The psychoanalyst who treated Sybil, the woman with 16 personalities, studied at UK
Editor’s Note: As Lexington celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding, the Herald-Leader and kentucky.com each day throughout 2025 will share interesting facts about our hometown. Compiled by Liz Carey, all are notable moments in the city’s history - some funny, some sad, others heartbreaking or celebratory, and some just downright strange.
Jan. 23, 1923: Shirley Ardell Mason is born.
Mason would later be known as the inspiration for the 1976 TV movie “Sybil.” Born in Minnesota, Mason suffered periods of blackouts and breakdowns for years. In her 20s, Mason met Dr. Cornelia B. Wilbur, a Freudian psychoanalyst who treated her for dissociative identity disorder, then known as multiple personality disorder.
When Wilbur moved to Lexington to teach at the University of Kentucky, Mason followed her, moving into a house near Wilbur’s.
Wilbur treated Mason for more than a decade and eventually wrote a book about their sessions and Mason’s 16 different personalities in 1973 - Sybil - The True Story of a Woman Possessed by 16 Separate Personalities.
Wilbur and her co-author alleged that Mason developed multiple personalities to deal with the severe abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother, who Wilbur said was schizophrenic. The book became a highly-acclaimed TV movie starring Sally Fields and Joanne Woodward in 1976 and gave rise to the “repressed memory” industry.
When Wilbur was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, Mason, who had never married or had children, cared for Wilbur until her death in 1992.
Since then, Wilbur’s diagnosis and treatment of Mason have been criticized, with some claiming Wilbur manipulated Mason into behaving as though she had multiple personalities when she didn’t.
Others claimed Mason behaved the way she did to get attention and continued treatment from Wilbur. Psychiatrist Herbert Spiegel claimed he did not see the multiple personalities when he treated Mason during Wilbur’s absence on vacation and suggested Wilbur had generated the diagnosis for financial gain.
Mason stayed in Lexington until her own death in 1998 at 75. Her home later was found to have hidden in it several pieces of art, some signed by Mason, others unsigned and believed to have been drawn by her other personalities.
This story was originally published January 25, 2025 at 2:42 PM.
