Writes Alexandra Jacobs, in "Even After Debunking, 'Sybil' Hasn’t Gone Away/The “true story” of a woman with multiple personalities was a 1973 sensation and is still in print 50 years later. Why do such lurid tales hold their grip?" (NYT).
It was a remarkable story — and at this moment of Women’s Lib and changing gender roles, an oddly relatable one: somehow of a piece with 'The Exorcist,' released the same year, and that bonkers Enjoli perfume commercial with a spokesmodel bringing home the bacon, frying it up in a pan and never letting you forget you were a man....
Yes, the 70s were bonkers. Easy enough to see in retrospect. The trick — as Jacobs clearly says — is knowing what's bonkers in your own time.
I remember the "Sybil" craze of the 70s. I didn't read the book but I saw the TV movie. It allowed nice people to consume a sexual torture story and to believe that they cared quite seriously about mental health (and to marvel at the acting skill of Sally Field (as we once marveled at Joanne Woodward in "The 3 Faces of Eve")).
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Reminds me of the massive trend of body mutilations being done to kids today.
Alexandra Jacobs is psychotic. "Sybil", a violence-porn book completely invented by some sick ladies who lunch, is not a women's lib marker; it has nothing in common with a very silly, earworm-cursed perfume commercial. The current age doesn't need to be explained by resurrecting a truly vile piece of trash.
A haunting novel on this subject is "Perlman's Ordeal" by Brooks Hansen, who also wrote "The Chess Garden". I'd love to correspond with someone else who has read it.
Released in 1957, the same year as "Three Faces of Eve," was "Lizzie," based on a novel about a woman with three personalities. It starred two very underestimated actors, Eleanor Parker and Richard Boone.
The whole craze for such stories probably originated with "The Search for Bridey Murphy," by amateur hypnotist Morey Bernstein--a supposedly true story published in 1956. It purportedly related the story of a Denver housewife who, under hypnosis, recalled a previous life in Ireland a century earlier. That included the less "scientific" element of reincarnation, which dropped out of the storyline the following year when the psychiatric element came to the forefront.
I always think of Bridey Murphy when I hear Dylan's "She Belongs To Me" with the lines "She's a hypnotist collector/You are a walking antique"--even though that verse seems pretty clearly to be about Joan Baez.
"Even After Debunking, 'Sybil' Hasn’t Gone Away/The “true story”
WHY, on Earth? Would people let pesky things like "facts" get in the way of their beliefs?
that would be like expecting people to realize that
There are Only 2 sexes
Children make rash decisions
Children change their minds
Alexandra asks... that makes one wonder what current voguish diagnoses
yet, she SURE DOESN'T seem to thing about the biggest contagion today.. "I'M NOT A GIRL"ism
Rose Garden and Bell Jar were autobiographical. Jacobs is trying to silence women's voices.
Yeah I wrote an essay on this in college that was published in a journal, Fiction and Feminism: Fighting Ontological Engulfment.
I remember Rose Garden being around the house when I was little. Sybil too. I never read either one, but in college I found When Rabbit Howls, which was absolutely horrible. Absolutely violence porn masquerading as a sympathetic exploration of a psychological malady.
Coincidentally (is there any such thing, here in the zeitgeist?), my husband was relating a news (or "news") story to me the other day about a couple who say they both have (I can't really say "suffer," because they seem to be having fun with it) DID - dissociative identity disorder, formerly multiple personality disorder - each claims something like 400 personalities. You might have seen the picture - two persons of considerable size and colorful mien, who say that when their "child" personas are in charge, they frequently miss meals because the children don't know how to cook. I held out as long as I could before commenting that the child personas couldn't be in charge very often then.
The part of me that snarks at the mentally ill (though not with DID; they clearly don't have that, based on their knowing exactly who is who and everything each persona does, no amnesia, no lost time) is not my favorite part of me.
But I don't claim to have DID in order to escape responsibility for my actions and decisions, either.
a cautionary tale of mass cultural delusion that makes one wonder what current voguish diagnoses — witness the 'TikTok tics' — might warrant closer interrogation...."
What current voguish diagnoses, indeed.
Regardless of the real world and the fake Sybyl, the artistic world gave us Sally Field's Sybyl. Extraordinary! Makes Chris Reeves Clark Kent look trivial for any actor. (Which Dean Cain and Tothers prove such portrayal is very much not trivial). Field was amazing and so the mental illness seemed as plausible as any other aspe t of the human condition.
Poking around online I see “Sybil is a girl's name of Greek origin that is sure to help baby embrace their dark, mysterious side. Meaning a fascinating ‘prophetess’ and ‘oracle,’ this alluring name is for the little witchling of your life. . . . With the name Sybil, baby is sure to be inspired to trust their intuitions and let their spooky side shine.”
The name’s popularity was roughly #500 in 1920, descending to #18,500 around 2000 before improving slightly to roughly #2,750 today. For comparison, the popularity of the name Adolph was also roughly #500 in 1920, plunging to #29,500 around 2010 before improving slightly to around #19,500 today.
ChatNYT is in denial of The Butterfly Effect brayed in off-world cliques, adopted in clinics, and published in handmade tales.
Why do such lurid tales hold their grip? Why are there so many sequels to Friday the 13th, A Nightmare on Elm Street, and for that matter, Star Wars, Star Trek, and Fast and Furious? The lurid appeals to normal people as escapism from dreary reality.
Best performance I’ve seen on this theme is Ed Norton in “Primal Fear”.
"Easy enough to see in retrospect."
I was young, but it was easy to see even then.
"The trick — as Jacobs clearly says — is knowing what's bonkers in your own time."
$31T debt, millions of illegals, SSM found in the Constitution, mutilation of minors, deep-state hoax against an elected president, green energy and EV mandates, climate "crisis," 100K opioid overdoses, CCP payments to VP and future prez family--shall I keep going?
Knowing what's bonkers is easy. Not so easy is understanding why many otherwise bright people resist knowing.
"Why do such lurid tales hold their grip."
Because people are still seeking an explanation as to why there are so many "psychologically distressed women" and why they are wreaking so much havoc on the rest of us.
There is something about psychiatry. It seems to attract quacks, and has no adequate way to police itself. I saw what purported to be a list of clinics that came into existence to treat the fake diagnosis of multiple personalities. There were a lot!
On the same topic, read The Great Pretender, by Susan Cahalan. It is an expose of a highly influential study from the late 1960s which fueled the deinstitutionalization movement. The study is still taught in many places. In the study, a psychatrist teaching at a prestigious school in California had grad students fake a mental illness and get themselves admitted to an institution. While inside, they took notes. The main takeaway was that the doctors in the institution could not distinguish a truly ill person from one who was faking it. There is one little problem with the study. The psychiatrist made it all up. With one exception, he did not send students into mental hospitals. The one exception was a student who did get admitted, and found the doctors to be good people who were making a difference. His report was not included in the study.
The next time you see an onviously mentally ill person on a city street, and wonder why our society does not do something, this faked study is one of the reasons.
There is something about psychiatry. It seems to attract quacks, and has no adequate way to police itself.
That's the least of the problem. Psychiatry tries to use actual police to impose its own worldview and the views of confirmed crazy people upon reality, and on the innocent. Remember diagnoses of "recovered memories" and the McMartin Preschool (and related) hysteria?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMartin_preschool_trial
Judy Johnson was, to put it in terms of the politically incorrect and offensive, crazy as a loon. But she set the psychiatric mobs in motion to hypnotize and probe and analyze and confront toddlers about Satan and sodomy -- and set child protective services onto the babysitters.
There was hardly anyway SHORT of a criminal trial to rein in the "experts".
I read Sybil and saw the TV movie as a teen. Mom believed every word of it, so of course I believe it too.
Then the McMartin Preschool trial happened, and Mom was, of course, horrified. How could those evil teachers perform such terrible things on those poor, defenseless children?
Then about a year later, I read "The Crucible" in a lit class in college, and around that same time I found out that "Sybil" was bullshit.
I started to wonder: When little kids make up stories that adults believe in, does it function like an epidemic of the mind?
We're certainly seeing that happen right now, with the transgender rage. Children have convinced adults that they aren't their biological sex, and teachers have chosen to do irrational things like refusing to tell parents. You can't have a rational discussion about it either. There are two basic sides to the issue, and they can't have a dialogue without it turning into a screaming match.
In the end, the McMartin school was exonerated, and it turned out that kids made the whole thing up. Of course, people's lives were destroyed, reputations wiped out, etc. And of course the kids that caused all the trouble were never punished.
That's the way these things go, right? COVID-19 lockdowns, climate change hysteria, trans nonsense, and so on .... in the short term, our society goes completely bonkers, but eventually the adults are put back in charge and normalcy is restored. But along the way, there is incredible devastation and rarely are there any consequences. Fauci will get off scot-free, Al Gore lives in a mansion, and the teachers who push for puberty blockers will receive their pensions.
We're living in "Lord Of The Flies".
@BothSidesNow: "The next time you see an onviously mentally ill person on a city street, and wonder why our society does not do something, this faked study is one of the reasons."
"One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest" also had a huge influence on the shuttering of mental institutions.
Incarceration of the mentally ill sucks, of course. Violation of basic freedoms. But should the homeless have the freedom to sack out on the streets, and poop wherever they want?
Nancy said “A haunting novel on this subject is ‘Perlman's Ordeal’ by Brooks Hansen, who also wrote ‘The Chess Garden’.”
I looked this guy up. What an interesting person. He’s a literature teacher at a private high school in NYC. He’s taught a course on the subject of mental health and literature.
Perlman’s Ordeal has uniformly bad reviews on Amazon but they’re bad in a good way. And several of Hanson’s books aren’t offered on Kindle (including PO) which seems kind of eccentric. I’m going to start with the Chess Garden. Anyway, thanks for introducing me to a new author.
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