Sybil Exposed
Page 32
35. Rennie Taylor, Associated Press: “Demure brunette, ‘devilish creature’ puzzles doctors,” Eugene (OR) Register-Guard, 9 May 1953. Retrieved December 2009 at http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=4IcRAAAAIBAJ&sjid=ueIDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6353,1318497&dq=eve+black&hl=en
36. For Rennie Taylor’s background as an Associated Press science writer, see “Science: Skeptic’s Prize,” Time 3 July 1978, retrieved December 2009 at
CHAPTER 8
1. SAM to WM, n.d. but from context, September or October 1954. DE.
2. Ibid.
3. FRS Box 37, File 1095, Tape 116.
4. Edward Shorter, Before Prozac: The Troubled History of Mood Disorders in Psychiatry (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
5. For Shirley Mason’s Seconal dosage see FRS Box 37, Files 1081, 1084. For her Demerol consumption, see FRS Box 37, File 1086. For Edrisal and Daprisal dosages, see FRS Box 37, File 1083. For side effects of Seconal, Demerol, and amphetamines, see H. Winter Griffith et al., Complete Guide to Prescription and Non-Prescription Drugs 2011 (New York: Penguin, 2010).
6. SAM to Miss Weblemoe, 26 May 1958, FRS Box 37, File 1099; Robert Rieber donation to FRS, Tape 1.
7. SAM treatment diary in FRS Box 37, File 1081 (21 February 1956).
8. Robert Reiber donation to FRS, Tape 1.
9. STERN; Connie Wilbur to FRS, 26 July 1965, FRS Box 37, File 1102.
10. Ibid.
11. Record of therapy, FRS Box 37, File 1098; SAM to Miss Weblemoe, 26 May 1958, FRS Box 37, File 1099.
12. Robert Rieber donation to FRS, Tape 1; FRS Box 37, Files 1081, 1097, 1099 (therapy diary, 26 May 1958), 1102.
13. FRS Box 37, File 1089, “Tape 5/6.”
14. Robert Rieber donation to FRS, Tape 1.
15. FRS Box 37, Files 1081 (Analysis Diary 9 January 1956, 13 June 1956, 15 November 1956), 1082, 1083; Rieber addition to FRS, Tape 1.
16. FRS Box 37, File 1089, Tape 5/6; Flora Rheta Schreiber, Sybil, 1st ed. (Chicago: Regnery, 1973).
17. “John Greenwald dies from gun accident,” Dodge County Republican, 29 August 1940, available at the Minnesota Historical Society archives, Minneapolis. Online death record viewed December 2011 at
18. FRS Box 37, File 1089, “Tape 5/6” transcription.
19. FRS Box 37, File 1085 (11 October 1958).
20. FRS Box 37, File 1090.
21. FRS Box 37, File 1084; SAM to FM, 3 February 1955, DE, copy in author’s possession.
22. FRS Box 37, Files 1082, 1097, Tape 124.
23. FRS Box 37, File 1103.
24. FRS Box 37, Files 1087, 1101, 1103.
25. FRS Box 37, File 1081 (Shirley Mason treatment diary, 17 January 1956); SAM to Miss Weblemoe, 26 May 1958, FRS Box 37, File 1099.
26. FRS Box 37, File 1081, treatment diary, 20 December 1955.
27. Ibid., treatment diary, 4 November 1955, 18 November 1955.
28. Ibid., treatment diary, 25 November 1955.
29. Ibid., treatment diary, 14 December 1955; SAM to Luella Warnke Odden, 1956, in MC.
30. FRS Box 37, File 1081, treatment diary, 15 December 1955 and 9 January 1956.
31. FRS Box 37, File 1081, treatment diary, 9 and 12 January 1956. For Lorand’s biography see Franz Alexander et al. (eds.), Psychoanalytic Pioneers (New York: Basic Books, 1966).
32. SAM to Florence Eichman, 4 May 1963, DE.
33. FRS Box 37, Files 1081, 1983, 1090, 1094; SAM to Miss Weblemoe, 26 May 1958 in FRS Box 37, File 1099.
34. FRS Box 37, File 1081.
35. FRS Box 37, File 1081. For media claims and for side effects of Miltown and related new drugs of the 1950s see Jonathan Metzl, Prozac on the Couch (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); and Shorter, Before Prozac.
36. FRS Box 37, File 1081. For side effects, see Metzl, Prozac, and Shorter, Before Prozac.
37. FRS Box 37, File 1081.
38. FRS Box 37, Files 1081, 1097, Tape 124.
39. FRS Box 37, File 1081, treatment diary, fall 1955 to early winter 1956.
40. FRS Box 37, File 1081, treatment diary, January to February 1956.
CHAPTER 9
1. FRS Box 37, Files 1081 (June 1956 and 13 October 1956), 1082, 1083, 1090, 1097.
2. FRS Box 37, File 1084, therapy diary, 26 May 1957.
3. FRS Box 37, Files 1080 (therapy diary, 13 June 1956), 1081 (June 1956), 1083, 1088.
4. FRS Box 37, File 1083 and File 1089, Tape 12 (November 1958); STERN.
5. FRS Box 37, Files 1082 and 1089.
6. FRS Box 37, File 1083.
7. FRS Box 13, File 316.
8. FRS Box 37, File 1089, Tape 15; File 1102.
9. Author interviews with Jean Lane at her home in Portland, OR, May 2008; and Sag Harbor, NY, July 2009.
10. Shirley’s concern with homosexuality is reflected in notes that she took and saved from an article she obviously read, probably at the New York Academy of Medicine Library, where Connie often sent her to do research. The article is Eric P. Mosse, “Psychological mechanisms in art production,” Psychoanalytic Review 38 (1951): 66–74. See Shirley’s handwritten notes in FRS Box 37, File 1088. For passage about Willie Price in Shirley’s bed, see FRS Box 37, File 1102, and Schreiber, Sybil (1st ed.), pp. 264–265.
11. Cornelia Wilbur, “Clinical Aspects of Female Homosexuality,” in Judd Marmor (ed.), Sexual Inversion: The Multiple Roots of Homosexuality (New York: Basic Books, 1965).
12. SAM to Dr. Cornelia Wilbur, FRS Box 37, File 1099, 26 May 1958.
13. STERN.
14. Ibid.; FRS Box 37, File 1081; SAM to Miss Weblemoe, 26 May 1958, FRS Box 37, File 1089.
15. FRS Box 37, File 1089, Tape 15.
16. SAM therapy diary in FRS Box 37, File 1085, 6 July 1958.
17. Schreiber, Sybil (first edition); FRS Box 3, File 1089; STERN.
18. FRS Box 37, File 1089, Tape 13.
19. STERN; FRS Box 37, File 1089.
20. FRS Box 37, File 1097, Tape 24.
21. FRS Box 37, Files 1081, 1089.
22. STERN.
CHAPTER 10
1. Flora Rheta Schreiber, “Vitamins Can Help You Live Longer,” Pageant, April 1959, pp. 86–88, copy in FRS Box 6, File 145.
2. FRS to Vice-President Richard Nixon’s Special Assistant Herbert G. Klein, 17 August 1959 and 2 September 1959, FRS Box 28, File 840; “Getting Around at GH,” Good Housekeeping, June 1960, p. 14.
3. Flora Rheta Schreiber, “The woman who, by a year, missed seeing her son become president,” Spartanburg (S.C.) Herald-Journal, 19 January 1969; Flora Rheta Schreiber, “Richard Nixon: A Mother’s Story,” Good Housekeeping, June 1960, pp. 55–57, 207–208, 212–213.
4. “Getting Around at GH.”
5. Shaun Casey, The Making of a Catholic President (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 98.
6. For Lady Bird Johnson as a vice-presidential wife, see Family Weekly, October 1960, copy in FRS Box 5, File 124. For Jackie Kennedy, Good Housekeeping, October 1962. For Lady Bird as first lady, Cosmopolitan, February 1964, copy in FRS Box 5, File 119. For Lady Bird as hostess, Accent, Summer 1965, copy in FRS Box 5, File 109.
7. Curtis Mitchell to FRS, 6 May 1963, FRS Box 26, File 714.
8. List of freelance rates, by magazine, Society of Magazine Writers Newsletter, November 1961, pp. 13–16, and Summer 1960. Archived at the offices of the American Society for Authors and Journalists (successor organization to the Society of Magazine Writers), in New York City.
9. Author interview with 1950s-and-60s-era magazine freelancer and editor Mary Anne Guitar at her home in West Redding, CT, February 2010; author telephone interview with former women’s magazine editor Harrison Kinney, of Lexington, VA, March 2010.
10. Evan McLeod Wylie, “A Day in the Life of an Obstetrician,” Good Housekeeping, January 1963, p. 126.
11. FRS to Jack (Schreiber), n.d. FRS Box 33, File 104; F
RS to Marion, n.d., Box 33, File 1033.
12. Society of Magazine Writers Newsletter, November 1961, p. 5.
13. Ibid.
14. Ibid, p. 6.
15. Ibid., p. 7.
16. Terry Morris (ed.), Prose by Professionals (New York: Doubleday, 1961); Terry Morris, Confessions of a Freelance Writer (San Jose, CA: ASJA Press, 2001).
17. Morris, Prose by Professionals, p. 164.
18. Morris, Confessions, p. 108.
19. Morris, Prose by Professionals, p. 47.
20. Society of Magazine Writers Newsletter, 9 May 1962.
21. For Herman’s background see Lucy Freeman and Martin Theodores (eds.), The Why Report (New York: Pocket Books, 1964). For names of private hospitals, see J. Martin Meyers et al., “Report on Five Concurrent Section Meetings,” Mental Hospitals, June 1964, pp. 340–343; Melvin Herman to Perry C. Talkington, 26 February 1963, FRS Box 31, File 971.
22. Flora Rheta Schreiber, “I Committed My Daughter,” Cosmopolitan, May 1962, pp. 57–63 (copy in FRS Box 5, File 117); notes and correspondence related to the article in FRS Box 30, Files 952, 958, 963.
23. Flora Rheta Schreiber, “Family Therapy,” Cosmopolitan, February 1961, FRS Box 5, File 117.
24. “Family Therapy” work materials in FRS Box 30, Files 953 and 958.
25. Herman to Talkington, 26 February 1963.
26. “An Interview with Cornelia B. Wilbur, MD,” in Dickstein and Nadelson, Women Physicians.
27. Author telephone interview with Dr. Harriette Kaley, New York City, June 2008; author personal interview with Brenda Burwell Canning, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada, April 2009; Patrick Suraci self-published manuscript, Sybil in Her Own Words. Suraci lives in New York City.
28. Irving Bieber et al., Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study (New York: Basic Books, 1962).
29. For an extensive critique of Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study, see Kenneth Lewes, The Psychoanalytic Theory of Male Homosexuality (New York: Meridian), 1988. For the former APA president’s comment, see Michael Blumenfield, “An Interview with Alfred M. Freedman, MD,” Journal of Gay & Lesbian Mental Health, 13:1 (2009), p. 65.
30. For McDowall’s life, see Kenneth T. Jackson et al., The Scribner Encyclopedia of American Lives, Vol. 5. For his homosexuality, discussed after his death, see Robert Hofler, “Secrets and Bios,” The Advocate, 11 October 2005, pp. 74–81; Joann Malloy, “Lies and suffering lurked behind Taylor’s glamour,” New York Daily News, 24 March 2011, last viewed on 25 April 2011 at http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-03-24/gossip/29355378_1_elizabeth-taylor-child-stars-roddy-mcdowall; for the description of “Case 29,” see Homosexuality: A Psychoanalytic Study, op. cit, pp. 54–58.
31. FRS Box 29, File 866.
32. Ibid.
33. Ibid.
34. Melvin Herman to FRS, 2 December 1962; FRS to Melvin (Herman), 4 December 1962. Both in FRS Box 31, File 972.
35. Flora Rheta Schreiber, “I Was Raising a Homosexual Child,” Cosmopolitan, January 1963, pp. 60–64.
36. Dickstein and Nadelson, Women Physicians, p. 16; Cornelia B. Wilbur, with Moshe Torem, “A Memorial for Cornelia B. Wilbur, M.D., in Her Own Words: Excerpts from Interviews and an Autobiographical Reflection,” Clinical Perspectives on Multiple Personality Disorder, edited by Richard P. Kluft and Catherine G. Fine (Washington, D.C., American Psychiatric Press, 1993), p. xxix.
37. SAM to FM, postmarked 7 September 1962, DE; Dickstein and Nadelson, Women Physicians.
38. SAM to FM, 23 April 1962 and 4 May 1963; SAM to “Florence and Dad,” n.d. but by content 1962 and marked “2nd day of spring.” All in DE.
39. STERN.
40. See for example SAM to WM and FM, 1 February 1962, and FRS Box 37, File 1087; SAM to WM and FM, postmarked 8 March 1962; SAM to WM and FM, n.d. but by content 1962 and marked “2nd day of spring.” Both in DE. SAM to WM and FM, 5 February 1962, DE.
41. SAM to WM and FM, 21 February 1962, DE.
42. Maxwell, Uncle Arthur’s Bedtime Stories, p. 51; STERN; Rieber addition to FRS, Tape 1.
CHAPTER 11
1. List of therapy hours and charges 1954–1965, FRS Box 37, File 1089; 1098.
2. American Psychiatric Press Review of Psychiatry, Vol. 13. Edited by J. M. Oldham and M. B. Riba (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, 1994); Glen O. Gabbard and Eva P. Lester, Boundaries and Boundary Violations (Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing, 2003).
3. SAM to WM and FM, 1 October 1962, DE.
4. SAM to WM and FM, 1 February 1962 and SAM to FM, 1 October 1962, DE.
5. STERN.
6. SAM to WM and FM, 2 February 1962, DE.
7. FRS Box 37, Files 1086, 1090, Tape 28.
8. SAM to FM, 6 August 1962, DE.
9. SAM to FM 26 July 1962, SAM to FM, 3 September 1962, both in DE.
10. FRS Box 37 File 1090, Tape 27.
11. FRS Box 37, File 1092 (“Late March-Early April 1960”).
12. Therese Benedek and Franz Alexander, Psychosomatic Medicine, Its Principles and Applications (New York: Norton, 1950); Franz Alexander and Thomas M. French, Psychoanalytic Therapy: Principles and Application (New York: Ronald Press, 1946). For Connie’s embrace of “corrective emotional experience” theory, see Tape 2 (4 April 1971) of Rieber donation to FRS.
13. FRS Box 37, File 1090, Tape 35.
14. SAM to WM and FM, 8 April 1962, DE.
15. SAM to WM and FM, 25 December 1962, DE.
16. SAM to FM, 25 November 1962, DE.
17. Columbia University registar’s office, verification of pre-medicine studies for Shirley Ardell Mason, 1960–61. Available from
18. Letter from Arthur Brown, Columbia University Dean of Students, to Cornelia Wilbur 23 June 1961, FRS Box 37, File 1103.
19. SAM to WM and FM, 22 February 1961; 27 November 1962, DE.
20. Ibid.
21. SAM to Wyelene Frederickson, 7 December 1964, Daniel Houlihan collection, Mankato, MN, copy in author’s possession.
22. STERN.
23. SAM to Luella Warnke Odden, n.d. but content indciates late November 1962, MC.
24. SAM to FM, postmarked 10 October 1962 and 25 November 1962, DE.
25. Ibid.
26. SAM to FM, 31 October 1962, DE.
27. SAM to FM, n.d. but by content June 1963, DE.
28. SAM to FM, 20 January 1963, DE.
29. SAM to FM, n.d. but by content March 1963, DE.
30. FM to SAM, 14 March 1963, DE.
31. SAM to FM, 12 December 1962, DE.
32. SAM to FM, 16 May 1963, DE.
33. SAM to WM and FM, 16 March 1961 and 25 January 1962; SAM to WM and FM, postmarked 12 January 1962, all in DE.
34. Donald S. Connery, The Inner Source: Exploring Hypnosis (New York: Helios Press, 2003); Herbert Spiegel, “The Grade 5 syndrome: The highly hypnotizable person,” International Journal of Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis 23:4 (1973): 303–319; Herbert Spiegel, “Memory & Hypnosis: Facts & Fictions,” unpublished paper delivered to the American Psychiatric Association, May 2002, copy in author’s possession.
35. Mikkel Borch-Jacobsen, “Sybil—The Making of a Disease: An Interview with Dr. Herbert Spiegel, New York Review of Books, 24 April 1997.
36. Dr. Herbert Spiegel, clinical notes for patient Shirley A. Mason, 20 June 1959 to 27 May 1963. Copy in author’s possession.
37. FRS Box 37, File 1091, Tape 40, dated 14 March 1960; Tape 44.
38. Transcript of Tape 18, “Hypnotic Session Feb. 8, 1960,” in FRS Box 37, File 1090; and File 1091, Tape 44.
39. FRS Box 37, File 1090, Tape 28; and File 1093.
40. Tape 2, 4 April 1971, Robert Rieber addition to FRS.
41. FRS Box 37, File 1087, n.d.
42. Author visit in 2010 to Shirley Mason’s apartment building from 1960 to 1965, at 414 E. 78th Street, New York, NY.
43. See, for example, SAM to Wyelene Frederickson, 7 December 1964, Daniel Houlihan collection, Mankato, MN, copy in author’s po
ssession; SAM to Lu-ella and Muriel Odden, in MC.
44. SAM to FM, 28 May 1963, DE; Dr. Herbert Spiegel clinical records for SAM; SAM to Dr. Cornelia Wilbur n.d., FRS Box 37; see also SAM to FM, postmarked 22 October 1962, DE.