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    A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder
    A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder
    A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder
    Audiobook9 hours

    A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder

    Written by Robert B. Oxnam

    Narrated by William Dufris

    4/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    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. Jeffery 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.

    A Fractured Mind is the powerful and moving story of one person’s struggle with this terrifying illness. The audiobook includes an epilogue by Dr. Smith in which he describes Oxnam’s case, the treatment, and the nature of multiple personality disorder. Oxnam’s courage in facing his situation and overcoming his painful past makes for a dramatic and inspiring book.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherListen & Live Audio
    Release dateJan 1, 2005
    ISBN9781593163464
    A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder

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    Reviews for A Fractured Mind

    4/5

    81 ratings10 reviews

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    • 5/5
      Unbelieveable. I had anger issue and it has been hard for me to control myself. I can't imagine having multiple personality, It must be hell.
      I hate abusers, especially to children. They are cowards. I just hope there would be many abusers get caught and pay what they deserve.
      I pray for all the victims, hope they could get help. Just remember to ask for help, don't bottle everything up inside. There are still many good people in this world that will help you.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      As someone coming to terms with a possible DID diagnosis, this is a nice read to understand that yes, other people have DID and go through similar emotional states as I do etc. One annoying thing is how frequently the author comments on how rare it is for people to have multiple personalities, which is false, but understandable because of when this book came out. DID is actually surprisingly common. (It’s a very human way to respond to trauma, creating a person who feels non-human- so they don’t have to /feel/ anything) It’s a good first look into this universe.

      One real negative is that I am in fact listening to the audio book at work and experience some quality issues- including awful screeching noises that can be triggering honestly
    • 3/5
      The story itself was good however this is a very bad recording. It broke and skipped in multiple places
    • 5/5
      "Not as your psychological biography but rather as the autobiographies of your MPD personalities."

      Halfway through I really really liked this book and out of curiosity browsed through some of the Goodreads reviews and what do I see. Such hateful commentary! I was really surprised.

      This is OXNAM's book. He's entitled to tell his story as he pleases. Name-dropping comments made me laugh. Come off it! He himself said that his ambitions to succeed were strongly linked to his disorder. Have you people no heart?

      Everyone is entitled to their opinion at the end of the day. However, no one gets to claim misdiagnosis and made-up characters especially as a nonprofessional. Especially knowing how DID developes. Shame on you.

      I audiobooked this novel and to me it was very stimulating on so many levels. If I'd skipped chapters here and there I think I would have missed important dialogue and nuances and gotten a distorted idea altogether.

      Thank you R.B. Oxnam for sharing and all the best.
    • 5/5
      Excellent book! It was a bit slow to begin with, but ended up being very interesting. The biggest issue was technical glitches. It sounded like a broken record and as if someone was fast forwarding at times. Other than that, I highly recommend this book.
    • 4/5
      A very candid and honest story. The narrator was a good interpreter for some very intense content. Useful as well in my work as a therapist to widen my professional understanding
    • 5/5
      This book was utterly fascinating. I listened to the audiobook while commuting to grad school, and at first I didn't realize that it was narrated by the author---he's a fabulous reader! He could definitely be a professional audiobook voice actor ^_^ And why not? He's done about everything else!One last thing: I'm amazed by Oxnam's courage in writing this book. Kudos to him and the other hims (and hers) within his psyche, especially since he is such a political and academic figure who had a lot to lose when his disorder came to the public.I recommend this to anyone with an interest in psychiatric disorders, and, if possible, listen to the audiobook and hear the words in the author's own voices!
    • 3/5
      I have scored this book a bit low not beause of the content or the writing of this book, just that it was different from what I was hoping to read. I was looking for more of a take from another person with DID that had recovered and their stories and tips or things to do and consider, and it's not like that.Instead of a guide it's just a tale of a person and his system dealing with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), or Multiple personality disorder (MPD) as it was formeraly labelled by psychological professionals. It was formatted as a biograophy of Robert and his alts in the system. It did raise questions and thoughts for myself and my system to consider that was eye opening. Not in a negative way or a positive one, just in a surprising way.The book was an excellent and straight forward read. I was able to read this 300 page book in one day and makes notes of things to come back to, think on and process later.I feel it's a must read for anyone with this disorder, living with someone with it or treating someone as the therapist. His psychiatrist's excerpts are mingled throughout the pages as he interacts with Robert's complete system through it's intergration and many changes. As well as writing a bit of a summary of Robert's case at the end of the book that was quite insightful and moving.
    • 3/5
      I picked up this book to add to my ever growing collection of first account stories of mental illness. The book is not difficult to read, but comes off as somewhat juvenile in content. Obviously, the author had to overcome great odds to even tell his complicated story so I would not hold it against him. Good story to add to the collection.
    • 5/5
      One of the more interesting accounts of living with multiple personalities. The beginning of the book sounds a lot like a cure for insomnia -- the narrator takes a very non-emotional, clinical tone -- but it picks up and, as I said, is quite interesting and informative.