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Robert Oxnam has suffered with multiple personality disorder for much of his adult life. Now his three personalities -- he once had 11 -- have written a strange and fascinating book.

By Laura Miller

Nov 2, 2005 | In the 1980s, Robert B. Oxnam developed some serious problems. He was an alcoholic and prone to sudden, frightening rages, both of which had his marriage on the rocks. He was also bulimic, and after separating from his wife, he spent two or three nights per week in a lonely "addiction ritual" that "required several specific ingredients -- two packs of cigarettes, Polish sausage, a gallon of ice cream, a two-pound bag of peanuts, a bottle of scotch and a pornographic movie on the VCR." Most disturbing of all, he suffered from strange blackouts, often at moments when a canceled appointment left him with unexpected free time. On a trip to Taiwan, he had "zero memory of what I did for almost three days." When he came to, he discovered what appeared to be cigarette burns on his arms.

After six months of treatment, the psychiatrist Oxnam consulted diagnosed him with multiple personality disorder, or MPD, a condition that has since been renamed dissociative identity disorder, or DID. (Oxnam and his doctor, Jeffery Smith, still call it MPD, "out of habit.") Oxnam's new memoir, "A Fractured Mind: My Life With Multiple Personality Disorder," describes his years of coping with the illness, which is not yet entirely cured.

In fact, Oxnam's various personalities cheerfully take turns narrating the book, and give it one of the most peculiar introductions among modern memoirs. A sample: "We have whittled it down to three remaining personalities through a process of 'integration.' The three who remain -- Robert, Bobby, and Wanda -- made a joint decision to proceed with this book, and all three of us agreed to very clear rules about how it would be written  How can readers possibly believe this story? For a while we all fretted about this issue. We vowed to tell the story as accurately as we could, letting each personality speak for him or herself."

Remarkable as this corporate voice may be, what most sets "A Fractured Mind" apart from the small but sensational genre of MPD accounts is Oxnam him- er ... themself. The vast majority of those diagnosed with MPD are women, often lackluster and passive individuals, presenting with a host of chronic and nonspecific emotional and physical ailments. Oxnam, despite his disturbed behavior, was nothing if not high-functioning. He was president of the prestigious Asia Society for over a decade, made frequent appearances on national television as a China expert, and escorted such luminaries as the first President Bush, Bill Gates and Warren Buffet on informational tours of China. One of his "alters" (as the alternate personalities are called) even made him famous in an entirely different context -- as "Bottleman" in Central Park's informal rollerblading scene, renowned for his ability to skate while balancing as many as three bottles on his head.

In short, as a public figure perfectly capable of commanding attention in other ways, Oxnam makes an ideal advocate for MPD/DID sufferers -- something those who believe in the disorder sorely need. As even the author and Smith (who contributes an epilogue) feel obliged to acknowledge, the diagnosis may be listed in the DSM-IV, but it's controversial. For every Dr. Smith there is another putative authority who insists that MPD/DID is "iatrogenic" -- that is, an otherwise nonexistent condition induced by the suggestive powers of therapists. Others describe it even more harshly as a murky combination of fake and fantasy, nurtured by patients who are "in love" with the illness.

There were reported cases of MPD before the 1950s, but very, very few of them -- one estimate finds only about 100 in the first half of the 20th century. Bestselling books like "The Three Faces of Eve" (1954) and "Sybil" (1973) -- both of which were made into popular movies -- led to a boom in diagnoses, tens of thousands in the years after "Sybil" appeared. This, naturally, lends credence to the argument that the disorder can be "learned" by exposure to books and films that show how people with MPD supposedly behave. Then, in the 1980s, MPD became entangled in what can only be called a nationwide therapeutic craze following a boom in public discussion of the prevalence of child sexual abuse.

Without a doubt, incest and the sexual abuse of children are more widespread than was acknowledged before the 1970s, though how common it may be still isn't clear. In the second half of the century, grown women and men who had been tormented for years by conscious, intrusive memories of such abuse gathered the courage to go public with their stories in memoirs and media appearances. Some therapists became convinced that repressed memories of similar abuse lay at the root of the chronic problems plaguing other patients. They developed a battery of techniques -- persistent questioning, hypnotism, even drugs -- to draw forth those "memories."

The recovered-memory movement boomed in the 1980s. Books like "The Courage to Heal" insisted that incest was ubiquitous, and a sensational, credulous media spread the word. The idea that psychopathology is rooted in unconscious memories of childhood events had solid precedence, after all: It is enshrined in the work of psychiatry's founder, Sigmund Freud. Eventually, though, these "recovered" memories evolved into bizarre, epic sagas involving networks of adult fiends: The result was the satanic ritual abuse frenzy that has reminded so many of the witch hunts in 17th century Salem, Mass.

Next Page: Some multiples claim to have hundreds of alters; Oxnam had 11

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