'From the 1930s to the 1950s, in psychiatry and the popular culture, you were not a fully realized woman unless you had children,' Nathan explained. Wilbur's motivations were based on the fact that she never had children. Nathan likened the relationship to that of a junkie to her pusher. Shirley became a barbiturate addict, and was heavily dependent on Wilbur, who paid her rent, gave her clothes and money, and supplied her with drugs. Though Sybil ends happily, the woman who inspired the story did not. Wilbur and Shirley Mason, had been sealed until 2001, because it wasn't until then that it was known whether Shirley was alive or dead. Her papers, which included thousands of pages of therapy material between Dr. Nathan discovered the truth by poring over the papers of Flora Schreiber, the journalist who collaborated on the book. They're like nightmares, but when you wake up from them, you believe that the material you fantasized really happened.' 'And she gave her intravenous barbiturates, which can cause all kinds of fantasies which seem very real while the person's having them. Wilbur administered was Thorazine, 'an anti-psychotic that can have very, very strong side effects, including hallucinations,' Nathan said. Within a few weeks, asked Shirley if she'd like to write a book with her about the case.' She told Shirley she'd treat her for free, on credit, and she began giving her strong psychotropic drugs and barbiturates. She seemed very pleased that she now had a multiple personality disorder patient. Wilbur's door and said, 'Hi, I'm Peggy,' a nine-year-old alter personality,' Nathan explained. But it wasn't until a few years later, in the early 1950s, that Shirley returned to therapy and the multiple personalities emerged. Wilbur had an interest in multiple personality disorder, and she recommended that Shirley read up on the subject a mistake, in Nathan's view, as Shirley was so prone to fantasize. By the time Shirley was in college, she was having psychological problems, and she went to see Dr. 'She lived in a fantasy world as a little girl,' Nathan said. But Shirley was a highly imaginative child, who loved to make up stories. The fundamentalist Christian sect taught that people shouldn't read fiction. Sybil's real name was Shirley Mason, and she was brought up as a Seventh Day Adventist in rural Minnesota. And by the late 1980s there were 40,000 cases diagnosed in the United States alone.' 'But after the book and film, suddenly there were hundreds and thousands. 'In the entire history of Western civilization, there had been less than 200 over a period of centuries,' Nathan said. Once that happened, the disorder, which had been extremely rare, became a relatively common diagnosis. Sybil's case generated widespread fascination both in the general public and the medical community, and a group of psychiatrists and psychologists successfully lobbied to have multiple personality disorder included in the DSM ( Diagnostic and Statistical Manual). And ultimately Sybil remembered terrible, hideous sexual abuse and torture by her mother, and once she came to remember that, she reintegrated and was able to have a happy life after that. So she spent many years working with her. The therapist assumed that something terrible must have happened to her when she was a child to create this kind of splitting in her consciousness. And as she went into further therapy with the therapist, she developed many other personalities, a total of 16. Nathan described what happened after a few sessions, as detailed in the book: 'She had a very dramatic moment when she started smashing windows, and split into another personality, into a little girl. In the original book, Sybil is portrayed as a young woman who started seeing a psychoanalyst in New York City in the early 1950s. She reveals the truth about the case in her new book, Sybil Exposed: The Extraordinary Story Behind the Famous Multiple Personality Case, which she discussed in a recent interview on The Current. Much of the sensational story was fabricated, according to journalist and author Debbie Nathan. Sybil also profited, but her true identity remained a secret until after all three women were dead. Cornelia Wilbur, became rich and famous as a result. Author Flora Schreiber and Sybil's psychiatrist, Dr. Sybil was a bestselling book in the 1970s and was adapted as a 1976 television mini-series and a feature-length docudrama in 2007. The story of Sybil - a young woman who had been abused by her mother as a child and, as a result, had a mental breakdown and created multiple personalities - caused a sensation.

Sybil movie summary