Sybil Exposed
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13. “Germicidal and Fungicidal Composition,” Cornelia Burwell, patent applied for 17 March 1934, patent granted 30 November 1937, Patent No. 2,100,469.
14. Kluft and Fine, Clinical Perspectives, p. xxvi.
15. University of Michigan records for Henry Wilbur, in registrar’s office, copies in author’s possession; Neil Burwell, Warner O. Burwell, and Brenda Burwell Canning (great-nephews and great-niece of Cornelia Burwell), author interviews April 2009 in Ancaster, Ontario (Canada); FRS Box 37, File 1096.
16. Quoted in Franz Alexander, Psychosomatic Medicine (New York: Norton, 1950), p. 176; FRS Box 37, File 1089, Tape 13.
CHAPTER 3
1. Information about the Schreiber home was provided in 2010 by her cousin, Dr. Stanley Aronson, of Providence, RI. For Willy Schreiber’s contribution to the Emily Post book, see FRS Box 34, File 1052.
2. FRS Box 33, Files 1033, 1034, 1047.
3. FRS Box 34, File 1052.
4. Author interviews with with Dr. Stanley Aronson, January 2010, May 2010.
5. Flora Schreiber to Willy and Esther Schreiber, “Notes on Going to Church,” 17 June 1935, in FRS Box 33, File 1039; and see File 1043.
6. Anna Lee, Maureen O’Hara, Barbara Rojisman, Anna Lee: Memoir of a Career on General Hospital and in Film (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2007), p. 47.
7. Ibid., p. 48.
8. FRS Box 6, File 149.
9. Flora Schreiber to “Bob,” 23 August 1941, FRS Box 34, File 1075.
CHAPTER 4
1. Author telephone interview with Richard Dieterle, son of Dr. Robert Dieterle, Ann Arbor, MI, December 2008; author interview with Caroline Dieterle, daughter of Dr. Robert Dieterle, Iowa City, IA, October 2008; Biographical Directory of Fellows and Members of the American Psychiatric Association (New York: The American Psychiatric Association, 1950), viewed online March 2011 at http://www.archive.org/details/biographicaldire007514mbp; records of the University of Michigan Medical School, at the Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan.
2. C. G. Goetz et al., Constructing Neurology (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995); C. G. Goetz, Charcot, the Clinician. The Tuesday Lessons (New York: Raven Press, 1987); D. M. Bourneville and P. Regnard, Iconographie photographique de la Salpêtrière, Service de M. Charcot (Paris: Bureau du Progres Medical, V. Adrien Delahay et. Cie, 1877).
3. Dieterle’s paper was published as Robert R. Dieterle and Edward J. Koch, “Experimental induction of infantile behavior in major hysteria,” Journal of Nerald Pressvous & Mental Disease 86(6) (December 1937): 688–710. The film made to accompany the paper is now owned by Dr. Richard Dieterle.
4. Dieterle and Koch, “Experimental induction,” p. 710.
5. Cornelia Burwell Wilbur academic transcript, University of Michigan Medical School registrar, copy on file with author.
6. Dickstein and Nadelson, Women Physicians; Michiganensian (yearbook of the University of Michigan, 1939).
7. Report of the Board of Trustees, 1889–90, Michigan Asylum for the Insane, on file at the Michigan University Archives and Regional History Collections in Kalamazoo, and cited in Rory J. Becker and Michael S. Nassaney, “An Assessment of the Asylum Lake/Colony Farm Orchard Property in Kalamazoo, Michigan” (viewed by author in March 2011 at
8. STERN.
9. Ibid.; and Denis Brian, The Voice of Genius (Cambridge, MA: Perseus, 1995), p. 339.
10. Edward Shorter, A History of Psychiatry (New York: Wiley, 1997), p. 216.
11. J. B. Craig and M. E. Schilling, “A comparison of the results of metrazol therapy with a group of matched controlled cases,” American Journal of Psychiatry 98:2 (1941): 180–184.
12. David Herman and Jim Green, Madness: A Study Guide (London: BBC Education, 1991).
13. Author telephone conversation with Dr. Richard Dieterle.
14. “Rushton takes hand in state investigation of hospital death,” Adrian (MI) Daily Telegram, 14 June 1943; “Asks quiz of state asylum,” St. Joseph (MI) Herald Press, 27 February 1945; James A. O. Crowe, “Ask probe into Pontiac State Hospital,” Ludington (MI) Daily News, 12 July 1947; “Michigan probe says orderlies choked inmates,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 13 July 1947.
15. Peter A. Martin, “Convulsive therapies: Review of 511 cases at Pontiac State Hospital,” Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 109:2 (1949): 142–157.
16. E. Lindemann, “Psychological changes in normal and abnormal individuals under the influence of sodium amytal,” American Journal of Psychiatry 88 (1932): 1083–1091.
17. J. Stephen Horsley, Narco-Analysis: A New Technique in Short-Cut Psychotherapy (London: Oxford University Press, 1943), p. 2; Horsley, “Narco-Analysis,” The Lancet 1:55 (4 January 1936); “Pentothal sodium in mental hospital practice,” The British Medical Journal, 9 May 1936, pp. 938–939.
18. C. B. Wilbur, “The use of intravenous barbituates in determining the prognosis in metrazol therapy,” Diseases of the Nervous System, Vol. 4 (December 1943): 369–372.
19. “Medicine: Psychosurgery,” Time Magazine, 22 November 1942. Viewed online in August 2010 at
20. A. E. Bennett, “Curare: A preventive of traumatic complications in convulsive shock therapy,” American Journal of Psychiatry 97 (March 1941): 1040–1060.
21. “Books: Precious poison,” Time Magazine, 22 July 1940; “Medicine: Useful poison,” Time Magazine, 21 February 1944.
22. Shorter, History of Psychiatry, p. 223.
23. “Notes on science: Operations on the brain for insanity—‘Cat Cracker,’” New York Times, 5 December 1943; Abram Elting Bennett, Prefrontal Lobotomy in Chronic Schizophrenia [motion picture] (Omaha: Bishop Clarkson Memorial Hospital, circa 1944), available at the National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD.
24. William Sargant, The Unquiet Mind: The Autobiography of a Physician in Psychological Medicine (Boston: Little Brown, 1967), p. 87; Roy Grinker and John Spiegel, War Neurosis in North Africa: The Tunisian Campaign (January–May 1943) (New York: Josiah Macy, Jr., Foundation, 1943; republished as War Neurosis [Philadelphia: Blakiston, 1945]), p. 80.
25. W. Sargant and E. Slater, Physical Methods of Treatment in Psychiatry (Edinburgh, Scotland: E. & L. Livingstone, 1944); Ben Shepard, A War of Nerves: Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century (London: Jonathan Cape, 2001), pp. 208–209; S. Brandon, J. Boakes, et al., “Recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse: Implications for clinical practice,” British Journal of Psychiatry 172 (1998): 296–307; Alison Winter, “Film and the construction of memory in psychoanalysis, 1940–1960,” Science in Context 19: 1 (2006): 111–136.
26. Bishop Clarkson Memorial Hospital Department of Psychiatry, Narcosynthesis (film), 1944, currently held at the National Library of Medicine, Historical Audiovisuals Collection, Rockville, MD.
27. Cornelia Wilbur resume in FRS Box 13, File 315.
28. FRS Box 37, File 1095, Tape 130, and File 1096, Tape 29; STERN.
CHAPTER 5
1. FRS Box 37, File 1096, Tape 134.
2. FRS Box 37, File 1084.
3. “Former Centerite shot at Kasson,” Dodge Center Star-Record, 29 August 1940, p. 1 Available at the Minnesota State Historical Society, St. Paul, MN.
4. FRS Box 37, File 1084.
5. Shirley Mason, “Pen name of Samuel Clemens immortalizes river boat pilot,” The Reporter (Mankato State Teachers College), 18 April 1943, p. 4.
6. 1940 Katonian (yearbook of Mankato State Teachers College), 1940, pp. 15–18.
7. Linda Mack Schloff, “Overc
oming Geography: Jewish Religious Life in Four Market Towns,” Minnesota History, Spring 1988, pp. 2–14.
8. Wanda Gäg, Growing Pains: Diaries and Drawings from the Years 1908–17 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1984).
9. Josef Breuer et al., Studies in Hysteria (New York: Nervous and Mental Disease, 1936).
10. FRS Box 37, File 1078, File 1094, Tape 14, File 1097.
11. FRS Box 37, File 1095, Tape 115.
12. Merlaine Nelson Samuelson letter to Daniel Houlihan, 9 February 1999, in Daniel Houlihan Collection, Mankato, MN, copy in author’s possession; SAM to Wylene Frederickson, 14 December 1943, in Daniel Houlihan collection; Author interview of Jean Lane.
13. Merlaine Nelson Samuelson, ibid.
14. FRS Box 37, File 1095, Tape 115.
15. Mayo Clinic letter to Dr. Wilbur, 22 July 1964, FRS Box 37, File 1078, File 1095, Tape 115, File 1097; Dr. H. W. Woltman to Dr. H. B. Troost, 1 April 1942, in FRS Box 37, File 1078.
16. FRS Box 37, File 1095, Tape 115.
17. SAM to Wylene Frederickson, 14 December 1943; SAM to Louella Warnke (Odden), n.d. postmarked 16 January 1944. MC; Robert Rieber donation to FRS, Tape 1.
18. FRS Box 37, File 1095, Tape 115; Tape 2 in Robert Reiber donation to FRS.
19. FRS Box 37, File 1086.
20. FRS Box 37, File 1095, tape dated 12/13 August 1970.
21. FRS Box 37, Files 1079, 1081, 1095.
22. FRS Box 37, File 1095, Tape 130, 12 or 13 August 1970.
23. FRS Box 37, File 1095, Tape dated 13 August 1970, and File 1096, Tape 129.
24. FRS Box 37, File 1083; STERN.
25. Sidney Howard, The Silver Cord (Hollywood, CA: Samuel French, 1928); Morton Prince, The Dissociation of a Personality (New York: Longmans, Green, 1905, First Edition).
26. Tape 2, Robert Rieber donation to FRS.
CHAPTER 6
1. Michele Hilmes, Radio Voices: American Broadcasting, 1922–1952 (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997).
2. Flora left no evidence in her archive that she had ever volunteered at WNYC. But definitive records in Germany attest that, in the late 1930s and early 1940s, she was assisting the Marxist philosopher Theodor Adorno when he was a refugee from Naziism in New York City and was writing scripts for shows for WNYC. See Stefan Müller-Doohm, Adorno: A Biography (Cambridge, England: Polity, 2004), p. 253; Theodor Adorno, Current of Music, ed. Robert Hullot-Kentor (Cambridge, England: Polity, 2009).
3. Hilmes, Radio Voices; for George Kondolf, see Douglas McGill, “George Kondolf is dead at 85: Theater and radio producer,” New York Times, 26 December 1985, viewed online March 2011 at www.nytimes.com/1985/12/26/arts/george-kondolf-is-dead-at-85-theater-and-radio-producer.html>; Irving Foulds Luscombe, “WNYC: 1922–1940—The Early History of a Twentieth-Century Urban Service” (Ph.D. dissertation, Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1968).
4. Haym [sic] Solomon and Metamorphosis typescripts in FRS Box 27, File 724.
5. FRS Resume; Flora Rheta Schreiber, “Battle of the Soap Opera,” Film and Radio Discussion Guide 10:7 (April 1944): 16, copy in FRS Box 6, File 125.
6. Flora Rheta Schreiber, “Television: A New Idiom,” Hollywood Quarterly, Winter 1949; FRS Box 6, Files 136 and 137.
7. Author telephone interview in February 2010 with Flora’s Brooklyn College colleague Georgiana Peacher, of Brunswick, ME.
8. FRS Box 31, File 1006.
9. FRS Box 31, File 1003.
10. “Popularity of the soap opera analyzed by Eugene O’Neill, Jr.,” Lewiston (ME) Daily Sun, 17 February 1950. Information about O’Neill Jr.’s life and death is from Croswell Bowen, The Curse of the Misbegotten (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1959); Arthur and Barbara Gelb, O’Neill (New York: Harper & Row, 1960; subsequent editions 1962, 1973); Louis Sheaffer, O’Neill: Son and Artist (New York: Little Brown, 1973).
11. FRS Box 34, File 1051.
12. Ibid.
13. See, e.g., “O’Neill suicide has tragic note,” (Bend, OR) Bulletin, 26 September 1950.
14. FRS Box 34, Files 1054, 1056.
CHAPTER 7
1. FRS Box 37, File 1095, Tape 116.
2. SAM to Luella Warnke, postmarked 16 January 1944, MC.
3. Author interview with Jean Lane, May 2008, in Portland Oregon; SAM to Miss Frederickson, 14 December 1948, DE; SAM to Luella Warnke, n.d., MC.
4. FRS Box 37, File 1095.
5. Author interview with David Eichman, of Rosenburg, OR, May 2008; SAM to Luella Odden, MC.
6. “Annual Commencement Art Exhibit” (invitation), Mankato State Teachers College, 27 May–3 June 1949, DE.
7. Shirley Mason resume in FRS Box 37, File 1078; DE op. cit.; FRS Box 37, File 1080; SAM to Miss Frederickson, 14 December 1948 and 5 December 1950, Daniel Houlihan Collection, Mankato, MN, copies in author’s possession.
8. Shirley Mason resume; SAM to FM, postmarked 4 October 1952, DE.
9. SAM to FM, ibid.; SAM to FM postmarked 4 January 1954; SAM to 15 April 1954, all in DE.
10. FRS Box 37, File 1095.
11. Mabel Curry, “Memphis artist wins recognition with paintings,” Port Huron (MI) Times-Herald, 30 November 1952; author interview with Earlene King, director, Dodge County, MN Historical Society; Dodge County Sesquicen-tennial, 150 Dodge County Fairs: 1857–2007 (available at the Dodge County Historical Society, Mantorville, MN).
12. Author interview with Jean Lane in Portland, OR, May 2008.
13. SAM to FM, n.d. but by context early 1954; SAM to FM, 10 November 1954. Both in DE.
14. SAM to FM postmarked 6 October 1954; SAM to FM, n.d. but letter appears to have been written October 1954. Both in DE.
15. “Cornelia Wilbur” entry in Biographical Directory of Fellows and Members of the American Psychiatric Association (New York: American Psychiatric Association, 1950); M. J. Tissenbaum and H. M. Harter, “Survey of a mental hygiene clinic—21 months of operation,” Psychiatric Quarterly 24:4 (1950): 677–705.
16. Stephen Farber and Marc Green, Hollywood on the Couch (New York: Morrow, 1993).
17. James Strachey and Anna Freud (eds.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (London: Hogarth Press, 1966), Vol. 23, p. 228.
18. “Medicine for the psyche,” Time Magazine, 2 September 1946, accessed in 2010 at www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,803953,00.html
19. Farber and Green, Hollywood on the Couch.
20. For neo-Freudian ideas, see Nathan G. Hale, Jr., The Rise and Crisis of Psychoanalysis in the United States (New York: Oxford, 1995), and Joel Kovel, A Complete Guide to Therapy (New York: Pantheon, 1975). For Frieda FrommReichmann’s ideas, see Edward Dolnick, Madness on the Couch (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1998), p. 99, quoting from Jeanne Block et al., “A study of the parents of schizophrenic and neurotic children,” Psychiatry: Journal for the Study of Interpersonal Processes 21 (1958): 387–397.
21. William V. Silverberg, Childhood Experience and Personal Destiny: A Psychoanalytic Study of Neurosis (New York: Springer, 1952), p. 254.
22. Biographical Directory of Fellows and Members of the APA.
23. Ibid.
24. STERN.
25. Biographical Directory of Fellows and Members of the APA.
26. Author telephone interview with Keith Brown’s niece Deborah Brown Kovac, of Bushnell, IL, November 2008.
27. The Michigan Alumnus 60 (October 3, 1953 to August 7, 1954): 148.
28. FRS Box 37, File 1102.
29. See Connie’s contributions in Alfred H. Rifkin (ed.), Schizophrenia in Psychoanalytic Office Practice (New York: Grune & Stratton, 1957).
30. STERN.
31. Author telephone interview with Dr. Arthur Zitrin, New York City, October 2009.
32. C. H. Thigpen and H. Cleckley, “A case of multiple personality,” Journal of Ab-normal and Social Psychology 49(1954):135–151. Quotes from pp. 137, 141–142, 145. A later version of the film shown at the meeting is available as A Case Study in Multiple Personality: The Thr
ee Faces of Eve, Corbett H. Thigpen and Hervey M Cleckley (University Park, PA: Penn State Media Sales, and New York: Insight Media, 2006/1954).
33. “Medicine: Order in Disorder?” Time, 18 May 1953, retrieved December 2009 at
34. Thigpen and Cleckley, “A case of multiple personality,” p. 148.