The real Sybil?" Star Tribune (Minneapolis, Minnesota).
This newspaper story dovetails nicely with the previous journal article, because it reinforces the previous author's point that highly suggestible patients will fake multiple personalities to please their therapists. Lerner's sources argue that the famous Sybil's multiple personalities were induced by her psychiatrist's less than subtle encouragements, hypnosis, and heavy doses of sodium pentothol, and that her condition was a "sham".
A Minnesota psychology professor (Daniel Houlihan) and a New York writer (Peter Swales) were independently researching the truth about the real Sybil on which the successful book and movie were based when they met, compared notes, and together decided that the whole story was "a classic case of what we call implanting false memories". The truths they discovered "should put the whole psychiatric profession to shame", writes Lerner.
While they don't deny that the real Sybil, whose name was Shirley Mason, had serious psychological
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