A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder - Hardcover

Oxnam, Robert B.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1401302270 ISBN 13: 9781401302276

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing, 2005

Synopsis

In 1989, Robert B. Oxnam, the successful China scholar and president of the Asia Society, faced up to what he thought was his biggest personal challenge: alcoholism. But this dependency masked a problem far more serious: Multiple Personality Disorder.

At the peak of his professional career, after having led the Asia Society for nearly a decade, Oxnam was haunted by periodic blackouts and episodic rages. After his family and friends intervened, Oxnam received help from a psychiatrist, Dr. Jeffrey Smith, and entered a rehab center. It wasn't until 1990 during a session with Dr. Smith that the first of Oxnam's eleven alternate personalities--an angry young boy named Tommy--suddenly emerged. With Dr. Smith's help, Oxnam began the exhausting and fascinating process of uncovering his many personalities and the childhood trauma that caused his condition. This is the powerful and moving story of one person's struggle with this terrifying illness. The book includes an epilogue by Dr. Smith in which he describes Robert's case, the treatment, and the nature of multiple personality disorder. Robert's courage in facing his situation and overcoming his painful past makes for a dramatic and inspiring book.

About this title

About the Author

Robert B. Oxnam is internationally recognized as an outstanding Asia specialist and dynamic speaker. He often accompanies prominent Americans -- such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, former President George H. W. Bush and Barbara Bush -- as they seek in-depth, first hand knowledge of China. He was president of the Asia Society for over a decade, which has headquarters in New York, across the U.S., and throughout the Asia-Pacific region. He has hosted MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour specials on Asia. He lives in New York with his wife Vishakha Desai.

Reviews

As a child Oxnam worried about how the fractured Humpty-Dumpty could be fixed. This nursery rhyme later became a metaphor for his "fractured mind." Oxnam was outwardly a successful China scholar and president of the Asia Society. Inwardly, however, he struggled with self-doubt and inadequacy, blackouts and alcoholism. He sought treatment from psychiatrist Jeffrey Smith, who, during a session in 1990, found that Oxnam's problem was not alcoholism but multiple personality disorder when Tommy, an angry boy, emerged as the first of Oxnam's alternate personalities. Eventually, 11 personalities emerged, including Baby, who had suffered from severe child abuse. Through therapy, Oxnam was able to put most of the pieces of his personalities together (three remain). In an epilogue, psychiatrist Smith writes that while the disorder is serious and therapy is demanding, the results are usually good. Although the conversations the 11 personalities have with Smith are at times difficult to follow, this touching and powerful account of the "inner world" of the disorder—the power struggles and dialogues among the fractured parts of a person's mind—provides valuable insight into a courageous man's struggle.
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*Starred Review* Sybil, of course, and a handful of others have achieved a measure of public recognition as a result of books chronicling their lives with MPD--multiple personality disorder, known in clinical circles as DID, dissociative identity disorder. Unlike the others, Asia specialist and public speaker Oxnam achieved public distinction, to say nothing of an impressive list of professional accomplishments, despite the at-times crippling burden of MPD, manifested by no fewer than 10 additional, distinct personalities, or "alters," of himself. Sometimes he was in charge; sometimes not. He was often relegated to the role of hapless passenger as one or another alter drove all of them down a path of profligate eating and drinking, temper tantrums, or adultery. Oxnam doesn't shirk responsibility, but with a father who tolerated nothing short of scholastic, indeed overall, perfection and a drama-queen mother, it seems inevitable that Oxnam developed some sort of mental instability. But add gross physical and sexual abuse at the hands of trusted family members into the mixture of childhood experiences, and there is little remarkable in the fact that this child's mind broke into the walled divisions within what the adult Oxnam calls the Castle, home to his inner selves. A remarkable life that, for all its successes, took great personal courage to survive and to publicly record. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1401302270
• ISBN 13: 9781401302276
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 304