Broken Child - Softcover

Camerson, Marcia

4.15

529 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1575660008 ISBN 13: 9781575660004

Publisher: Kensington Pub Corp, 1996

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Follows the recovery story of Marcia Cameron, whose childhood of abuse, depravity, and neglect led to the development of multiple and destructive personalities before she sought help. Reprint.

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From Publishers Weekly:

This account of multiple personality disorder and child abuse is intensely moving, exhausting and powerful. When the author was three, her German mother, Gisela, an ardent Nazi who moved to Southern California in 1936, began to torture her?knifing and burning Marcia's flesh, mutilating her genitals and locking her in a closet for hours while Marcia's father, Frank, a German-Jewish immigrant lawyer, was at work. Marcia Cameron (a pseudonym) split into multiple selves?promiscuous, reckless Emily; thumb-sucking Sunshine, an eternal six-year-old; Sophie, a loving Jewish mother; Camille, a blind girl; condescending, four-times-baptized Muriel; and Joey, an angry, food-obsessed Jewish boy. When Marcia, at 13, told her father about Gisela's abuse, he left his wife, taking Marcia and her two brothers with him. A year later, Frank died and Marcia returned to her mother. At 18, spinal meningitis and a coma led to speech and motor impairment, and Marcia was raped several times while hospitalized. Although she eventually married and had a son and daughter, her life was punctuated by dissociative episodes, suicide attempts, "Emily's" affairs and a succession of inept psychotherapists. Through six years with San Francisco psychiatrist Steinman, she integrated many of her personalities and continues to heal.
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From Booklist:

It is painfully difficult to bear witness to the countless incidents of physical, sexual, and psychological abuse suffered by Cameron. And after contemplating the possible consequences of a child suffering such trauma, it comes as no surprise that Cameron fractured into multiple personalities. Rendered in appalling detail is a litany of crimes committed against her in childhood by her mother; but to read Cameron's book is to ultimately accompany her on a lifelong journey toward healing. Even after locating a psychiatrist competent enough to treat her problems and help her move toward a realm of mental health, she has had an exhausting and interminable struggle. Cameron's story is heartbreaking and horrifying in its intensity. Alice Joyce

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