Book picks similar to
I Am WE: My Life with Multiple Personalities by Christine Pattillo
non-fiction
did
dissociative-identity-disorder
memoir
Sybil in her own words: The Untold Story of Shirley Mason, Her Multiple Personalities and Paintings
Patrick Suraci - 2011
Based on taped conversations that Patrick Suraci had with Shirley Mason (known to the world as “Sybil”) from 1993 until her death in 1998, the book reveals the untold story of Sybil’s life.This new information about Sybil’s early years, her psychoanalysis, and the integration of her sixteen personalities has never before been disclosed to the public.One hundred reproductions of paintings from the Sybil years are presented and interpreted. Most of them have never been seen by the general public.Previously unreleased photographs of Shirley Mason at various ages are presented. Shirley’s cousin also provided Dr. Suraci with letters written by Shirley. Included is a photograph of Shirley with her painting at The National Arts Club on Gramercy Park where she won the student competition while attending Columbia University and undergoing psychoanalysis in New York in 1955.Sybil’s story is very much alive today. CBS aired a new TV movie on June 7, 2008, based on Flora Rheta Schreiber’s book, “SYBIL”, starring Jessica Lange as “Dr. Wilbur” and Tammy Blanchard as “Sybil”.Her story is so compelling because of the rarity of her complete integration of all sixteen personalities. For almost half her life she lived under the shadow of multiple personality symptoms such as black outs, fugue state and amnesia. After her cure the second part of her life was thrust into glaring light of reality of the world. Although she was known to almost everyone as the troubled Sybil of the book and movie, she was known to her colleagues as a remarkable teacher, a gifted artist, a devoted friend and a generous spirit. New details about the nature of Shirley’s recovery and treatment as written in Flora Schreiber’s book are uncovered. The reader will also discover the remarkable friendship and relationship that Shirley had with her former therapist, Dr. Cornelia Wilbur. This relationship resulted in Shirley taking care of Dr. Wilbur after she had a stroke. It only ended with Dr. Wilbur’s death.“SYBIL in her own words” explores the continuing controversy about dissociative identity disorder, its cures, its causes and its place in modern popular culture, in no small part due to the overwhelming popularity of Sybil’s enduring story. It’s a book about why these subjects - Sybil and Dissociative Identity Disorder - continue to intrigue us, and what they say about our own nature, our own place in the world, our own society.
All of Me
Kim Noble - 2011
She was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID), which causes unbearable pain.Now her body plays host to more than 20 different personalities, or 'alters'. There are women and men, adults and children; there is a scared little boy who speaks only Latin, an elective mute, a gay man and an anorexic teenager.All Of Me tells of Kim’s terrifying battles to understand her own mind, of her desperate struggle against all odds to win back her 13-year-old daughter, and of her courage in trying to make sense of her life. It is by turns shocking, inspiring, sometimes funny, and deeply moving.
Katherine, It's Time: The Incredible Journey into the World of a Multiple Personality
Kit Castle - 1989
The Man Who Couldn't Stop
David Adam - 2014
In this captivating fusion of science, history and personal memoir, writer David Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind, and how they drive millions of us towards obsessions and compulsions.David has suffered from OCD for twenty years, and The Man Who Couldn’t Stop is his unflinchingly honest attempt to understand the condition and his experiences. What might lead an Ethiopian schoolgirl to eat a wall of her house, piece by piece; or a pair of brothers to die beneath an avalanche of household junk that they had compulsively hoarded? At what point does a harmless idea, a snowflake in a clear summer sky, become a blinding blizzard of unwanted thoughts? Drawing on the latest research on the brain, as well as historical accounts of patients and their treatments, this is a book that will challenge the way you think about what is normal, and what is mental illness.Told with fierce clarity, humour and urgent lyricism, this extraordinary book is both the haunting story of a personal nightmare, and a fascinating doorway into the darkest corners of our minds.
The Magic Daughter: A Memoir of Living with Multiple Personality Disorder
Jane Phillips - 1995
The Magic Daughter is a harrowing, moving, inspiring, and ultimately triumphant account of a woman's journey toward wholeness.
The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality
Joan Frances Casey - 1991
And it wasn't the first time she had blanked out. She decided to give therapy another try. And after a few sessions, Lynn Wilson, an experienced psychiatric social worker, was shocked to discover that Joan had MPD--Multiple Personality Disorder. And as she came to know Joan's distinct selves, Lynn uncovered a nightmarish pattern of emotional and physical abuse, including rape and incest, that nearly succeeded in smothering the artistic and intellectual gifts of this amazing young woman.
First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple
Cameron West - 1999
Cameron West... First of all, for those of you who have read First Person Plural, thank you. Rikki, Kyle, and I have been very moved by the kind words many of you have sent, and for the stories some of you have shared about overcoming your own challenges.I'd like to share something with you that Leonardo da Vinci wrote, which I think of as "Leonardo's Rule." He said, "Every object yields to effort." I remind myself of that every day, and when I'm having a difficult time, Rikki reminds me that this rule applies not only to the obstacles "out there," but to the more important ones-the ones we face in our own minds. Rikki lives by Leonardo's Rule; it comes to her naturally. Even though they are Leonardo's words, it is Rikki's actions that guide me and inspire me to work toward becoming a healthier and better person.
Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder
Herschel Walker - 2008
He led the University of Georgia to victory in the Sugar Bowl on the way to an NCAA Championship and he capped a sensati
I'm Eve
Chris Costner Sizemore - 1977
She became pregnant as one woman and gave birth as another. She moved in seconds from vibrant youth to trembling old age. She changed in her husband's arms from a loving wife to a savage shrew. And, finally, she desperately tried and failed and tried again with the aid of doctors, family and loved ones to find her own true face behind the tortured masks. From Chris Costner Sizemore's own memories, her torment and hard-won triumph, comes the most remarkable true story that any woman ever lived.
Hell Minus One
Anne A. Johnson Davis - 2008
Until she ran away from home at 17, her parents and other cult members subjected her to satanic ritual abuse (SRA), a criminally inhumane and bizarre form of devil worship. In the middle of the night, Anne would be drugged and forced to endure hours of ritualistic torture as a symbolic sacrifice. The horrors she experienced, the miracles that made it possible for her to survive, and the hard choices she made as an adult to triumph over her past, are revealed in her new book, Hell Minus One: My Story of Deliverance from Satanic Ritual Abuse and My Journey to Freedom. Anne's story is different from other previously published memoirs by victims of SRA. Instead of distressing, heart-breaking accounts without collaborative or corroborative evidence, Anne's story is fully and responsibly documented. Her parents confessed their atrocities-both in writing and verbally-to clergymen, and to detectives from the Utah Attorney General's Office. Anne's suppressed memories, which erupted when she was in her mid-30s, were fully substantiated by her mother and stepfather. Hell Minus One is an unforgettable and moving story that takes the reader to the depths of human depravity, and to the heavens of human will and forgiveness. The foreword was written by Lt. Detective Matt Jacobson, who was the lead investigator with the Utah Attorney General's Office on Anne's case.
Fractured
Ruth Dee - 2009
She is 50 years old, and was for 30 years a respected teacher and educational manager. She is married with three grown children. But ever since she was four years old, Ruth has lived with other people in her head. Ruth isn't certain when the sexual abuse started but her first memories are of being assualted by her grandfather, so it was certainly happening by the time she was four. Her response to the massive trauma was to detach herself from it completely. Unconsciously, she invented an alter ego to take her place and take her pain. The technique was so successful that she continued to invent personalities to deal with anything stressful that happened to her. And a lot of awful things happened. Her father abused her too; her mother was severely mentally ill, and for years, as the personalities inside her mind multiplied, Ruth was terrifed that she too was mad. On the outside, Ruth grew up to be a successful adult, but inside, all was chaos. Eventually she could no longer cope and she suffered a breakdown. Since then she has learned how to manage her condition and these days she works with research psychologists to increase the understanding and treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder.
My Lobotomy: A Memoir
Howard Dully - 2007
Yet somehow, this normal boy became one of the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman performed his barbaric transorbital—or ice pick—lobotomy.Abandoned by his family within a year of the surgery, Howard spent his teen years in mental institutions, his twenties in jail, and his thirties in a bottle. It wasn’t until he was in his forties that Howard began to pull his life together. But even as he began to live the “normal” life he had been denied, Howard struggled with one question: Why?“October 8, 1960. I gather that Mrs. Dully is perpetually talking, admonishing, correcting, and getting worked up into a spasm, whereas her husband is impatient, explosive, rather brutal, won’t let the boy speak for himself, and calls him numbskull, dimwit, and other uncomplimentary names.”There were only three people who would know the truth: Freeman, the man who performed the procedure; Lou, his cold and demanding stepmother who brought Howard to the doctor’s attention; and his father, Rodney. Of the three, only Rodney, the man who hadn’t intervened on his son’s behalf, was still living. Time was running out. Stable and happy for the first time in decades, Howard began to search for answers. “December 3, 1960. Mr. and Mrs. Dully have apparently decided to have Howard operated on. I suggested [they] not tell Howard anything about it.”Through his research, Howard met other lobotomy patients and their families, talked with one of Freeman’s sons about his father’s controversial life’s work, and confronted Rodney about his complicity. And, in the archive where the doctor’s files are stored, he finally came face to face with the truth.Revealing what happened to a child no one—not his father, not the medical community, not the state—was willing to protect, My Lobotomy exposes a shameful chapter in the history of the treatment of mental illness. Yet, ultimately, this is a powerful and moving chronicle of the life of one man. Without reticence, Howard Dully shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent youth, his struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his redemption.
The Magic Castle: A Mother's Harrowing True Story Of Her Adoptive Son's Multiple Personalities-- And The Triumph Of Healing
Carole Smith - 1998
But nothing had prepared them for the unruly, self-destructive boy who stormed into their lives. Alone with Alex during the day, Carole was baffled by his infantile tantrums and violent, self-hating behaviors. Exasperated, she tried relating to him as the two-year-old he appeared to be, and finally, a door to Alex's mind began to open.With the help of psychiatrist Dr. Steven Kingsbury, Alex's tormented mind revealed a host of personalities, each born in a horrifying episode of Alex's past-- each carrying a memory too powerful for his conscious mind to handle. As the personalities came forth in the safety of Alex's inner, secret castle, they unleashed stories of abandonment, brainwashing, and sexual abuse by those Alex trusted the most. In the spellbinding tradition of Sybil and When Rabbit Howls, here is a fascinating true story of the human mind; of innocence shattered by inhuman cruelty; and ultimately of love's power to transform fragments into wholeness-- tragedy into triumph.
Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
Alice Jamieson - 2009
Hours of her life simply disappeared. She'd hear voices shouting at her, telling her she was useless. And the nightmares that had haunted her since early childhood, scenes of men abusing her, became more detailed . . . more real. Staring at herself in the mirror she'd catch her face changing, as if someone else was looking out through her eyes.In this work she describes her journey from a teenage girl battling anorexia and OCD, drowning the voices with alcohol, to a young woman slipping further and further into mental illness. It was only after years lost in institutions that she was correctly diagnosed with multiple personality disorder. When her alternative personalities were revealed in therapy she discovered how each one had their own memories of abuse and a full picture of her childhood finally emerged. As she learned to live with her many 'alters', she set out to confront the man who had caused her unbearable pain.Moving and ultimately inspiring, this is a gripping account of a rare condition, and the remarkable story of a courageous woman.
A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder
Robert B. Oxnam - 2005
But what the millions of people who'd seen him didn't know--what even those closest to him didn't know--was that Oxnam suffered from multiple personality disorder. It was only after an intervention staged by family and friends, in response to frequent blackouts and episodic rages assumed to be alcohol-driven, that he sought treatment with Dr. Jeffery Smith; the first of his eleven personalities emerged in a session in 1990. After years of treatment, he has integrated them into three: Robert, Wanda, and Bobby, who take turns narrating this remarkable, unprecedented chronicle.