Like countless other readers in 1973 I was fascinated and shocked by SYBIL, the account of a woman with sixteen personalities by Flora Rheta Schreiber that became an enormous bestseller and, several years later, an award-winning TV movie with an astonishing performance by Sally Field. There were rumors over the years that, as disturbing as the incidents of child- and sexual-abuse detailed in the book were, still more had been omitted from the published book.

The truth is actually much more shocking: SYBIL was actually a story of symbiotic exploitation between a doctor (Cornelia Wilbur) and her patient (Shirley Mason), and their willing exploitation by a third party (writer Schreiber) - all three cooperated together to present an astonishing deception to the medical world in particular and the public in general. Today, Dr. Wilbur's flagrant disregard of doctor/patient ethics would have her banned from practicing (and 'practice' seems to be exactly what she did on Shirley Mason).

A collaboration between two masterful glory-deeking self-promoters (Wilbur and Schreiber) ultimately became a battle of wills as each appropriated Shirley Mason's life for their own purposes.