was writing about border issues last I checked. I follow her on twitter! https://twitter.com/DebbieNathan2

this is probably my favorite thread too because i get to talk about SYBIL, which tbh over the years has the distinction of being my perennial favorite conversation topic

Leaving aside pizzagate and other politically-driven conspiracies -- which don't have any real traction in mainstream media -- what's the current example of Sybil or SRA? Is there something going on now that people are giving credibility to that will eventually seem totally bizarre that anyone believed?

idk. the first thing that springs to mind is conversion therapy? it's horrifically cruel and still practiced iirc (also illegal in CA and maybe other states iirc?)

i might be wrong about CA -- i didn't look it up before posting :-/

That’s p politically-driven imo

The Johnny Gosch “my kid is missing & was kidnapped into an underground pedophile ring that goes all the way to the top & somehow involves the Savings & Loan collapse” springs to mind https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Gosch


It’s got so much lowlevel Satanic Panic hysteria going on, and the Netflix doc gave it a lot of unearned credibility

I feel for the mom but the whole story is out of control.

What is the Sybil DVD situation at this point?

It's a little pricey ($30), but you can still get it on Amazon. I bought it a few years ago when it was maybe half that.

For iffy psychology ideas, possibly psychopathy, or at least the idea that people are born as psychopaths, or that your boss is a psychopath and there's a test to prove it.

my favorite psychopathy test is the one that just flat out asks "are you a psychopath" and nothing else

i might be misremembering actually, i think it actually just presents the clinical definition of psychopathy and asks the test taker if that describes them

idk, when i think about moral panics or conspiracy theories recently, i think of how victims of abuse sometimes make up cover stories to explain the abuse and its effects. especially this happens in situations where insitutions or people in positions of power refuse to acknowledge the abuse. the insidious thing is the way this coping mechanism gets used by people in power to discredit victims of abuse by accusing them of being "hysterical" (which is a specifically misogynist attack) or of just making up things out of whole cloth.

i brought up conversion therapy because it is a cruel pseudoscientific sham + it made it into the therapeutic repertoire of otherwise accredited people/institutions. for a while at least, if i understand correctly, it was considered legitimate as a therapy (like the diagnosis and treatment of MPD/recovered memories) but clearly it is not.

the thing about the Sybil situation is that she was drugged and coerced emotionally into telling stories of abuse to perpetuate the above-reference complex web of lies and self-promotion of an ambitious doctor and the writer who immortalized her. she was not actually abused by her mother in the ways described in the book (or the movie). she was abused by her doctor.

What is the Sybil DVD situation at this point? I don’t suppose any of the streaming services have it?

Just as FYI, the movie showed up on the dark.net.

i still love talking about sybil! so much in fact that i recorded a tiny (1 min) song inspired by her. i may record more. who am i to turn away when inspiration strikes? my most recent thoughts have been about Shirley Mason's art and the role art played in her life.

here is my song! https://tinyurl.com/rs8ku8t (it's a link to my soundcloud but i didn't want it to be searchable)

i am especially interested in the way she used art to process trauma.

i thought this was esp interesting:

"...The sensory experience of Mason's art may mirror the relative presence and absence manifest from the inner/outer shifting moments of selfhood, as different aspects of her subjectivity inhabit conscious control. Rather than visualize difference embedded in the visual forms and styles, as has often been noted, I ask the viewer to suspend such pronouncements. Instead, reflect upon the freshness of the experience of Mason's art; it is palpable when one confronts, through immersion, the vastness of this project. For this author the cohesiveness and integrative capacity, the traumatic experiences embedded in the art evoke certainly the stifling effects of splintering, but also much more, the congruent balance between difference, the potential self-acceptance, the healing action of and the promise of self reparation.

Another feeling from the work is a sense of urgency, of profound significance, struggling to be heard, seen and witnessed. There is a hallucinatory feeling after travelling through her work, again signalling the complex contradictions - the scream of silence and stillness. I increasingly found myself asking, where is Shirley Mason?

Mason's art is a living testament to resilience, determination and artistic legacy, in the face of unspeakable trauma. Vigilance pervades the work, searching for understanding, and the elusive comfort, amidst the sadness and poignancy of pain transcribed in every mark, in the affective traces of a hard-fought self-presence. The disquiet posits on of the enduring threads that permeate Mason's art, giving the viewer access to a reception of the empathic sensory experience of her life..."

- Geoffrey Thompson, American Art Therapy Association

more here:
https://hiddenpaintings.com/hidden-paintings

In latest dispatch from The Crime Lady (AKA Sarah Weinman, who has written about true crime and edited domestic suspense anthology, also d.s. box set for Library of America):
If you are not listening to the podcast You’re Wrong About — and if not, why not, it’s wonderful — they are doing a book club-in-progress on Michelle Remembers, the long out-of-print 1980 tome by Michelle Smith and her psychiatrist (and future husband) Larry Pazder, that was essentially the “Patient Zero” of the Satanic panic. I am beyond fascinated with this story, since it originated in Victoria, BC, and 40 years on, encapsulates everything about the panic in a single story.

ooooh

You're Wrong About again, which I found via the QAnon Anonymous podcast
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/human-trafficking/id1380008439?i=1000465289965

The "Taken" version of human trafficking doesn't exist.