bookshelf

A FRACTURED MIND

Name: A FRACTURED MIND
Author: Robert B. Oxnam
ISBN: 1-4013-0227-0

MY LIFE WITH MULTIPLE PERSONALITY DISORDER

by Robert B. Oxnam ‧ RELEASE DATE: Oct. 1, 2005

While the fanciful imagery employed by Oxnam may give his story greater impact, it will not authenticate it for skeptics who...

bookshelf

Memoir may not quite be the word to describe this account, which is presented as the work of several personalities, each speaking for him or herself.

The principal narrator, Robert, is the dominant personality, but this was not always so, according to Oxnam, an Asia specialist and business consultant who asserts that for some 30 years, another personality, Bob, was dominant. Memory blackouts, bizarre behaviors and alcoholism led him in 1989 to Dr. Jeffrey Smith, a psychiatrist with some experience with multiple personalities. Oxnam began twice-a-week sessions with the psychiatrist, who in mid-1990 told him that he had multiple personality disorder (MPD, now renamed dissociative identity disorder, or DID) after a session in which an alternate personality, Tommy, an angry adolescent boy, emerged. As their sessions continued, other so-called alters—Young Bob, Robbey, Robert, Witch, Eyes, Lawrence, the Librarian, Baby and Wanda—all trapped inside separate parts of a dark castle, appeared. Labels identify which section of the narrative comes from which voice. Although Oxnam’s childhood memories were initially vague, under therapy he recovered memories of early, ugly abuse. In MPD theory, dissociation is a method of coping with the trauma of such abuse. Through long therapy, Oxnam gradually freed the alters from the castle and achieved partial integration of the personalities. By the end, three of the alters—Bobby, Wanda and Robert—remain separate, but have worked out a “collaborative multiplicity,” with Bobby providing his youthful energy, Wanda her internal incisiveness and outer perceptiveness and Robert his drive. Oxnam weaves into this psychological narrative stories of trials and triumphs from his professional life, which include dealings with Bill Gates, Warren Buffet and the first President Bush, and scenes from his marriage to a remarkably understanding woman.

While the fanciful imagery employed by Oxnam may give his story greater impact, it will not authenticate it for skeptics who question either the existence of MPD as a genuine mental disorder or the legitimacy of recovered memories.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2005

ISBN: 1-4013-0227-0

Page Count: 304

Publisher: Hyperion

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2005

Categories:

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | PSYCHOLOGY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

bookshelf

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPYNESS

FROM MEAN STREETS TO WALL STREET

by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006

Well-told and admonitory.

bookshelf

Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.

Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.

Well-told and admonitory.

Pub Date: June 1, 2006

ISBN: 0-06-074486-3

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006

Categories:

GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | BUSINESS

bookshelf

INTO THE WILD

by Jon Krakauer ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1996

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor...

bookshelf

The excruciating story of a young man on a quest for knowledge and experience, a search that eventually cooked his goose, told with the flair of a seasoned investigative reporter by Outside magazine contributing editor Krakauer (Eiger Dreams, 1990).

Chris McCandless loved the road, the unadorned life, the Tolstoyan call to asceticism. After graduating college, he took off on another of his long destinationless journeys, this time cutting all contact with his family and changing his name to Alex Supertramp. He was a gent of strong opinions, and he shared them with those he met: "You must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life''; "be nomadic.'' Ultimately, in 1992, his terms got him into mortal trouble when he ran up against something—the Alaskan wild—that didn't give a hoot about Supertramp's worldview; his decomposed corpse was found 16 weeks after he entered the bush. Many people felt McCandless was just a hubris-laden jerk with a death wish (he had discarded his map before going into the wild and brought no food but a bag of rice). Krakauer thought not. Admitting an interest that bordered on obsession, he dug deep into McCandless's life. He found a willful, reckless, moody boyhood; an ugly little secret that sundered the relationship between father and son; a moral absolutism that agitated the young man's soul and drove him to extremes; but he was no more a nutcase than other pilgrims. Writing in supple, electric prose, Krakauer tries to make sense of McCandless (while scrupulously avoiding off-the-rack psychoanalysis): his risky behavior and the rites associated with it, his asceticism, his love of wide open spaces, the flights of his soul.

A wonderful page-turner written with humility, immediacy, and great style. Nothing came cheap and easy to McCandless, nor will it to readers of Krakauer's narrative. (4 maps) (First printing of 35,000; author tour)