Patrick Suraci, Ph.D

Born May 31, 1936 in Rochester, New York, Patrick Suraci received his Bachelor of Arts Degree from Assumption College, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the New School for Social Research, New York in 1981.

His latest work, Sybil In Her Own Words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings is being launched at Book Expo America at the Jacob Javitz Center in New York City on May 24, 2011. His first non-fiction book, Male Sexual Armor: Erotic Fantasies and Sexual Realities of the Cop on the Beat and the Man in the Street in 1992. In 2005, his play Bless Me Father was produced at the National Arts Club in New York City. From his former career as an actor, he is still a member of the Actors Equity Association.

Dr. Suraci was a Staff Psychologist for the New York Police Department and is now in private practice in Manhattan. He has taught at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Baruch College at the City University of New York.

When I did research for my doctorate, I learned that I had to produce proof for every statement of fact made in my conclusion. As a reader, when I pick up a book of non-fiction, I expect that the author has documents or proof of some nature to verify each fact stated in the book. I take for granted that a well-known publisher, especially its legal division, would have vetted everything in the book. The author can also give her opinions and beliefs so long as they are stated as such and not confused with hard evidence and facts.

This is not the case with a new book “Sybil Exposed” by Debbie Nathan. The untrue statements begin at the very beginning – the dust jacket of the book. On the inside back flap it states: “The Sybil archive became available to the public only recently, and Nathan is the first person to have examined all of it and to provide proof that the story was an elaborate fraud…”

The following letter is in the Special Collections Library at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan (click on images to view them larger):

Here is a typical example of how Ms. Nathan did her research:

On page 71 Nathan writes: “Completely inexperienced with men, she had little idea of how to take Gene’s (O’Neill) measure. He noticed her ignorance and didn’t like it. Too‘girlish’ he called Flora, particularly when it came to sex. In a sheaf of notes she wrote to herself, she described feeling pain at having his finger inside her, let alone his penis. ‘Be an animal,’ Gene would urge her, and he blamed her reticence on the fact that she had a profession. ‘You bring Adelphi College into the bedroom. It is not that career women don’t want to go to bed – it is that they don’t know how,’ he scolded Flora.”

To prove this Nathan cites in: “Notes: Chapter 6, No.11, FRS Box 34, File 1051”

This is the complete document. Nathan quotes Schreiber's actual words about Eugene O’Neill, Jr.: “Be an animal", "you bring Adelphi College into the bedroom", "it is not that career women don’t want to go to bed – it is that they don’t know how" You can see that at no time does Schreiber write about O’Neill’s “finger” or “penis.”