Talk:Shirley Ardell Mason

Discussion
I am very afraid when read anything like multiple personality disorder or schizophrenia,because I am afraid if I will be the same symptom. And when I read the detail, i sometimes feel more likely I have some similar symptom. My afraid make the feeling stronger. I read Shirley's story, I feel she is just normal woman,she is a teacher,although she maybe has some mental problem in her life. Its just life, relax. Face the problem is the best way, not to avoid because be afraid. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.73.238.36 (talk) 13:48, 24 March 2024 (UTC)

The article is about a person who was at the center of a groundbreaking, bestselling book and extremely famous television movie. There is still much interest in her life and medical record today, as there continues to be controversy over her diagnosis. As you point out, there have been other people with schicophrenia and split personalities. Yet most are not as famous, or embedded in popular culture. If they are, they have articles as well...or should.Codenamemary (talk) 22:37, 19 May 2010 (UTC) I AM WRONG DO NOT DELETE THIS ARTICLE — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.30.32.75 (talk) 00:36, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Nuked copyvio (aka "Personalities of Sybil" section)
I have removed the list of personalities from this article. They were taken word-for-word from the book Sybil by Flora Rheta Schreiber. ("Cast of Characters and Dates of 'Birth'", between the contents and the preface, in my Penguin edition). I do not think that we can call this WP:FAIR.

Telsa (talk) 23:04, 29 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Inasmuch as the book was highly tarted-up for publication and the "list of personalities" is probably not accurate anyway, I completely agree with this. I'd wait till Swales' book came out and find out what her selves were really called. --Bluejay Young 22:34, 18 June 2006 (UTC)


 * So Swales has the absolute truth in the matter? BTW, I do not see why that isn't fair use. It is less than a page, and it is factual, which is not copyrightable, evidence. Ans e ll  23:56, 18 June 2006 (UTC)


 * If the list had been taken word for word directly from Schreiber's list, that might be a copyright violation. All you need to do is go through the book and make your own list in a different order (maybe alphabetical, maybe chronological by discovery, maybe chronological by apparent evolution in Mason's life) with a description of your own wording after each name. Doczilla 01:01, 11 January 2007 (UTC)


 * I've restored the list. It is an *appropriate* Fair use. Yes we can call it fair use, because it is. As has been pointed out, fair use encompasses a quote, even up to several pages in length. Wjhonson 23:49, 27 January 2007 (UTC)


 * Fair use shouldn't be the question. The issue should be this is the article about Shirley Ardell Mason, not the fictionalize account in a book called "Sybil".  This list should be moved to the book's article (if it's not there already).  If a list is still wanted on this artcle, then link to the book's version.Techsmith 15:37, 2 August 2007 (UTC)


 * Shirley is famous only because of that book. She said it was correct, by implication saying she'd had all of those personalities. Whether true or not, it's relevant to her life. Without the alters, she's just a woman who taught art. As the basis for the book, the alters make her notable enough for Wikipedia. Doczilla  STOMP! 23:16, 8 August 2009 (UTC)


 * I think you should have left the list of personalities in the information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.74.216.126 (talk • contribs)

I feel that a list, or at the very least a partial list, of the personalities of "Sybil" is essential to the article. Regardless of the controversy about whether this is a true case of mulitiple personalities, it is the various (claimed) personalities that gives Sybil notoriety. To talk about her without some discussion of the personalities is like talking about Lincoln without mentioning the Civil War. Mzalar (talk) 23:54, 6 August 2009 (UTC)
 * A list of Mason's "personalities" contributes to sensationalism and makes it look too much like the article is biased toward believing she was multiple. The case as a whole and its impact on modern psychiatry and popular media are important -- not the individual persons in Shirley Mason's system.--Bluejay Young (talk) 02:48, 16 March 2011 (UTC)
 * I think a list of the identities presented in "Sybil" doesn't sensationalize or bias the article. As the case impacts modern psychiatry, a list seems inclusive of the facts of the case.  Plus, Wikipedia articles are often used as reference for forgotten information, for which a list would be useful.--Forener (talk) 18:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)
 * If experienced Wikipedia editors think it is okay to have, it's okay with me. I have to say "names and ages of the personalities" is one of the more frequently asked questions in the emails we get from readers of the Shirley Mason material on our website. We just direct them to the book. I just never thought it was that relevant to the core issues of her story. --Bluejay Young (talk) 19:16, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

recent edits
I have added a quote from a Newsweek article about her mother and verified information from the Sybil book. ResearchEditor (talk) 05:56, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

I smoothed out Dr. Suraci's contribution. I couldn't find the name of the publisher for his book. --Bluejay Young (talk) 02:48, 16 March 2011 (UTC)


 * The Suraci book does not appear to exist. http://www.google.com/search?tbs=bks:1&q=isbn:9780615446004 Doczilla  STOMP! 07:03, 19 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Oh, it exists all right. It's self-published. ISBN 978-0-615-44600-4. We get email from him all the time. Says it's going to premier at Book Expo America at the Jacob Javits Center, NY on May 24. Should I wait until then to say anything here? It's not just a book of the interviews he did with her. He says he had so many full color art plates in there that no publisher wanted to go for it, thinking too few people would be interested in this woman's art to warrant spending that kind of money. --Bluejay Young (talk) 18:41, 21 March 2011 (UTC)


 * A self-published book is not a reliable source. Doczilla  STOMP! 12:44, 26 March 2011 (UTC)


 * So I won't mention it and you were right to take it out. When I edited his contribution, I thought it was a regular book. --Bluejay Young (talk) 19:09, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Debbie Nathan Contribution
Debbie Nathan's entry on Shirley Ardell Mason's wikipedia page does not have vaildity. In a legal statement from Jennifer K. Weidman at Simon and Schuster they state that they will remove the untrue words "first person" from the dust jacket of any future editions of Ms. Nathan's book, "Sybil Exposed". Regarding other untrue statements Simon and Schuster ordered "that such statements have nonetheless been removed from Ms. Nathan's Facebook page."

"Nathan describes the purported manipulation of Wilbur by Mason and vice versa, going into personal detail about the lives of Mason, Wilbur and Schreiber.", but many of these details are not found in the documents she sites that are in the Flora Schreiber archives.

Another innacuracy in this post is that Dr. Wilbur's paper's were not destroyed, but are in the care of Dr. Leah Dickstein.Drsuraci (talk) 20:46, 28 April 2012 (UTC)
 * You need reliable sources to substantiate these points. Your opinion or personal knowledge is not sufficient.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 21:40, 28 April 2012 (UTC)


 * Our reliable source is Simon and Schuster's legal dept. Here is the link where you will find a portion of their statement - http://members.authorsguild.net/psuraci/  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drsuraci (talk • contribs) 17:27, 5 May 2012 (UTC)


 * We see that untrue statement regarding Dr. Wilbur's papers was removed from Dr. Cornelia Wilbur's page, but remains here on Shirley Ardell Mason's page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Drsuraci (talk • contribs) 17:35, 5 May 2012 (UTC)
 * That appears to be a personal webpage, and is not a reliable source. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 17:01, 7 May 2012 (UTC)

True(?) version
Since there is controversy about the story, there is no "true" version. I have changed "Flora Rheta Schreiber's novel Sybil told the true version of Mason's story" to:

"Flora Rheta Schreiber's book, Sybil, was the first to tell Mason's story."

In the Controversy section I removed the clumsy and superfluous words "which is actually" in the statement: "She cites a well-known 1958 letter by Mason (which is actually reprinted in Sybil)" to:

"She cites a well-known 1958 letter by Mason (reprinted in Sybil)" Guyburns (talk) 09:46, 2 June 2012 (UTC)

Hysteric diagnosis
Why is it added? It's been long since "hysteria" has been declared as a non-existing disease. Is it there only to prove the diagnosis was challenged? Even if it does have a source and it did happen according to the source using it as a could be proof that the patient had no DID means we should recognize hysteria as a valid disease, no? 189.173.96.74 (talk) 04:34, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Purportedly
I inserted "purportedly" in the section of the article which discussed Shirley Mason's mother's diagnosis of schizophrenia. I am the author of Sybil Exposed. In researching that book, I found documentary, contemporaneous mental health records for Mason's mother, dated 1912, indicating she received diagnoses which today would be interpreted as clinical depression. There was no indication that she ever was diagnosed as a schizophrenic. In the extensive archives I examined, I found no evidence that anyone--from Mason's psychiatrist to Flora Schreiber, author of Sybil--had any documentation that the mother had ever been diagnosed as schizophrenic.

I would also like to clarify the comments of Patrick Suraci, who has contributed to this Wiki item. Suraci protested to Simon & Shuster, my publisher, that I was wrong in saying I was the first person to examine the full Schreiber archive at John Jay College in New York City. However, I do appear to be the first person to examine the ENTIRE archive, page by page. To clarify: it consists of 37 boxes of material. All researchers, including Suraci, have examined the final box, No. 37. Suraci has examined at least one other box as well--that is evident from the content of his own book. However, I contacted Suraci while doing my research and asked him to comment on material in yet another box. He wrote back clearly indicating he had no familiarity with the contents of that box. His book contains minor errors--the names of places where Shirley Mason worked, for instance--further suggesting that he did not look at other boxes. Suraci, according to the history of this discussion, also says that I was incorrect in writing that Dr. Wilbur's papers were destroyed after she died. He claims that Dr. Leah Dickstein has the papers. This is only very partially true. When Dr. Wilbur died, according to Diane Morrow, a source I interviewed who has eye-witness authority, the vast bulk of Wilbur's papers were destroyed by the executrix of the Wilbur estate, with the exception of a small number which Shirley Mason had earlier taken without the executrix's knowledge or permission, then mailed to Dr. Dickstein. As of early 2011, Dickstein was still in possession of this small quantity. She declined to make them public, though she quoted from them during a scholarly presentation in 2011. Her possession of the papers is discussed in Sybil Exposed. Not to belabor the Suraci material, but he has for a year and a half, ever since Sybil Exposed was published in late 2011, insisted that my research is significantly flawed. He has full access to all my research via the John Jay archives and several other public archives and resources, all end noted in my book. Yet he constantly complains about less than a handful of the most trivial, insubstantial errors, the kind any researcher makes during a long course of investigation and writing. (When did Shirley Mason die, for instance? Her death certificate, which I cited, says late afternoon. He says mid-afternoon. But really, what is the difference to the gestalt of the story?)

To date, despite Suraci's constant claim that my research is fundamentally flawed, neither he nor anyone else has demonstrated any significant problems with my work. A portion of it was minutely reviewed in October 2011, by fact checker Jillian Dunham, from the New York Times Magazine, who visited the John Jay Library archive to compare my work against the Schreiber collection.. In the office with Dunham were three other people: a Times photographer, the senior John Jay archivist, and myself. After a section of Sybil Exposed was excerpted in the magazine, Suraci published an article implying that Dunham had not really been at the archive  On the face of it, this claim is so careless, and even absurd, that it should cast doubt on everything Suraci claims re Sybil Exposed. 64.131.228.109 (talk) 15:53, 1 April 2013 (UTC)Debbie Nathan

Dr. Patrick Suraci's response
Ms. Debbie Nathan inserted “purportedly” in the biography section of the Shirley Ardell Mason page on Wikipedia. She claims there is no evidence that Shirley’s mother Mattie was schizophrenic. However, Ms. Nathan states that she found evidence that Mattie “received the diagnoses which today would be interpreted as clinical depression.” In her book “Sybil Exposed” on page 9, Ms. Nathan contradicts herself claiming that Mattie suffered from “asthenia” and “neurasthenia”. Since Ms. Nathan has no psychiatric qualifications to make a diagnosis, she mistakes asthenia for “clinical depression.” In fact, asthenia is synonymous with anxiety neurosis as described in the “Psychiatric Dictionary [5th edition]” by Robert Campbell, M.D.

Ms. Nathan mentions that I “protested to Simon & Schuster” that she was wrong in saying she was the “first person” to examine the full Schreiber archives. Conveniently, she omitted the outcome of the Simon & Schuster’s investigation where they agreed to remove the words “first person” from subsequent editions. This agreement can be verified by Simon & Schuster’s Legal Department. They made this correction on the paperback of Ms. Nathan’s book. In 1998, I was the first person given permission to view the Flora Schreiber archives at John Jay College by the executrix of Schreiber’s will, Helen Vogel. Simon & Schuster also ordered Ms. Nathan to remove libelous remarks she made about me on her Facebook page on October 29, 2011. She did so but not before I printed them out. She could not resist printing more libelous untrue statements about me on January 19, 2012 and again was ordered by Simon & Schuster to remove them, which she did. I, again, printed them out.

I met Flora Schreiber in 1973 when I taught with her at John Jay College. I assisted her in doing research for her next book “The Shoemaker.” As her friend I was privy to her records from that point until her death in 1988. After I examined Schreiber’s records in 1998, Robert Rieber did so and wrote “The Bifurcation of the Self” on March 27, 2006 and Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen published “Making Minds and Madness” in 2009. Ms. Nathan is not omniscient and has no concept of what these men read in the Schreiber archives.

Ms. Nathan states that she asked me to comment on material that she had about Schreiber and me. I then sent her an email stating “I am looking forward to seeing the material you are talking about, since I found nothing when I was at the library. You must have found some material which I never saw.” I hoped that she would send me this so called material but Ms. Nathan claimed it was too extensive for her to send. Flora Schreiber gave me all the files mentioning me before she died. As you will see there is no mention of these so-called documents in Nathan’s book.

Another example of her claiming to have documents that do not exist is her outrageous and irrelevant statements on page 71 in her book: “Completely inexperienced in men, she (Schreiber) had little idea of how to take Gene’s (O’Neill) measure … In a sheaf of notes she later wrote to herself, she described feeling pain at having his finger inside her, let alone his penis.”  Ms. Nathan cites FRS Box 34, File 1051 as the source. This entire document is on my website. There is no mention of O’Neill’s finger or penis. http://members.authorsguild.net/psuraci/

To bring up this matter of Mattie’s diagnosis a year and a half after her book has been published and all this time the biography has been in Wikipedia, it appears that Ms. Nathan is attempting to publicize her own book, which is in violation of Wikipedia’s Conflict of Interest statement.

Patrick Suraci, Ph.D.

SYBIL in her own words

Abandonded Ladder

ISBN-13-978-0615560472

Drsuraci (talk) 19:36, 5 April 2013 (UTC)Drsuraci (talk) 20:24, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Response to Suraci
Re the item which Suraci claims does not exist in the Schreiber archive, I have posted it here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/134423918/From-the-Flora-Rheta-Schreiber-collection-at-John-Jay-College-Library-s-Special-Collections. Anyone can verify its existence in the archive by simply visiting the Special Collections Department at the John Jay College library, and looking in the box and file I've indicated at the top of the photo I've posted. The fact that Suraci has not seen the item in the archive logically indicates he has not looked at the entire archive. Therefore it makes little sense for him to insist he is the first person to have done so. There is much more material he apparently has not seen. While working on Sybil Exposed, I found many documents related to his employment by Flora Shreiber in the 1980s. I wanted to interview him about this and asked to meet him at the archive to show him the material. He seemed surprised at the material's existence, but declined the invitation. Re his continuing claim that the New York Times lied about sending a fact checker to the archive, her presence can easily be verified by calling Ellen Belcher, John Jay's head archivist. Belcher was present during the fact checking. 64.131.228.109 (talk) 13:15, 7 April 2013 (UTC)Debbie Nathan


 * Hello Ms. Nathan and Dr. Suraci,
 * Both of you are engaging in what on wikipedia is referred to as original research. Neither of your personal experiences nor personal logic are considered sufficient to add or remove any text that is based solely on your experience - only material which can be verified in reliable sources is sufficient to adjust wikipedia pages.  If either of your claims and counter-claims can be found in reliable sources (i.e. published somewhere other than wikipedia pages), then they could be included via a summary and reference.  Until such sources are identified, please cease using this or other talk pages as a forum to advance your ideas.  Please note that due to the venue within which they are published (Free Press and The New York Times), Ms. Nathan's ideas are considered the more reliable of the two.  Dr. Suraci's publication venue, an obscure and I believe pay-to-publish company, is not considered a reliable source and thus is not appropriate for adding any text to the page.  Thanks, WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 19:49, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Please note that I have some WP:BLP concerns about this talk page section, and have raised it at the BLPN here. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 19:58, 20 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Mason is not a living person, so how is this a BLP issue? Please specify what "some WP:BLP concerns" specifically are.
 * Also, they are only "engaging in what on wikipedia is referred to as original research" if neither is using published, verifiable research. Suraci's self-published thing obviously counts as OR, but Nathan's work, published in better sources, is verifiable. The issue is whether (and I'm not saying she necessarily is) Nathan might be pursuing an agenda or engaging in self-promotion of her own work. Personally, I'm okay with Nathan refuting Suraci's promotion of non-notable self-publication. The biggest problem is that they shouldn't be having this discussion at all because it's about that inappropriate, non-encyclopedic, self-published source. Doczilla  @SUPERHEROLOGIST 02:35, 22 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Not against Mason, against each other - while I'm certain the mudslinging against each other here is inappropriate, I'm not certain it raises to the point of being removed. The OR comes in when they attempt to use claims on these talk pages - precisely the issue you identify :)  I'm probably being sloppy in my terminology but irrespective, the discussion shouldn't be on wikipedia at all.  WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules: simple/complex 21:07, 22 April 2013 (UTC)

bad grammar
Put in commas and it pops out: " whom her psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur believed had been schizophrenic". With the commas: " who, her psychiatrist Cornelia Wilbur believed, had been schizophrenic" The second is correct grammar. 71.163.117.143 (talk) 02:16, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Please disregard my previous post. 71.10.236.185 (talk) 22:25, 1 November 2020 (UTC) H. Smith