From: CEvans1950@aol.com
Date: Sun, 16 Aug 1998 16:55:59 EDT

Hello,

Here we see yet more of the delusional bullshit so many "talking therapists" offer up in support of their delusions.... these are the same class of imbeciles who try to sell "recovered memories" as real.

While the observations that folks exhibit all sorts of different mental "symptoms" and illnesses may well be believable... here is yet another indication that those who sell "talking therapy cures" for such psychlogical circumstances are usually if not always full of shit.

Of those alleged cures I've studied... it is only those that involve physical brain problems that stand up under scrutiny..... the talking therapists practice mere voodoo and merely drain the bank accounts of the ill..... no 'cure' is to be seen from that realm.

They seem to cause the illnesses they pretend to cure as often as not.

If I poison you.. is it not criminal if I charge you for the antidote? Even if it fixed you right up?

Is it any wonder that Carl Sagan, among others, laughed at these pseudo- scientific charlatans running around with their cut-a-check-that-clears degrees?

Sincerely,
Caroline

Doubt Cast on Story of `Sybil'

By MALCOLM RITTER
.c The Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) -- A psychologist says tape recordings that lay forgotten in his desk for 25 years show the popular story of Sybil, the woman with 16 personalities, is bogus.

In a best-selling 1973 book, later made into a movie, Sybil was portrayed as developing alternate personalities who did things without her knowledge. The account blames the problem on abuse Sybil suffered as a child, and says she overcame it with therapy.

The newfound tapes suggest these personalities were actually created during therapy, through suggestions to a highly pliable young woman, says psychologist Robert Rieber of the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York.

Rieber said the tapes of conversations between Sybil's psychiatrist and the book author show they were "not totally unaware" that the story they told was wrong.

"Yet at the same time they wished to believe it, no matter what," Rieber said. "I would prefer to believe that there was as much self-deception as deception of others. They were not malicious people."

An expert on multiple personalities said although he doesn't know whether Sybil's personalities were created in therapy, Rieber's written report sheds no light on the question.

Dr. Richard Gottlieb, an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York, also said the report fails to show the book was a conscious misrepresentation.

Sybil's psychiatrist, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, died in 1992, and the book's author, Flora Rheta Schreiber, died in 1988.

Rieber spoke in an interview before presenting his conclusions Sunday at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association. He said he got the tapes in 1972 from Schreiber, then a colleague at John Jay College, but forgot about them until a conversation about Sybil in 1997.

One excerpt in his report quotes Wilbur telling Schreiber, "And I said, `Well, there's a personality who calls herself Peggy.' And uh, I said, `She is pretty assertive. ... She can do things you can't,' and she (Sybil) was very, uh, obviously perturbed by this. ... And I said ... `She wouldn't do anything you wouldn't approve of. She might do something that you wouldn't think of doing."'

The excerpt also lists three other personalities.

That shows Wilbur was "carving out the characters" for Sybil to absorb, Rieber said. Gottlieb, however, said Wilbur may merely have been describing what she'd observed in therapy.

The tapes also show Schreiber improperly dismissing a letter Sybil wrote to Wilbur in which she denies having multiple personalities, Rieber said. The letter is reproduced in Schreiber's book.

Rieber's conclusions fall in line with previously published opinions by Dr. Herbert Spiegel, a New York psychiatrist who used Sybil in hypnotism research and says he was her surrogate therapist when Wilbur was out of town.

Spiegel also concluded that Sybil's so-called personalities actually arose from Wilbur's therapeutic technique of giving names to various emotional states Sybil experienced. The problem was that Wilbur mistakenly came to believe that they really were distinct personalities, Spiegel said.

He said Sybil told him one day that Wilbur wanted her "to be Helen" when talking about a particular event in Sybil's past.

Spiegel suggested talking about the event just as Sybil.

"Then she discovered she didn't have to act like Helen in order to talk about it. ... It became clear Wilbur was coaching her to be these different people. It was a very dramatic way of carrying out therapy," Spiegel said.

He also said he told Schreiber that Sybil didn't have multiple personalities, and "Schreiber said, `If we don't call it multiple personality the publisher won't want it, it won't sell."

But Dr. Leah Dickstein of the University of Louisville in Kentucky, who said she was in touch with Sybil for several years after Wilbur's death, recalls Sybil telling her, "`tell people every word in the book is true."'

Dickstein, who knew Wilbur, said Wilbur "had no need to make this up."

AP-NY-08-16-98 1637EDT