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

Oxnam, Robert B.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1401308686 ISBN 13: 9781401308681

Publisher: Hachette Books, 2006

Synopsis

The harrowing, insightful, and courageous account of a prominent man's struggle with multiple personalities

Robert Oxnam was a high-profile, successful man: A renowned scholar and president of the Asia Society, he appeared frequently on television and traveled the world as a sought-after expert. But what the millions of people who'd seen him didn't know--what even those closest to him didn't know--was that Oxnam suffered from multiple personality disorder. It was only after an intervention staged by family and friends, in response to frequent blackouts and episodic rages assumed to be alcohol-driven, that he sought treatment with Dr. Jeffery Smith; the first of his eleven personalities emerged in a session in 1990. After years of treatment, he has integrated them into three: Robert, Wanda, and Bobby, who take turns narrating this remarkable, unprecedented chronicle.

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, firsthand knowledge of China. For more than a decade he was president of the Asia Society, which has headquarters in New York, across the United States, 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.

From Booklist:

*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

About this edition

• Publisher: Hachette Books
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1401308686
• ISBN 13: 9781401308681
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 304