Books on Parts Work and Dissociative Identity Disorder

Someone recently asked for a list of the books that inform how I work with trauma, dissociation, and dissociative identity disorder, so here is that list. I thought I might share it here for those who work with these clients or those who suffer with these symptoms.

The books with an * are books I endorse as excellent resources.


Best Readings in Trauma and Dissociation:

• Healing Developmental Trauma: How Early Trauma Affects Self-Regulation, Self-Image, and Capacity for Relationship - Laurence Heller and Aline LaPierre *
• Coping with Trauma-Related Dissociation: Skills Training for Patients and Therapists - Suzette Boon, Kathy Steele, and Onno van der hart *
• The Inner World of Trauma: Archetypal Defences of the Personal Spirit - Donald Kalsched *
• Trauma and the Soul: A psycho-spiritual approach to human development and its interruption - Donald Kalsched *
• In an Unspoken Voice: How the Body Releases Trauma and Restores Goodness - Peter Levine and Gabor Mate *
• The Trauma Spectrum: Hidden Wounds and Human Resiliency - Robert Scaer *

Psychosynthesis:

• Multiple Mind: Healing the Split in Psyche and World - Gretchen Silker
• Unfolding Self: The Practice of Psychosynthesis - Molly Young Brown
• The Primal Wound: A Transpersonal View of Trauma, Addiction, and Growth - John Firman and Ann Gila *

Subpersonalities, Ego States, and Parts:

• Subpersonalities: The People Inside Us - John Rowan (basic reference to existing models)
• Parts Psychology: A Trauma-Based Self-State Therapy for Emotional Healing - Jay Noricks
• Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual - Hal and Sidra Stone *
• Ego States: Theory and Therapy - John G and Helen H Watkins *

Internal Family Systems Therapy:

• Internal Family Systems Therapy - Richard C. Schwartz *
• Parts Work: An Illustrated Guide to Your Inner Life - Tom Holmes (for clients)
• Self-Therapy: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Wholeness and Healing Your Inner Child Using IFS, a New, Cutting-Edge Psychotherapy - Jay Earley (for clients)

Dissociative Disorders:

• The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization by Onno van der Hart, Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, and Kathy Steele *
• Structural Dissociation: A Proposed Modification of the Theory - Colin Ross *
• Trauma Model Therapy: A Treatment Approach for Trauma Dissociation and Complex Comorbidity - Colin Ross *
• The Dissociative Mind - Elizabeth F Howell *
• The Wandering Mind: Understanding Dissociation from Daydreams to Disorders - John A Biever and Maryann Karinch
• The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation, and Disease - Robert Scaer *

Dissociative Identity Disorder:

• Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity: Working with Dissociative Identity Disorder - Valerie Sinason *
• Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder - James L Spira, editor
• Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook - Deborah Bray Haddock
• Understanding and Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder: A Relational Approach - Elizabeth F Howell *
• Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder - Frank W Putnam *
• Dissociative Identity Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment of Multiple Personality - Colin Ross

For Clients or By Clients:

• Amongst Ourselves: A Self-Help Guide to Living with Dissociative Identity Disorder - Tracy Alderman and Karen Marshall
• Got Parts? An Insider's Guide to Managing Life Successfully with Dissociative Identity Disorder - A.T.W. 
• Multiple Personality Disorder from the Inside Out - Barry Cohen, Esther Giller, and Lynn W., editors

Documentary - Helen: The Woman with 7 Personalities (and more)

This first documentary is a look at the life of Helen, a woman with seven identified parts, or ego states, or alters. She is a woman with dissociative identity disorder (sometimes known as structural dissociation). Her reported history includes satanic and sexual abuse as a child (the only common denominator in most DID diagnoses is severe and on-going childhood abuse and neglect).

Seven parts is a relatively small number for most reported DID cases - many reports have documented more than 10 and as many as 100 (although some of the parts in cases with such high numbers are little more than fragments of emotions belonging to one or more other parts).

Helen: The Woman with 7 Personalities

The Woman With Seven Personalities - Multiple Personality Disorder: Helen and Ruth were best friends at school. Helen, according to Ruth, was one of the prettiest and cleverest girls in the class. Whenever Ruth thinks of school she thinks of the fun times she shared with Helen. Soon after leaving school, however, they lost contact. Fourteen years later Helen and Ruth bumped into each other by chance on a train. As they sat together on the train, Helen told Ruth that she had Multiple Personality Disorder, claimed she had been satanically and sexually abused as a child and had tried to take her own life on a number of occasions. Since that meeting six years ago Ruth and Helen have begun to rekindle their old friendship. Helen wanted to make this documentary to raise awareness of Multiple Personality Disorder, now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder

This film follows Ruth on her journey of discovery into Helen's world. We accompany her as she gets to know her friend again, as she tries to find out what happened to Helen in the fourteen years they were apart and to understand what it means for Helen to live with Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), which is now known as Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID).

Here is the list of Helen's inner family:

• Alex, A five year old boy who loves shooting toy guns.
• William, A six year old boy who loves the Mr. Men.
• Adam, A lovable ten year old boy who is not allowed to play outside.
• Brenda, An outspoken, feisty 13 year old girl
• Karl, A sixteen year old boy with an attitude and a temper.
• Jamie
• Elizabeth

Helen will switch from her self personality to one of the alter personalities at a moment’s notice and have no recollection of the time spent in the other personality. Under the personalities of Karl and Brenda, Helen would drink and take drugs. She became an alcoholic and overdosed over 100 times. She has since recovered from the alcoholism and the overdoses, were clearly not fatal.

Ruth was determined to discover what may have caused these personalities to form and was horrified when Helen confided in her that she had been extensively abused as a child and had created the first personalities to distance herself from the horrors. Karl and Brenda provide escape by causing physical pain by means of self-harm to block the emotional trauma, while the younger personalities allow escape to various ages of her childhood.

But wait, there's more . . . if you simply scroll down there is another documentary on dissociative identity disorder (multiple personalities to most folks). This is an old HBO documentary from the 1990s and, while our understanding of DID has increased considering, this one-hour show provides a basic introduction to the experience and development of DID.

Oh, and just in case you think we have moved beyond the idea that dissociative identities are demon possession (an idea raised in the film below), I have worked with people with DID who were told they were possessed by demons by their church pastors, and who tried an exorcism to pray the demons away. Needless to say, it did not work.

Multiple Personalities

Film by: HBO / Michael Mierendorf / Gloria Steinem
Year: 1993

In early times, evil spirits were thought to possess people and make them act in strange and frightening ways. By the 1800’s, the study of this hysteria led some doctors to believe one person could have separately functioning personalities.

In a rare research film from the 1920’s, a woman has different personalities who believes they are separate people. One is a male that is not comfortable in women’s clothes. Another is a small child. The affliction has been known by different names, but recognized for centuries. Today it is called multiple personality disorder.

Why have they become tormented and broken into different personalities? What is the childhood pain that lies buried in the unknown depths of their mind? How can they search for the deadly memories that holds the secrets of their paths and the promise of their healing?

New Research Supports Diagnosis of Dissociative Identity Disorder in Some Survivors of Trauma

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is still one of the most controversial diagnoses in psychology, with many professionals denying its existence. The primary objections are that the "disorder" is iatrogenic (created by the therapist) and that DID is a culture-bound syndrome not found in other cultures.

There is a considerable body of evidence in support of dissociative disorders, including DID. A couple of new studies are presented below - one refuting the iatrogenic model for DID and one supporting a sub-type of PTSD with strong dissociative tendencies.

Wikipedia offers a good summary of the current issues:

What the main debate today concerns is the question - can child abuse causes DID. Colin A. Ross points out the errors of logic and scholarship that the quite vocal disbelievers of trauma based disorders, Piper and Merskey, have made in their publications concerning DID, but even with the doubt raised by Ross there is still debate today. [33] Ross also disagrees with Piper and Merskey's conclusion that DID cannot be accurately diagnosed, pointing to internal consistency between different structured dissociative disorder interviews (including the Dissociative Experiences Scale, Dissociative Disorders Interview Schedule and Structured Clinical Interview for Dissociative Disorders) ^[73] that are in the internal validity range of widely accepted mental illnesses such as schizophrenia and major depressive disorder. In Ross's opinion, Piper and Merskey are setting the standard of proof higher than they are for other diagnoses. Ross also asserts that Piper and Merskey have cherry-picked data and not incorporated all relevant scientific literature available, such as independent corroborating evidence of trauma in some patients. ^[74]

Initially DID was infrequently diagnosed, numbering less than 100 by 1944, with only one further case added in the next two decades. In the late 1970s and 80s, the number of cases rose sharply. Accompanying this rise was an increase in the number of alters per case, rising from only the primary and one alter personality, in most cases, to an average of 13 in the mid-1980s. Proponents of the trauma model propose that the increase in incidence and prevalence of DID over time is that the condition was misdiagnosed as other such disorders in the past; another explanation is that an increase in awareness of DID and child sexual abuse has led to earlier, more accurate diagnosis. Those in the Sociocognitive camp explain the increase as a result of iatrogenic procedures and health care professionals past failure to recognize dissociation is now redressed by new training and knowledge and they claim that dissociative phenomena is actually increasing, but this rise only represents a new form of an old and protean entity: "hysteria". In a 2011 publication, V. Sar postulated other possible causes for the apparent differences in the prevalence of DID, including different preferences in diagnostic instruments, cultural differences in the interpretation of presenting symptoms, differences in mental health care systems and differences in the frequency of overall mental health treatment seeking behavior around the world. ^[75]

 I have generally been highly skeptical of DID diagnoses, and I still believe there is a serious issue with iatrogenic causation. However, I have seen extreme dissociation in clients (fitting the structural dissociation model - more on this below) in which clients do not necessarily have a different personality, but regress to a much younger and wounded self-state that is totally isolated from the adult self.

A new piece of research recently examined a collection of the complaints against DID, that clients diagnosed with DID exhibit fantasy proneness, suggestibility, suggestion, and role-playing tendencies. One of the researchers, Ellert Nijenhuis, is a leader is in the understanding of structural dissociation. The research was published in the open access journal (freely available online), PLoS ONE:

Fact or Factitious? A Psychobiological Study of Authentic and Simulated Dissociative Identity States

A. A. T. Simone Reinders, Antoon T. M. Willemsen, Herry P. J. Vos, Johan A. den Boer, Ellert R. S. Nijenhuis.

Abstract

Background

Dissociative identity disorder (DID) is a disputed psychiatric disorder. Research findings and clinical observations suggest that DID involves an authentic mental disorder related to factors such as traumatization and disrupted attachment. A competing view indicates that DID is due to fantasy proneness, suggestibility, suggestion, and role-playing. Here we examine whether dissociative identity state-dependent psychobiological features in DID can be induced in high or low fantasy prone individuals by instructed and motivated role-playing, and suggestion.

Methodology/Principal Findings

DID patients, high fantasy prone and low fantasy prone controls were studied in two different types of identity states (neutral and trauma-related) in an autobiographical memory script-driven (neutral or trauma-related) imagery paradigm. The controls were instructed to enact the two DID identity states. Twenty-nine subjects participated in the study: 11 patients with DID, 10 high fantasy prone DID simulating controls, and 8 low fantasy prone DID simulating controls. Autonomic and subjective reactions were obtained. Differences in psychophysiological and neural activation patterns were found between the DID patients and both high and low fantasy prone controls. That is, the identity states in DID were not convincingly enacted by DID simulating controls. Thus, important differences regarding regional cerebral bloodflow and psychophysiological responses for different types of identity states in patients with DID were upheld after controlling for DID simulation.

Conclusions/Significance

The findings are at odds with the idea that differences among different types of dissociative identity states in DID can be explained by high fantasy proneness, motivated role-enactment, and suggestion. They indicate that DID does not have a sociocultural (e.g., iatrogenic) origin.

Full Citation: 

Simone Reinders AAT, Willemsen ATM, Vos HPJ, den Boer JA, Nijenhuis ERS. (2012). Fact or Factitious? A Psychobiological Study of Authentic and Simulated Dissociative Identity States. PLoS ONE, 7(6): e39279. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0039279

The most recent studies suggest that DID is a form of structural dissociation, as defined by Steele, van der Hart, and Nijenhuis. Again, Wikipedia offers a brief and coherent overview of the structural model:

Structural Dissociation Model

Steele, K., van der Hart, O., Nijenhuis, E. suggest a distinction between "apparently normal parts" (ANP) and "emotional parts". ANP, the part in executive control and who is responsible for daily functioning is often exhausted and depressed. The part avoids trauma memory and often has amnesia for many if not all childhood traumatic events. If those events were grouped close together, entire blocks of early life will be absent from ANP's memory. ANP avoids the affect and information held by EP, including nightmares, dreams, somnambulism, intrusive thoughts, flashbacks and some somatoform symptoms. ANP is not only avoidant of the list above, but is actually phobic of trauma memory, related emotions, cognitions and sensory memory that goes with it. ANP actively or passively suppress triggers to the point that it can become automatic. ^[55]

"Emotional parts" (EP) are needed for survival situations involving Fight or Flight, total submission, reflexes, vivid traumatic memories and strong, painful emotions. EP remains fixated in traumatic experiences, which it often reenacts. It is focused on a narrow range of cues that were relevant to the trauma. “Action systems” direct EP. ^[56]

Summary of Categories of Structural Dissociation. Primary Structural Dissociation (PSD)

• PSD - Involves one EP and one ANP such as found in simple acute stress disorder and PTSD. The ANP is detached and numb, characterized by partial or complete amnesia of the trauma. EP is usually limited in scope compared to ANP and is hyper-amnesic and re-experiences trauma.
• Secondary Structural Dissociation. (SSD) - Includes trauma based DDNOS-1, complex PTSD and borderline personality disorder. This is characterized by dividedness of two or more defensive subsystems. For example, there may be different EP's who are devoted to flight, fight, freeze, total submission and so on.
• Tertiary Structural Dissociation (TSD) - This is Dissociative Identity Disorder. Two or more ANP perform aspects of daily living, such as work, child-rearing. There must also be 2 or more EP.

This model fits the findings of the Internal Family Systems model of therapy (which is not exclusive to DID, but works with all forms of multiplicity). The ANP are termed managers in the IFS model, while the EP are called exiles. The IFS model also recognizes a third group of parts that fall between the ANP and EP distinctions - firefighters are parts that leap into action when the ANP fail to keep the EP suppressed, and they often take the form of addictive and numbing behaviors.

Colin Ross explains DID through his trauma model of dissociation (see Epidemiology of Multiple Personality Disorder and Dissociation, which is unfortunately behind a pay wall). A recent study, published in JAMA's Archive of General Psychiatry, was able to verify the existence of a dissociative subtype in PTSD survivors - the results seem to confirm the links between early trauma, PTSD, and dissociative disorders for some individuals (overwhelmingly, it seems, in those who suffered childhood abuse).

A Latent Class Analysis of Dissociation and Posttraumatic Stress DisorderEvidence for a Dissociative Subtype

Erika J. Wolf, PhD; Mark W. Miller, PhD; Annemarie F. Reardon, PhD; Karen A. Ryabchenko, PhD; Diane Castillo, PhD; Rachel Freund, PhD

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2012;69(7):698-705. doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.1574 

Context  The nature of the relationship of dissociation to posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is controversial and of considerable clinical and nosologic importance.

Objectives  To examine evidence for a dissociative subtype of PTSD and to examine its association with different types of trauma.

Design  A latent profile analysis of cross-sectional data from structured clinical interviews indexing DSM-IV symptoms of current PTSD and dissociation.

Settings  The VA Boston Healthcare System and the New Mexico VA Health Care System.

Participants  A total of 492 veterans and their intimate partners, all of whom had a history of trauma. Participants reported exposure to a variety of traumatic events, including combat, childhood physical and sexual abuse, partner abuse, motor vehicle accidents, and natural disasters, with most participants reporting exposure to multiple types of traumatic events. Forty-two percent of the sample met the criteria for a current diagnosis of PTSD.

Main Outcome Measures  Item-level scores on the Clinician-Administered PTSD Scale.

Results  A latent profile analysis suggested a 3-class solution: a low PTSD severity subgroup, a high PTSD severity subgroup characterized by elevations across the 17 core symptoms of the disorder, and a small but distinctly dissociative subgroup that composed 12% of individuals with a current diagnosis of PTSD. The latter group was characterized by severe PTSD symptoms combined with marked elevations on items assessing flashbacks, derealization, and depersonalization. Individuals in this subgroup also endorsed greater exposure to childhood and adult sexual trauma compared with the other 2 groups, suggesting a possible etiologic link with the experience of repeated sexual trauma.

Conclusions  These results support the subtype hypothesis of the association between PTSD and dissociation and suggest that dissociation is a highly salient facet of posttraumatic psychopathology in a subset of individuals with the disorder.

Full Citation:

Wolf EJ, Miller MW, Reardon AF, Ryabchenko KA, Castillo D, Freund R. (2012). A Latent Class Analysis of Dissociation and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Evidence for a Dissociative Subtype. Arch Gen Psychiatry, 69(7):698-705.  doi:10.1001/archgenpsychiatry.2011.1574.

The continued collecting of data on this small subgroup of clients are so crucial in enabling clinicians to understand their experiences and design appropriate interventions.

All in the Mind - Many Selves, One Body: Dissociation and early trauma

All in the Mind, hosted by Natasha Mitchell, is one of the best psychology podcasts on the web, and now the show is going off the air. I'm sad about this - but she is moving on to bigger and better things.

In honor of the show's ten years on the radio (ABC Radio National in Australia), they have been posting some of their best shows, including the one below.

Many Selves, One Body: Dissociation and early trauma

• Download audio
• show transcript

Broadcast: Saturday 22 August 2009

We all dissociate to a degree—compartmentalising major traumatic experiences in our psyche to protect ourselves. But Dissociation Identity Disorder is the extreme end, where a person might present multiple selves or 'alters' to the world without fully knowing it—swapping clothes, life histories and personalities each time they 'switch'. Don't miss this firsthand account.

Transcript

Show

Guests

Professor Warwick Middleton

Brisbane based psychiatrist in private practice Adjunct Professor, School of Public Health, La Trobe University Associate Professor of Psychiatry, University of Queensland Chair, Cannan Institute Director, Trauma and Dissociation Unit, Belmont Hospital

Zoe Farris

Queensland Association of Mental Health

Publications

Title: When Me Means Me: Multiple Personality - A View from the Inside

Author: Zoe Long (now Farris) & Co

Publisher: Queensland Association of Mental Health Inc, 1996 (booklet)

Title: Dissociative Identity Disorder: An Australian series

Author: Warwick Middleton and Jeremy Butler

Publisher: Aust N Z J Psychiatry. 1998 Dec;32(6):794-804

Title: Dissociative Identity Disorder: Multiple Personalities, Multiple Controversies

Author: Scott Lilienfield and Steven Jay Lynn

Publisher: in Science and Pseudoscience in Clinical Psychology (edited by Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, Jeffrey M. Lohr), 2004

Title: A Clinician's Understanding of Dissociation: Fragments of an Acquaintance

Author: Richard P Kluft

Publisher: in Dissociation and Dissociative Disorders: DSM-V and Beyond (edited by Paul F Dell, and John A O'Neill), Routledge, 2009

Title: Historical conceptions of dissociation and psychosis: Nineteenth and earlt twentieth century perspectives on severe psychopathology

Author: Warwick Middleton, Martin Dorahy, Andrew Moskowitz

Publisher: in Psychosis, Trauma and Dissociation (edited by Andrew Moskowitz, Ingo Scahfer and Martin Dorahy), John Wiley and Sons, 2008

Title: A New Model of Dissociative Identity Disorder

Author: Paul F Dell

Publisher: Psychiatric Clinics of North America (Psychaitr Clin N Am), 2006, 1-26

Title: Owning the past, claiming the present - perspectives on the treatment of dissociative patients

Author: Warwick Middleton

Publisher: Australiasian Psychiatry, Vol 13, No 1, March 2005

Title: Remembering the past, anticipating the future

Author: Warwick Middleton, Lisa De Marni Cromer, Jennifer Freyd

Publisher: Australasian Psychiatry, Vol 13, No 3, September 2005

Title: The Persistence of Folly: A Critical Examination of Dissociative Identity Disorder. Part I. The Excesses of an Improbable Concept

Author: August Piper, Harold Merskey

Publisher: Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, Vol 49, No 9, September 2004

Debbie Nathan - A Girl Not Named Sybil

There is a very good article in the New York Times this morning about the case of Sybil, the world's first well-known and "documented" case of multiple personality disorder - now known as dissociative identity disorder (DID). The problem is, as has been known for many years now, the case was not exactly as it was presented. It may have been little more than an impressionable client being compliant with a psychiatrist who was intent on finding what she was looking for in her patient.

Wikipedia offers this: Multiple Personality Controversies: Links to many articles about the real Sybil, Shirley Mason - for those who would like to see other perspectives.

The reality is that we are all multiple in many ways, but that these "parts" are generally mild and not completely shut off from awareness - with a little work we can learn to see our parts act out when they are triggered. But this is a whole other than DID - in DID the dissociation is so extreme that people may have whole separate lives, and be known to other people only as that "alter." In fact, some people with DID have been known to be vision impaired in one alter and 20/20 in their real self. Likewise, there have been anecdotal reports of different eye colors in different alters.

However, there are currently fewer than 100 verified cases of DID known in the literature. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was an explosion in this diagnosis, but nearly 90% of the diagnoses were made by a handful of therapists - a fact that makes the diagnosis questionable whenever it comes up.

Debbie Nathan is the author of new book about the Sybil case, Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case, to be released on October 18, 2011.

A Girl Not Named Sybil

By DEBBIE NATHAN
Published: October 14, 2011

“What about Mama?” the psychiatrist asks her patient. “What’s Mama been doing to you, dear? . . . I know she gave you the enemas. And I know she filled your bladder up with cold water, and I know she used the flashlight on you, and I know she stuck the washcloth in your mouth, cotton in your nose so you couldn’t breathe. . . . What else did she do to you? It’s all right to talk about it now. . . . ”

The Mankato Free Press/Associated Press

An undated photo of Shirley Mason, best known by the pseudonym Sybil Dorsett, given to her by Flora Schreiber in the book “Sybil.”

Related

• Tapes Raise New Doubts About ‘Sybil’ Personalities

• Book Review: Creating Hysteria — Women and Multiple Personality Disorder

Enlarge This Image

Gabrielle Plucknette/The New York Times

“Sybil,” published in 1973, would go on to sell more than six million copies.

“My mommy,” the patient says.

“Yes.”

“My mommy said that I was a bad little girl, and . . . she slapped me . . . with her knuckles. . . .”

“Mommy isn’t going to ever hurt you again,” the psychiatrist says at the close of the session. “Do you want to know something, Sweetie? I’m stronger than Mother.”

The transcript of this conversation is stored at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, in New York City, among the papers of Flora Schreiber, author of “Sybil,” the blockbuster book about a woman with 16 personalities. “Sybil” was published in 1973; within four years it had sold more than six million copies in the United States and hundreds of thousands abroad. A television adaptation broadcast in 1976 was seen by a fifth of all Americans. But Sybil’s story was not just gripping reading; it was instrumental in creating a new psychiatric diagnosis: multiple-personality disorder, or M.P.D., known today as dissociative-identity disorder.

Schreiber collaborated on the book with Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, the psychiatrist who asks, “What about Mama?” — and with Wilbur’s patient, whose name Schreiber changed to Sybil Dorsett. Schreiber worked from records of Sybil’s therapy, including thousands of pages of patient diaries and transcripts of tape-recorded therapy sessions. Before she died in the late 1980s, Schreiber stipulated that the material be archived at a library. For a decade after Schreiber’s death, Sybil’s identity remained unknown. To protect her privacy, librarians sealed her records. In 1998, two researchers discovered that her real name was Shirley Mason. In trying to track her down, they learned that she was dead, and the librarians at John Jay decided to unseal the Schreiber papers.

The same year that her identity was revealed, Robert Rieber, a psychologist at John Jay, presented a paper at the American Psychological Association in which he accused Mason’s doctor of a “fraudulent construction of a multiple personality,” based on tape-recordings that Schreiber had given him. “It is clear from Wilbur’s own words that she was not exploring the truth but rather planting the truth as she wanted it to be,” Rieber wrote.

It wasn’t the first indication that there might be problems with Mason’s diagnosis. As far back as 1994, Herbert Spiegel, an acclaimed psychiatrist and hypnotherapist, began telling reporters that he occasionally treated Shirley Mason when her regular psychiatrist went out of town. During those sessions, Spiegel recalled, Mason asked him if he wanted her to switch to other personalities. When he questioned her about where she got that idea, she told him that her regular doctor wanted her to exhibit alter selves.

And yet, in the popular imagination, Sybil and her fractured self remained powerfully tied to the idea of M.P.D. and the childhood traumas it was said to stem from. “Mamma was a bad mamma,” Wilbur declares in the transcripts. “I can help you remember.” But countless other records suggest that the outrages Sybil recalled never happened. If Sybil wasn’t really remembering, then what exactly was Wilbur helping her to do?

Read the whole interesting article.