A Fractured Mind by Robert B. Oxnam

A Fractured Mind by Robert B. Oxnam has been on my "to-be-read" shelf for at least four years! Some of these books have become buried and forgotten because I have so doggone many books and it's a real shame. This was an excellent book!

I've always been fascinated with books about multiple personality disorder, especially once I learned it's brought on by severe trauma in childhood. I read Sybil and When Rabbit Howls. This is the first time I've read about this disorder in a man. I know that it happens, it's just that there weren't many books about it.

I hadn't heard of Robert B. Oxnam before. Apparently he is a renown scholar and used to be the president of the Asia Society. It's amazing that he was able to carry himself in a way that no one suspected he had eleven different personalities. How could this have happened to him? He didn't seem to have experienced any trauma in his life and yet he struggled with alcoholism and depression. It took a very skilled and dedicated psychiatrist to help get to the root of it all.

One unique thing about the book is that the personalities speak. Some voice more strongly and more often than others and I found that fascinating. It was also fascinating to get such an up-close-and-personal look at how the personalities communicated with each other.

I won't say what happened to Oxnam and whether or not the personalities became integrated. Anyone who's interested won't be sorry to read the book and find out.

A Fractured Mind falls into these challenges: