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'I have essentially been lying': Best-selling child abuse and split personality memoir Sybil exposed as a FAKE (Daily Mail)
the rest, with pictures, at link aboveIt was a best selling 'true story' that planted the notion of repressed memory syndrome in the American consciousness.
The shocking account of Sybil, a girl with 16 separate personalities that developed as a result of horrendous childhood abuses, sold seven million copies, and even spawned a recognised syndrome, 'multiple personality disorder.'
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A new book has denounced the account as fiction, cooked up by three individuals hungry for fame and fortune: [Shirley] Mason, her therapist Cornelia (Connie) Wilbur and journalist Flora Schreiber.
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In a 1958 letter held in the archives at New York’s John Jay College, Mason confessed that she didn't 'have any multiple personalities, ' the New York Post reported.
In the letter uncovered by Nathan, Mason writes: 'I am all of them. I have essentially been lying… as trying to show you I felt I needed help.'
She added in the letter: 'Quite thrilling. Got me a lot of attention.'
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