Sybil Exposed (41 page)

Several scholars, writers, activists, and ex–psychiatric patients shared with me research, primary documents, theories, and experiences regarding multiple personality disorder and the politics of mental health diagnosis and treatment. Special thanks to Sherrill Mulhern; Harold Mersky; Evan Harrington; Pamela Freyd; Mark Pendergrast; Ben Harris; Jan Haaken; Jeanette Bartha; Bill Dobbs; John Bloise; two people whom Connie once treated, and the family of another of her patients who later died. You in the last group have asked me for anonymity, but know that your information and insights were invaluable.

Former Hollywood celebrities talked with me as well: Stewart Stern, the screenwriter for the
Sybil
telemovie; and Diana Serra Cary, who was known as “Baby Peggy” when she worked as a child star in silent movies in the 1920s and had a doll named after her.

Kathy Steele, former director of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD), arranged my attendance at the group’s 2009 conference in Washington, D.C., and organized an interview between me and ISSTD’s officers. I am grateful, as well, to Dr. Richard Kluft. He declined to discuss his working and personal relationship with Connie Wilbur, but he did allow me to sit in on a presentation he gave at the conference. Psychologist and ISSTD long-timer Barry Cohen gave me key information about Connie Wilbur. Dr. Vedat Sar directed me to recent medical studies regarding dissociation and dissociative identity disorder.

I also want to thank Dr. Leah Dickstein for a fascinating, though off-the-record, morning and afternoon spent at the Schreiber archives at John Jay College. Dr. Dickstein holds several files of papers which belonged to Connie Wilbur. She has cited this material in her own research but will not share it with others. I hope she eventually releases it.

Jan Haaken, Mike Snedeker, Miriam Lieberstein, and Miriam Lerner read
Sybil Exposed
when it was still a work in progress. Their critiques buoyed me through a long process that seemed especially lonely because I was thinking and writing about an earlier time and about people who, in the main, were dead. It helped to have feedback from the here and now.

It’s customary when writing acknowledgments to wait till the end to thank one’s agent. Though I’m following that rule on paper, Jennifer Carlson holds top billing on the list inside my head. I cannot imagine a smarter, more enthusiastic and harder working agent than Jen—or one as out-and-out classy.

With Jen’s work and guidance I ended up with my editors—first, Wylie O’Sullivan, then Leah Miller when Wylie moved on. Both have been a joy to work with: Not only do they know how to sprinkle fairy dust on a manuscript, they’ve conveyed deep interest in the same fascinating and troubling things about the Sybil tale that grabbed me when I first learned of it, years ago. A generation divides the present, when Sybil is a piece of history, from the near past, when she was a craze. My editors have been passionate about that evolution—and about the dilemmas of women and medicine in general. I’m grateful.

I’m thankful, also, that Flora Rheta Schreiber left her papers to posterity. Would she have been satisfied to see how I’ve read her life? I like to think so, and that Connie and Shirley would be happy, too—or, at least, respectful of my efforts.

INTRODUCTION

1.
FRS Box 37, File 1093, Tape 66.

CHAPTER 1

1.
(Seventh-Day Adventist)
Review and Herald
, 6 July 1933, at <
www.adventistarchives.org/documents.asp?CatID=27++&SortBy=0&ShowDateOrder=True&offset=4000
>. Last viewed April 2011. Copy in author’s possession.

2.
Ronald L. Numbers and Jonathan M. Butler (eds.),
The Disappointed: Millerism and Millenarianism in the Nineteenth Century
(Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1993); Ronald L. Numbers,
Prophetess of Health: A Study of Ellen G. White
, 3rd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2008).

3.
FRS Box 37, File 1087.

4.
Nineteenth- and early twentieth-century church records of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church in Dodge Center, MN, examined by the author in October 2009. The example of testimony by rural Midwestern Adventists in the 1920s and 1930s was provided to the author by T. Joe Willey, a historian of Seventh-Day Adventism whose family was Adventist and whose father was a minister in the church.

5.
Martha Atkinson Mason’s background was supplied by her third cousins Arlene Christensen, in Ojai, CA; Marcia Schmidt, in Palmdale, CA; and cousin by marriage Lorna Gilbert, in Houston. Author phone conversations in January 2011. Also FRS Box 37, File 1091, Tape 32. Martha Atkinson Mason’s health records from the Mayo Clinic are in FRS Box 37, File 1078. For WM’s history with the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, see FRS Box 37, Files 1095, 1097.

6.
Shirley Mason birth records are in FRS Box 37, File 1078.

7.
Seventh-Day Adventist Church records, Dodge Center, MN.

8.
Bible Readings for the Home Circle
(Washington, DC: Review and Herald Publishing, 1919 and 1923), p. 268; Arthur S. Maxwell,
Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories
, Vols. 1–4 (Takoma Park, MD and Washington, DC: Review and Herald Publishing, 1919).

9.
FRS Box 37, File 1086.

10.
FRS Box 37, Files 1084, 1086, 1087; for information on Adventist prohibitions against masturbation and fiction reading, see Numbers,
Prophetess of Health
, p. 208; and E. G. White,
Messages to the Youth
(Takoma, MD and Washington, DC: 1930, reprinted 2008), pp. 76–77, 290. For fighting in church, see SAM to FM, 25 December 1962, DE.

11.
FRS Box 37, File 1096.

12.
FRS Box 37, File 1089, Tape 12; File 1094, Tape 11; telephone interviews with Marcia Schmidt and Arlene Christensen, January 2011. For
Good Housekeeping
articles, see that magazine, April and November 1933.

13.
For founding of Adventist school in Dodge Center, see
Advent Review and Sabbath Herald
, 1 October 1901, p. 641; 14 October 1902, p. 19. At <
www.adventistarchives.org/documents.asp?CatID=27++&SortBy=0&ShowDateOrder=True&offset=2500
>. For theology about schooling and the Dodge Center school in the Depression era, see W. J. Smith, “Christian Education,”
Adventist Review and Sabbath Herald
, 6 July 1933, pp. 17 and 18, at <
www.adventistarchives.org/documents.asp?CatID=27++&SortBy=0&ShowDateOrder=True&offset=4000
>.
All last viewed April 2011. Copies in author’s possession.

14.
White,
Messages
, pp. 281–282, 290.

15.
FRS Box 37, File 1086.

16.
FRS Box 37, Files 1083, 1084.

17.
Pearl Lohrbach Book Club Report, 1975, copy at Dodge Center, MN, public library and in author’s possession; Monty Norris, “Sybil: A shocked Dodge Center thinks she grew up there,” Minneapolis
Star-Tribune
, 27 August 1975.

18.
FRS Box 37, File 1095, Tape 117; File 1080.

19.
For Bobby Moulton see FRS Box 37, Files 1084, 1085. Information also obtained from author telephone interview with Bobby’s daughter, Miranda Marland, of Falmouth, Maine, in December 2010. Anita Weeks material from author interview in Mantorville, Minnesota, with Frank Weeks, a cousin of Anita, in October 2009. See also records of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church for 1920s and 1930s in Dodge Center, Minnesota.

20.
For economic crisis in the Mason family see FRS Box 37, Files 1084, 1095, 1096.

21.
For Shirley’s childhood problems with depression and isolation see FRS Box 37, Files 1079, 1080, 1085, 1095, Tape 117.

22.
FRS Box 37, File 1095, Tape 117.

23.
For Shirley’s phobias, see FRS Box 37, Files 1084, 1085.
Fortune
magazine reading: “The Nervous Breakdown,”
Fortune
, April 1935, pp. 84–88 and 167–202.

24.
FRS Box 37, Files 1084, 1085.

25.
FRS Box 37, File 1095.

26.
FRS Box 37, File 1095, Tape 117.

27.
1998 interview of Dr. Virginia Flores Cravens, at her home in Nacogdoches, Texas, by Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen and Peter Swales. Copy of audiotape of interview provided to the author by Borch-Jacobsen.

CHAPTER 2

1.
Richard P. Kluft and Catherine G. Fine,
Clinical Perspectives on Multiple Personality Disorder
(Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, 1993); M. Sara Rosenthal,
The Thyroid Sourcebook
(Los Angeles: Lowell House, 1993); Stephen Lock et al.,
The Oxford Illustrated Companion to Medicine
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

2.
Leah J. Dickstein and Carol Nadelson (eds.),
Women Physicians in Leadership Roles
(Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1986); Craig Thompson,
Since Spindletop
(Houston: Gulf Oil Co., 1950).

3.
John T. Horton,
History of Northwestern New York: Erie, Niagara, Wyoming, Genesee and Orleans Counties
(New York: Lewis Historical Publishing Co., 1947), see entry on Arthur W. Burwell;
Who Was Who in America
, Vol. 2 (Chicago: Marquis, 1950);
Lubrication Engineering
, “Necrology” for Dr. A. W. Burwell, September 1946, p. 122; United States Patent Office, C. E. Baker and A. W. Burwell, “Process of Treating Ores,” patented October 13, 1903, Patent No. 741,439; “Has a new process for ore treatment,”
Anaconda (MT) Standard
, 3 July 1908; “New electrolytic plant proposed,”
Anaconda (MT) Standard
, 24 December 1909; Thomas Parke Hughes,
Elmer Sperry: Inventor and Engineer
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1971);
The World 1909 Almanac and Encyclopedia
(Press Pub. Company: The New York World, 1909);
The World Almanac and Book of Facts
(Chicago: Newspaper Enterprise Association, 1909).

4.
Homestead land grant title for Arthur W. Burwell: United States of America Kalispell 03945 (Kalispell, MT) #715933, dated 30 October 1919. Copy in author’s possession; Cornelia Wilbur’s description of hunting with her father is in STERN.

5.
“More than $7,000,000 in worthless stocks,”
New York Times
, 19 July 1916; “School pupils to graduate Thursday,”
Poughkeepsie Eagle-News
, 26 June 1922; “Girl Scout entertainment,”
Poughkeepsie Eagle-News
, 26 April 1922; “Scouts awarded badges at court,”
Poughkeepsie Eagle-News
, 9 December 1922; Poughkeepsie Public Library (information on family address in 1922).

6.
Cornelia Wilbur to Flora Schreiber, 26 July 1965. FRS Box 37, File 1102; Dickstein and Nadelson,
Women Physicians.

7.
Student records for Cornelia Burwell on file at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Geneva, NY; and in registrar’s office of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, copy in author’s possession; University of Michigan student records available in registrar’s office;
College & Private School Directory of the United States
, Vol. 22 (Chicago: Educational Aid Society, 1936); Porter Sargent,
A Handbook of Private Schools for American Boys and Girls
(Boston: Porter Sargent, 1934); information on Bertha Burwell’s conversion to Christian Science in SAM letters to FM, 22 June 1962 and 25 December 1962, DE.

8.
Mary Baker Eddy,
Science and Health
(Boston: First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1875/1994), pp. 390, 392–393, 150–151.

9.
Cornelia Wilbur student records, University of Michigan registrar’s office, copies in author’s possession; John Kraus,
Big Ear Two
(Powell, OH: Cygnus-Quasar Books, 1995).

10.
Bureau of Vocational Information,
Women in Chemistry: A Study of Professional Opportunities
(New York: Select Printing Co., 1922), pp. 80, 87; “Scientific careers for women,”
New York Times
, 4 June 1921, cited in Margaret W. Rossiter,
Women Scientists in America
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1982/1992), p. 12.