Fractured Mind, A: My Life with Multiple Personality ... (ISBN 1401302270)

Loved it.:
I really enjoyed this book, though it took awhile to get through. At times it got a bit slow, and I got distracted by other books. But definitely worth the time.

Just okay:
This book was just way too dull for me. I finished it because I thought it may get better but it really didn't. The book was an easy and quick read and the personalities were easy to keep up with, but it really isn't worth your time! If you are interested in MPD or mental illness and like memoirs, read First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple - which is a wonderful book!

If I want and educational MPD book I'll buy a textbook:
I agree with the reviewer's statement "Books on multiple personality disorder are not, as a rule, very well written and A Fractured Mind is no exception to this." I don't know about it being a rule but I found it to be true in this case. He states that his intent is for this to be educational about MPD and thus focuses on his internal journey rather than the more personal details about his life. I bought this as an audio book so was unable to learn this until I started listening. Honestly I wish the man the best but I find his approach bit presumptuous. Why don't you just share your story and let us learn about it as you go along? Also his decision to not share more about who the abusers were is a bit annoying. He states explicitly it was not his parents or his father's side of the family and given the age when it occurred most likely it was the maternal grandparents or people present during the time he and his mother lived with the grandparents while his father fought in WWII. He says it keeps him from staying in a negative mindset and that this is per the advice of his psychiatrist. It is a fine line to not wallow in such things but I found his approach left the reader hanging.

Great D.I.D. book:
If you like books on Dissociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personality Disorder) such as Sybil, then this book is for you. Great buy.

Eleven Alternate Worlds with a Single Past:
Never before had I immersed myself in the thoughts and emotions of a D.I.D patient. While this book is considered non-fiction, there were times when I felt I was entering an imaginary world inhabited by disparaging, disparate, and capricious individuals. Nevertheless, my mind always managed to find its way back to reality when the narrator spoke of his emotions, ambitions, and disappointments. One must understand that this book does not attempt to provide a thorough medical explanation of the causes, cures, and tribulations of D.I.D. On the contrary, the author wants to provide the reader with a glimpse of what it means to have D.I.D., as well as to how this disease can camouflage itself in the individual to the extent that neither s/he nor a mental care provider can detect its presence. Oxnam's assimilation of the idea that he has D.I.D is a process which he shares with the reader from the time he is diagnosed until the end of the book. This form of intimacy allows the reader to empathize with Oxnam, and mesmerizes the reader to the extent that s/he is unable to put the book down. The climax of the book, in my opinion, is the probing into Oxnam's psycho-library archives to find the cause of his disease. I cannot imagine how Oxnam reacted when learning about his past, but I was shocked, angry, pensive, sad, and at the brink of crying. By this point I had become to attached to Oxnam's past that Oxnam's life had virtually become my own. Oxnam's ability to convey ideas in such a way that reaches into the reader's subjectivity and arouses intimate emotions within him/her is, for lack of a better term, admirable. I strongly recommend this book to anybody. This book is not targeted for a specialized audience (i.e., students, professionals, teenagers, etc.), and as such anyone can benefit from reading about Robert B. Oxnam's life.