Astraea's Bookstore
Bestsellers
 |
 |
 |
 |
Note: Just because a book appears in this list does not mean we recommend it. Most of them present multiplicity strictly in terms of multiple personality disorder, dissociative identity disorder, or MPD/DID -- which is not our view.
The problem with most if not all books on MPD/DID is that if you've read one, you've read them all. In each case you've got a bewildered frontrunner, a "fascinating cast of characters", a well-meaning though often just as bewildered therapist, hundreds of pages of grueling depictions of child sex and violence (often bordering on "pornography of the victim"), and a bittersweet, Hallmark Classics ending of integration -- with few exceptions.
If you would like to tell us something about any of these books, click here to use our mailform. You can be anonymous, and you don't have to use HTML. Just write and tell us what you think.
The books are listed alphabetically by author. To find a title you're interested in, do a Control-F and type in your title.
How To Get These Books
|
|
A surprising number of the books in this list, especially more recent ones, can be found there: check it out! Accompanying each book is a link which will take you (if in print) to amazon.com's reference page for that particular book. You can buy it right then and there. (Amazon now sells used copies of out-of- print books. Also, check out their Zshops.) If all else fails, try Advanced Book Exchange. |
|
Title: Creating Hysteria Author: Joan Acocella Publisher: Jossey-Bass 1999 ISBN:: 0787947946 Joan Acocella has expanded the controversial article she originally wrote for The New Yorker in 1997. It's an excellent book, makes excellent sense, is a powerful expose of unethical practices in the mental health industry, and draws entirely the wrong conclusions. Even so, we recommend that everyone who is in therapy (multiple or not) read this book. Read it if you have ever had questions about the way your doctor tries to dredge up questionable traumatic memories -- or if you feel like you're being pressed to accept a certain view of yourself, the people in your multiple system (if any) and your childhood that doesn't fit your truth. Many therapists did, and some apparently still do, use the tactics described in this book. Acocella's theory of multiplicity as nonexistent save as a "cultural idiom of distress" may be completely wrong, but she is dead-on accurate about what goes on in the mental health industry.
Click here to read the first chapter
|
 |
Title: Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality
Author: Allen, J.G. and W.H. Smith
Publisher: Northvale, NJ; Aronson, 1995
|
Title: Minds in Many Pieces Author: Ralph Allison Publisher: CIE, new edition, 1999 ISBN: 0966894901 This is about Allison's first discovery of and work with multiple clients, his observations and clients' description of their experiences. Allison applied the term inner self-helper -- originally a devotional term used by people who felt Christ's personal guidance -- to certain persons in multiple systems who fit the profile of an objective, portentous 'guide' who was not a split-off part, but came (or was 'sent') from outside. |
 |
Title: Angel Child: The Story of Zoe Parry
Author: Jacqueline Austin with Zoe Parry
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1996
ISBN: 0671709178
True story of Zoe Parry, marketed as a novel for some reason. Zoe Parry appeared on Geraldo back in '88, after her arrest for kidnapping a child she was supposed to be babysitting. Another story of a multiple who split through abuse, we list it because you don't often hear about Zoe Parry.
Click here to buy Angel Child through
amazon.com
Search for used
copies on Advanced Book Exchange
Title: Oneselves
Author: Louis Baldwin
Publisher: Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1984
ISBN: 0-89950-124-9
Click here to buy Oneselves through amazon.com
|
Title: Four and Twenty Blackbirds: Personae Theory and the Understanding of our Multiple Selves Author: Peter A. Baldwin, Ph.D. Publisher: Norton ISBN:1883647061
|
 |
Ericksonian hypnotherapist Baldwin believes everyone has different conscious and nonconscious selves. Don't know how useful this is.
Title: Unity and multiplicity : multilevel consciousness of self in
hypnosis, psychiatric disorder, and mental health
Author: Beahrs, John O.
Publisher:New York : Brunner/Mazel, c1982.
ISBN: 0-87630-283-5
Click here to buy Unity and Multiplicity through amazon.com
Title: Katherine, It's Time
Author: Stephen Bechtel with Kit Castle
Publisher: Harper & Row, 1989
ISBN:006015926X
Suspicious tendency on the part of Bechtel to invent characters and Shirley MacLaine-like incidents, and a depressing integration=death ending. I wouldn't call this a courageous healing story as it is anything but healing. We think it's one of the most unpleasant books ever written about this subject. See what you think of it.
Click here to buy Katherine, It's Time through amazon.com
Title: Hidden Selves
Author: Edited by Moira Walker and Jenifer Black
Publisher: Open University Press 1999
ISBN: 0335202004
Same stuff..."This book is based upon the story of a survivor of abuse who tells of her experiences with multiple personality and its impact on her life." Note "based on"... so it probably takes off at right angles from what really happened. Everybody's trying to be William Peter Blatty.
Click here to buy Hidden Selves through amazon.com
Title: Multiple Personality, Allied Disorders, and Hypnosis
Author: Eugene L. Bliss
Publisher: Oxford University Press, 1986
ISBN: 0195036581
Click here to buy Multiple Personality, Allied Disorders, and Hypnosis now through amazon.com
Title: Assessment and Treatment of Multiple Personality and
Dissociative Disorders.
Author: J.P. Bloch
Publisher: Sarasota: Professional Resource Press, 1991
Title: Prism: Andrea's World
Author: J. and E. Bliss
Publisher: New York: Stein & Day, 1985
A fairly standard courageous healing story. Click here to buy Prism: Andrea's World through amazon.com
Title: Multiple Personality Disorders in the Netherlands:
A Study on Reliability and Vaildity of the Diagnosis
Author: Suzette Boon and Nel Draijer
Publisher: Taylor and Francis
ISBN: 90-265-1361-5
order Multiple Personality in the Netherlands now through amazon.com
Title: First Person Plural: Multiple Personality and the
Philosophy of Mind
Author: Stephen E. Braude
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 0-415-93591-0
Wastes no time debating whether or not multiplicity is real. He knows it is; all he wants is to talk about what it implies as far as why we think there should only be one person, etc. Highly recommended. Even our Anthony found himself a little out of his depth at times! :)
Click here to buy First Person Plural now through amazon.com
Title: The Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder
(Clinical Insights Monograph)
Author: Edited by Bennett G. Braun M.D.
Publisher: Rittenhouse Book Dist (American Psychiatric Press Inc)
1986
ISBN: 0-88048-096-3
Click here to buy Treatment of Multiple Personality now through amazon.com
|
Title: The Family Inside: Working With The Multiple Author: Doris Bryant, Judy Kessler and Linda Shirar Publisher: Norton ISBN: 0-393-70142-5
|
 |
Click here to buy The Family Inside now through amazon.com
Title: Beyond Integration
Author: Doris Bryant and Judy Kessler
Publisher: Norton
ISBN: 0393702065
Every once in a while someone asks us what we know about integration. Answer: not much! However, one thing we do know is that there are not enough books on what happens after integration.. Most of the books, including the ones on this list, don't talk much about that, but seem to regard integration as the happy end of the story, the ultimate healing.
In practical life, according to the bits we've heard from therapists willing to talk about it, integration is actually the middle step in a complex process of re-education and re-training designed to change the multiple's thinking processes and conditioned reflexes. The objective, of course, is to learn how to respond to daily life with a single, consistent perspective, instead of each person having his or her own unique response.
This book talks about that process and how it works from both the clinician's and the client's point of view. While we haven't read it, we used to know Judy Kessler on line and were impressed with her calm, well-balanced writing. So this is probably a good book if you are thinking about integration, for learning more about not just the integration process, but what it is like to live everyday as one person.
Click here to buy Beyond Integration through amazon.com
Title: Multiple Personality and Dissociation: Understanding Incest,
Abuse, and MPD
Author: David L. Calof and Mary Leloo
Publisher: Hazelden Foundation
ISBN: 0-942421-51-5
The late Cat W. of Geode@chatlink.com gives us this review: "[Hazelden is] not a christian publicist, a 12 step publicist, big, big difference. He defines a few things simply not covered in your other texts and very well worth reading. No caveat necessary. Read it."
Click here to buy Multiple Personality and Dissociation through amazon.com
|
Title: They Say You're Crazy: How the World's Most Powerful Psychiatrists Decide Who's Normal Author: Paula J. Caplan Publisher: Perseus, 1995 ISBN: 0201407582 Amazon.Com Sez: In a disturbing insider's look at how the mental health establishment decides who is normal and who is "sick," [Caplan] charges that the DSM board's decision-making process, dominated by a handful of conservative white male psychiatrists, is arbitrary, condescending, profit-driven and riddled with personal biases and political consideration. Facile labeling of personality problems, she shows, can cause personal suffering as well as material harm because DSM categories figure prominently in who wins child custody, who gets hospitalized against their will and whose psychotherapy is covered by insurance. |
|
|
Title: The Flock: the Autobiography of a Multiple Personality Author: Joan Frances Casey Publisher: Fawcett, 1992 ISBN: 0449907325 A fairly good popular account of a well-functioning household, including but not limited to the narrative of her courageous healing. |
|
|
Title: When Rabbit Howls Author: The Troops for Truddi Chase Publisher: Dutton, 1987. Still in print from Berkeley, Jove Books (paperback), 1990. ISBN: 0515103292 Parallel storylines might be confusing at first, but are an excellent example of the way a multiple's minds can run on several tracks at once. This was the first book on multiplicity to be written by a multiple, not by a therapist or a professional author -- although there seems to have been considerable input from Dr. Robert Phillips, the Troops' doctor. Upside: She gives extremely vivid, clear descriptions of her childhood and what it was really like not only to be sexually abused, but to be psychologically abused and manipulated by both parents. She was the first to describe co-running and co-presence, [although she never uses those words], in which more than one person can be active in the body at the same time. She rejects the idea that all multiples have to integrate. She demonstrates that a multiple -- even if a survivor of even the most violent abuse -- can be self-employed and successful in the business world. Her writing conveys a deep natural sensuality, a determination to live life to the fullest, and clear pictures of the people in her system. Downside: Due to her own experience, she repeatedly asserts that all multiples have extreme psychic ability. This sounds like Ralph Allison -- his statements in D. Scott Rogo's book Infinite Boundary ("I've never met a multiple who wasn't highly psychic") were made about the same time When Rabbit Howls was being written. We believe Truddi&, or their therapist, may have consulted Allison. In any case, the reader comes away with the impression that Truddi& and Dr. Phillips believe multiplicity has only one cause: when superintelligent children with paranormal powers are subjected to brutal sexual violence, they fragment their brains and thus different selves are born. This may not have been their original intention. Looking at what ophelia@asarian.org (below) says, it may be that Truddi&'s actual story is more complex and realistic than what we read in When Rabbit Howls, but that it's been sensationalised. A different view from ophelia@asarian.org [circa 1996]: "truly a hideous book. fractured tales and nonsensical editing done to a woman who is being exploited by a therp. her therp, btw, has become rich off truddi, and is now her 'manager', promoting tv and personal appearances for $. truddi, on the other hand, continues to live in pain." [If someone could provide us with more details regarding what Ophelia said, we would very much appreciate it! "When Rabbit Howls", with its descriptions of co-running and co-presence and a subjective world, told our frontrunners we were really multiple and not crazy or making up our own experiences, so if there's a scandal here, we want solid evidence of it -- not to mention that we'd like to see Truddi& get real help if they haven't been. - Ed.] Click here for a review of When Rabbit Howls Click here to buy When Rabbit Howls now through amazon.com. Look through the used books being sold -- you may be able to find the nice hardcover edition. Read the New York Times review of When Rabbit Howls, July 6, 1987. Visit the home page of Dr. Robert A. Phillips, Truddi's Therapist And leave him some email or sign his guestbook while you're at it. |
|
Title: Cross a Dark Bridge
Author: Deborah Churchman
Publisher: Ariadne
ISBN: 091805608X
A romance novel where one of the characters is multiple.
Click here to buy Cross a Dark Bridge through amazon.com
Title: All Around the Town
Author: Mary Higgins Clark
Publisher: Simon & Schuster, 1992
Tamsin of Amorpha says:
"The main character was kidnapped as a child by a crazy couple who molested
her and killed chickens to scare her; now twenty years later she has MPD.
Whee. Yawn. The mystery here is that someone kills their abuser and of
course everyone immediately suspects them of doing it, so their therapist
has to find out if they did or didn't. (They didn't.) And yeah, it was
pretty down the track, but not too over-the-top stereotypical. You've got
the scared host who doesn't know what's going on, the one who tries to
seduce the therapist, the token male, etc..."
Click here to buy All Around the Town now
through amazon.com
Click here to buy All Around the Town now in
abridged form on audio cassette through amazon.com
Title: Shatter
Author: Nancy Hughes Clark
One of the many supposedly factual books on this subject that rode on the success of Sibyl. Stereotypical depiction of dysfunctional MPD, ending in the usual integration/happy ending/courageous healing. What disturbed us about this story was that the very fact of her multiplicity was considered to be what was wrong with her; it wasn't a question of violent abuse, she hadn't had any! But we can't have people running around with 16th century witches in our heads, can we?
Click here to buy Shatter through amazon.com
Title: More Than One: An Inside Look at Multiple Personality Disorder
Author: Terri Clark
Publisher: Nashville: Thomas Nelson 1993
ISBN: 0-8407-9140-2
Thomas Nelson is a Christian Right Publisher. It's likely that any book on MP which is published by Thomas Nelson will have a Christian Right perspective.
Click here to buy More Than One through amazon.com
Author: Cleckley, Hervey M. and Corbett Thigpen
In 2007, this piece of felonious nonsense is still being referred to as the latest thinking on multiplicity. Two supposedly outstanding psychologists called it "The most delightful treatise of psychopathological literature of the mid-twentieth century." Thigpen embellished and fictionized and outright lied throughout this book, hoping to land a lucrative movie deal (he got it) and never guessing that the woman he took advantage of would someday haul Twentieth-Century Fox into court over the rights to her life story which he had signed away (she got'em back).
Click here to learn more about the real Three Faces of Eve
Title: Three Faces of Eve
Publisher:
ISBN: 0911238514
Library of Congress #: 56-012526
Click here to learn more about Chris Costner-Sizemore, the real Eve.
Click here to buy Three Faces of Eve through
amazon.com.
Buy a videotape of the film version of "Three Faces
of Eve" with Joanne Woodward through amazon.com
|
Title: Silencing the Voices Author: Jean Darby Cline Publisher: Berkley ISBN: 0425156931 "A deeply personal account of one woman's battle with multiple-personality disorder describes the childhood horrors and abuse at the hands of her father that led to a fragmentation into three separate entities and discusses her long battle to overcome de6cx 591\mg 2[; p ;p ;p NO CARRIER" |
 |
|
Title: Multiple Personality Disorder from the Inside Out Author: Edited by Barry M. Cohen, with Esther Giller and Lynn Wasnak Publisher: Sidran, 1991 ISBN: 0-9629164-0-4 Under the auspices of "Many Voices" and the ISSMPD, essays and notes by abuse survivors and trauma-split multiples, "guided by therapists". In the 1980s and 90s, this was as close as multiples could get to speaking for themselves. The cultural identity called "multiple personality" was completely bound to the world of psychiatry. People who felt they were sharing their bodies with others could not talk about it without attempting to fit themselves into the established profile. And if they didn't, the people they told about it certainly would! Multiplicity was always a mental disorder, a form of extreme dissociation, caused by a certain kind of abuse or trauma in childhood. And adult multiples never knew that they were until given the diagnosis by that noble therapist, who proceeded to light the path of their courageous healing, which always culminated in integration. In those days, few had ever heard of living multiple; outside of a relative handful of therapists who practiced family therapy with multiple clients to help them build a working operating system instead of integration. This of course skews the editors' choice of client descriptions of what it's like to be multiple, or more specifically, what it's like to have MPD. Text and art were all carefully selected to present a near-uniform picture of suffering, fear and pain. Perhaps this was done to show readers that if they were experiencing similar feelings, they were not alone. However, it excludes those who are multiple but do not fit this limited profile. One wonders about the material that didn't make the cut. The book does include a number of astute observations about psychotherapy. Many (probably "rebellious alters") express suspicion of the paradigm, and especially about the so-called healing process. |
 |
|
Title: Telling without talking : art as a window into the world of
multiple personality Author: Barry M. Cohen Publisher: W.W. Norton, 1995 ISBN: 0-393-70196-4
We have heard this highly recommended by several net friends. |
 |
Title: : Alter Egos: Multiple Personalities
Author: : David Cohen
Publisher: : London: Constable, 1996
Starts out skeptical about the existence of multiplicity, but through his research comes to believe in it. He thinks that many psychiatrists are overeager to condemn MP as something induced by therapists onto suggestible patients.
Click here to buy Alter Egos through amazon.com
|
Title: Not Even Wrong: Adventures in Autism Author: Paul Collins Publisher: Bloomsbury USA ISBN: 1582343675 This book by the father of a child who may or may not be on the "spectrum" is unique among parental accounts because of its lack of tragedy. Instead of seeing his son as a victim of a horrible devastating illness, Collins refused to buy into the pronouncements of alleged experts. He saw his son's unique reading and mathematical abilities and his love of computers over people as part of what was right about the kid. His own scholarly gifts and interests in historical trivia lead him to go back in time to find individuals who may or may not have been autistic, some of them now well known like Henry Darger, some all but forgotten. Even after Collins finally lets himself get talked into believing that his son needs some kind of help to improve the social side of things, he repeatedly gives us the message that it's a mistake to try to force we autistics into so called normality. Parents of other autistic kids tell Collins about how their kid went through the pink monkey routine when they were mainstreamed, but did fine in an autistic school where they're allowed to communicate in their own way. Simply letting autistic people be autistic is such a revolutionary idea! But it may well be the future. A review of Not Even Wrong, by Jay Young If you are interested in books by autistic authors, try Amanda Baggs' Autistic Authors Booklist.
|
 
|
|
Title: The Medicalization of Society: On the Transformation of Human Conditions into Treatable Disorders Author: Peter Conrad Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press ISBN: 080188585X A scholarly examination of how the psychiatric industry, in cooperation with the mass media, furthered the notion of ordinary life problems as mental diseases that require lifelong medication. |
Author: Adam Crabtree
Publisher: Praeger, 1985
The Author makes a compelling case for multiplicity being a natural state of humanity. At times scholarly, at times chatty; goes to a bit of extremes on the supposed paranormal connection.
Click here to buy Multiple Man through
amazon.com
See also The Inner Mind: Multiple Personality Before Eve by this author.
Title: Trance Zero
Author: Adam Crabtree
Publisher: Somerville, 1997
A definitive book on cultural trance. Well worth reading by all who are concerned about social perception and the media, whether related to multiplicity, or to anything else.
Order Trance Zero now through amazon.com
Have you read Trance Zero? Got
questions?
Email the Author.
Title: Ending the Battle Within: How to Create a Harmonious Life by
Working with Your Sub-Personalities
Author: Verlaine Crawford
Publisher: High Castle 1994
ISBN: 0964185407
Click here to buy Ending the Battle Within now
through amazon.com
Title: Can I Look Now?
Author: Rachel Downing
Publisher: Educational Recovery Communications
ISBN: 0-
9633913-0-5
Click here to buy Can I Look Now? now through Sidran.
Title: The Fractured Mirror: Healing Multiple Personality Disorder
Author: C.W. Duncan
Publisher: Health Communications
ISBN: 1-55874-275-1
Michelle Wilson recommended this book because it addresses many questions which multiple households often have, but which are usually not covered in texts on multiplicity.
Click here to buy The Fractured Mirror now through amazon.com
|
Title: From India to Mars Author: Theodore Flournoy Publisher: Princeton University Press ISBN: 0691034079 |
 |
Title: Spiritual and Clinical Dimensions of Multiple Personality
Disorder
Author: Loreda Fox
Publisher: Sangre de Cristo 1992
Buy this book through:
Books of Sangre de Cristo
PO Box 963
Salida, CO 81201
Write to us if you have any more
information about this book. We'd like a brief review.
Write to Jim Leftwich, who
first informed us of the existence of this book when he posted a message to Usenet. He's looking for a copy.
Or look for it on Advanced Book Exchange
Title: : Persons, one and three; a study in multiple personalities
Author: : Shepherd I. Franz
Publisher: : New York and London: Whittlesey house, McGraw-Hill 1933.
Click here to search for copies of Persons, one and three through Advanced Book Exchange
|
Title: Betrayal Trauma: The Logic of Forgetting Child Abuse Author: Jennifer Freyd Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674068068 Jennifer Freyd, the woman whose genuine recovered memories of childhood sexual harrassment inspired her parents to create the False Memory Syndrome Foundation to cover up their guilt, presents a very professional discussion of why some people suppress memories of trauma. |
 |
|
Title: This Alien Shore Author: C.S. Friedman Publisher: DAW ISBN: 0886777992
"Where you see only illness, a curse to be corrected, we see the untapped potential of humanity... God save us from an earth in which all men are the same!" The first work of fiction we have seen to present multiplicity and other neurological idiosyncracies as vital, positive qualities. Friedman tells of societies of mutants, descendants of abandoned Earth colonies, who have developed wonderful unique mental and physical characteristics, revel in their outrageous differences, and build viable societies around them. We were particularly impressed with her description of iru, who are clearly meant to be Aspergers' autistics. The young heroine must come to terms with the fact that she's been the victim of a cruel commercial experiment designed to give her multiple personalities. Far from crippling her, her selves are important to her survival, and there is no stupid integration happy solution at the end.
A biotech Internet and its attendant hackers and viruses are here, in a
subplot of mystery and intrigue. Echoes of James H. Schmitz, Frank Herbert and
good ol'Cordwainer Smith (whom she has the courtesy to credit!). Highly
recommended. |
|
Title: Uncovering the Mystery of MPD
Author: Rev. James Friesen
Publisher: Wipf & Stock 1997
ISBN: 1579100627
Buy a copy of Uncovering the Mystery of MPD
Friesen, a Fundamentalist preacher, appears to take up where Ralph Allison and D. Scott Rogo left off. That is, he believes that childhood misfortunes not only make people multiple, but open them to demonic possession. He does recognize that selves often portray themselves as demons without actually being them, and he does not believe in exorcising everyone who comes out. However, at least in Uncovering the Mystery of MPD, he does not apparently recognize that members of a multiple system can be animals, or creatures usually considered mythological, or shapeshifters -- he says these are invariably demons. He's written some more books since then -- maybe he revises that.
Friesen's methods have been adopted by other preachers who have used them (I think I should say misused) against countless women and children, some multiple, some not. A typical modern exorcism ceremony involving a multiple. I think this so-called deliverance activity owes as much to M. Scott Peck (author of People of the Lie) as it does to Friesen.
Someone in a self-aware system we correspond with told us they liked Friesen's book. They read it independently -- it was not pushed at them by a therapist or minister. They found it helpful because according to his list of standards, they came to understand they were genuinely multiple and not possessed or insane.
Title: United We Stand: A Book for People with Multiple
Personalities.
Author: Eliana Gil
Publisher: Launch
ISBN: 0-96132-05-91
Again, even though this book takes the angle that multiplicity is caused by child abuse, it is pretty good when it comes to reassuring people in households that they don't have to live as basket cases. This might be a good book for people who were newly diagnosed in therapy.
Click here to buy United We Stand now through amazon.com
Title: Shattered Selves: Multiple Personality in a Postmodern World
Author: James M. Glass
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 0-8014-2809-2
Began as a series of interviews exploring multiple personality in an attempt to relate it to postmodern views of what personality and identity really are, Glass found himself entrapped in the midst of the SRA / mind control witchhunt that swept through the Dissociative Disorders Unit of Shepard-Pratt Hospital in the late 1980s. Extreme, suffocating isolation and an overworked sense of suspension of disbelief created a genuine nightmare. An excerpt from the book is found at Soul's Self-Help Central.
Shepard-Pratt was not the only place this happened. No wonder so many DDUs were closed.
Click here to buy Shattered Selves now through amazon.com.
Title: Two Souls in One Body?
Author: H.H. Goddard
Publisher: London: Rider, 1927
Out of Print: Try Advanced Book Exchange
Or, search amazon.com's Zshops to see if anyone's selling Two Souls in One Body?
Title: Multiple Personality & Dissociation, 1791-1992:
A Complete Bibliography
Author: Goettman, Carole, Greaves, George B., & Coons, Philip M.,
eds.
Publisher: Sidran, Lutherville MD
ISBN: 0-9629164-5-5
Click here to buy Multiple Personality & Dissociation 1791-1992 now through amazon.com
|
Title: I Never Promised You A Rose Garden
Author: Joanne Greenberg (as Hannah Green) Publisher: New American Library ISBN: 0451160312 For many years, young Deborah has withstood the cruelty of the earth world through her gift of access to the Kingdom of Yr, a mysterious dimension whose deities have made her queen among them. Now, at sixteen, the very people upon whom she's relied for help have turned against her. But she fears there is no place for her on Earth. The story tells of her battles in both the ancient kingdom where she is captive and victim, and on Earth, where her body is living in a mental hospital. The importance of this story cannot be underestimated. To this day, the author herself -- who was Deborah -- believes she was insane. Read it for yourself... and never mind the ending... does it reflect your truth? Budding from a Garden of Reality A young woman's brief analysis of Yr and Yri suggests that they are real even though non-material. In 2001, Eyada.com had an interview with Joanne Greenberg and Gail Hornstein, who had just written a biography of Freida Fromm-Reichmann, "Dr. Clara Fried" from Rose Garden. Unfortunately, as of 17:00 hours on July 10th, www.eyada.com went the way of many dot.coms; i.e, bankrupt and closed their doors. We are trying to get a downloaded copy of the interview for you but it doesn't look good. Another, more recent interview covers a lot of the same issues: click here for an audio stream of Joanne's interview from prx.org. (This site requires that you register but it is free.) Listen carefully -- what Greenberg says may surprise you.
Biography of Hornstein from Mt. Holyoke University |
 |
Title: Out of the darkness into the light: a journey with two
multiples
Author: Edie Hand
Publisher: Birmingham, Ala.: Front Row Productions ; 1990 (Recording)
Format 1 sound recording (45 min.) : analog, mono.
With Patricia Eggleston and Chris Costner Sizemore. Edie Hand is best known for her books of recipes, inspirational material, and Elvis Presley.
Out of Print: Search for this recording through Advanced Book Exchange
Title: The five of me
Author: Henry Hawksworth
Publisher: Chicago: Regency, 1977
ISBN: 0-8092-7869-3
Click here to buy The Five of Me through
amazon.com.
Also, check
Amazon's Zshops for The Five of Me on VHS starring David Birney.
|
Title: Living With Your Selves Author: Sandra Hocking Publisher: Launch Press ISBN: 1-877872-06-7 A classic manual for people who feel they are suffering from a disorder, this book features an introduction by Colin Ross. Click here to buy Living With Your Selves now through Sidran. |
 |
Title: Someone I Know Has Multiple Personalities: A Book for
Significant Others-- Friends, Family, and Caring Professionals
Author: Sandra J. Hocking
Publisher: Launch, 1994
ISBN: 1-877872-08-3
Even though this book approaches multiplicity strictly from the angle of dissociative disorder caused by child abuse, it's said to be excellent for getting the message across to the singlets around you that you're not a basket case.
Click here to buy Someone I Know Has Multiple Personalities now through amazon.com
Title: Body Scripture
Author: Barbara Hope
Publisher: Wyndham Hall
ISBN: 1556052979
"This book is a personal account of recovery from multiple personality disorder. I describe a ten year therapy process during which dozens of alternate selves emerged and slowly disclosed their trauma" etc. Another in a growing series of books by therapists who are themselves multiple. It's interesting to see how different doctors handled their own realizations.
Click here to buy Body Scripture through amazon.com
|
Title: To Redeem One Person Is To Redeem The World: A Biography of Freida Fromm-Reichmann Author: Dr. Gail Hornstein Publisher: Free Press ISBN:0684827921 A biography of Dr. Freida Fromm-Reichmann, "Dr. Clara Fried" in I Never Promised You A Rose Garden. Seems a bit thrown together, but provides an indepth look at how Chestnut Lodge was founded. Therapists at the Lodge believed that some schizophrenics and psychotics could be helped with ordinary psychotherapy. Joanne Greenberg was only one (and the most famous) example, and not the sole success story. We learn a bit more about Miss Greenberg's situation, about Yr (its actual name was Iria), and some accidental insights into her family, and her decision to write Rose Garden. There is an entire chapter on public response. New York Times review, very good
|
 |
|
Title: Chrome Dreams II Author: Neil Young Publisher: Warner Reprise-Wea 2007 ISBN: B000VEA31Q Just about here you should sit back, relax, have a nice cup of tea or coffee or something, and look at something intriguing that doesn't have the least thing to do with multiplicity. If you've read this far you've earned it, so go ahead, have one, indulge yourself and blame it on us. |
Title: The Birds' Nest
Originally written in 1954. Shirley Jackson researched this one as carefully
as she could at the time. She was certainly capable of thinking of herself as
multiple, with some justification. Read Bird's Nest with this in
mind: it was published three years before Three Faces of Eve. It is
amazing to us that feisty Shirley did not hit Corbett Thigpen with a lawsuit.
Both Three Faces of Eve and Sybil contain many elements from this novel.
In 1957, Bird's Nest was made into Lizzie a fair-to-middling
movie (Johnny Mathis' songs are worth it though). Shirley didn't like
Lizzie -- she said it was too camped up. Almost no one remembers
Lizzie today. It is not available on DVD or videocassette. If you stay up late you might catch it on Turner channels. Shirley said:
Practically the only lines of mine they left in are the ones for Joan Blondell, who is the old aunt; she sits there with a fifth of bourbon and babbles. They must have used up twenty cases of bourbon in the movie; there are shots of people carrying out bushel baskets of empty bottles. [Shirley's husband] Stanley says it is because in Hollywood they don't know anything about drinking because they all take dope. They don't know much about psychology either.
Click here to buy The Bird's Nest now through
amazon.com
Title: The Passion of Ansel Bourne
Recommended because Kenny is not sympathetic to the traditional psychiatric
model for multiplicity. He also makes the multiplicity/Spiritualist connection,
and is a good deal more pragmatic about it than Crabtree, Rogo et al.
Click here to buy a hardcover edition of Passion
of Ansel Bourne now through
amazon.com
Author: Shirley Jackson
Publisher: Arbor House, 1986
Click here to buy Private Demons: The Life of
Shirley Jackson Vivid biography of Jackson, whose private life could be
as disturbing as her stories.
Author: Michael Kenny
Publisher: Smithsonian Institute Press
ISBN: 0-87474-572-1
Click here to buy a paperback edition of Passion
of Ansel Bourne now through amazon.com
|
Title: Minds of Billy Milligan
Author: Daniel Keyes Publisher: Random House, 1981 ISBN: 0-55326-381-1 The life story of a multiple household which was convicted of armed robbery and rape. (He was NOT a serial killer, as many have reported). Not as bleak as you might think. Keyes, author of Flowers for Algernon (Charly), conveys their experience well. Yay! Back in print! |
|
Click here to buy The Minds of Billy Milligan Right Now through amazon.com
What Is Billy Milligan Doing Now? By Daniel Keyes.
A Statement By Billy Milligan
Title: The Fifth Sally
Author: Keyes, Daniel
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin, 1980
ISBN: 0395294495
One would have hoped that his years of interviews with Billy Milligan would have given him a better idea of multiple-household experience, rather than just trotting out the same old stereotypical jazz. Maybe he explains this in his autobiography.
Click here to buy The Fifth Sally through amazon.com
Title: Expressive and Functional Therapies in the Treatment of
Multiple Personality Disorder
Author: Kluft, Estelle, ed.
Publisher: Charles C. Thomas
ISBN: 0-398-05826-1
Click here to buy Expressive and Functional Therapies now through amazon.com
Title: Clinical Perspectives on Multiple Personality Disorder
Author: Kluft, Richard P. & Fine, Catherine G., eds.
Publisher: American Psychiatric Press
ISBN: 0-88048-365-2
Click here to buy Clinical Perspectives on Multiple Personality now through amazon.com
|
Title: Making Us Crazy: DSM The Psychiatric Bible and the Creation of Mental Disorders Author: Herb Kutchins Publisher: Free Press, 1997 ISBN: 0684822806 Much like L.J. Davis' wonderful Encyclopedia of Insanity, this book contains cogent information on the creation of the DSM as a political tool, mostly for the benefit of insurance companies.
|
 |
Title: Evaluation of criminal responsibility in multiple
personality and the related dissociative disorders : a
psychoanalytic consideration
Author: Richard Lasky
Publisher: Springfield, Ill., U.S.A. : Thomas, 1982.
ISBN: 0-398-04673-5
Title: Psychology of Multiple Personality Disorders
Author: Richard Lasky
Publisher: Jason Aronson
ISBN: 1-56821-061-2
Click here to buy Psychology of Multiple Personality now through amazon.com
Title: Voices
Author: Trula M. LaCalle, Ph.D.
Publisher: Dodd Mead, 1988
ISBN: 0396089747
A doctor's experience of working with a multiple household whose chief presenting self was a young gay man, in the days when being gay was listed as a mental disorder, multiplicity was not listed at all, and the doctor herself was considered borderline psychotic for believing there was such a thing as multiplicity. Ends with a look at the early phase of the AIDS epidemic and how it affected the gay community.
Click here to buy Voices now through amazon.com
|
Title: Shyness -- How Normal Behavior Became A Sickness Author: Christopher Lane Publisher: Yale 2007 ISBN: 0300124465 Remember the outcry when the cute little cartoons advertising Zoloft, an antidepressant, were retooled to promote Zoloft's use as a medicine for social anxiety disorder? Or the Prozac commercial that magically changed the nametags at a cocktail party? First you invent the pill, right, then you invent the illness for which the pill is the cure -- you know that one. Using as his sources letters and memos written by mental health professionals, Lane builds a very convincing case for another instance of mental health industry fraud in which shy persons are told they have a mental disease. He also demonstrates how the public was fooled into thinking that these pills had been sufficiently tested and were relatively harmless. At this point, I just have to include this.
|
Title: Triad
Author: Mary Leader
Publisher: Coward, McCann & Geoghegan (1973)
ISBN: 069810496X
This book received a great deal of publicity among fans of singer Stevie Nicks when she revealed that it was her source for the name "Rhiannon". Nicks simply used the name, leaving the book behind, and it's well that she did so. Triad was an apparent attempt to cash in on the Exorcist fad and includes all The Usual -- an ordinary housewife whose life starts going to pieces, missing time, losing things, stuff moving around, and all the boring rest of it, soon after losing her child to crib death and subsequently moving to a mysterious old house. (If that sounds like the beginning of Lawrence Block's terrific 1981 Ariel, it's probably because it is. The elements are virtually the same -- it's what Block decided to do with them that makes his book a classic.) Believing she is possessed by the spirit of her long-dead cousin Rhiannon, whose spun-sugar exterior had masked a sociopathic evil, she turns for help not to the church but to a doctor. He works with her on her abuse background and eventually uncovers her "other personality", but then discovers that this is not Rhiannon. And on, and on, and on. Sigh.
Click here to buy Triad now through amazon.com
Title: The Psychiatric Clinics of North America--Multiple
Personality Disorder
Guest
Editor: Richard J. Loewenstein, The Psychiatric Clinics of North America
Vol 14, No 3, Sept 1991
Publisher: W.B. Saunders Co
Wildfire says: "Very technical but extremely informative book. Excellent section on diagnosis and treatment of children, which, as a DID Mom, I found helpful in forcing psychiatrist to address possibility of DID in my child."
Title: The Surprising Case of Rachel Baker, Who Prays and Preaches in
Her Sleep: With Specimens of her Extraordinary Performances
Taken Down Accurately in Short Hand at the Time.
Author: C. Mais
Publisher: New York: Whiting and Watson, 1814
This is about a trance speaker. Trance speakers were very common in the nineteenth century and were a little like New Age channels of today, but not as silly: they spoke about practical matters and political issues. Many of the early spokespersons for women's rights were trance speakers. Many women activists and speechmakers were assumed to be trance speakers because it was widely believed that women, on their own, without supernatural aid, were incapable of public speaking or of even having many of the thoughts and ideas presented in their addresses.
There is no clear way to tell if these ladies (and some gentlemen) were spirit mediums or if they were multiple or both. Dual personality (it was often called that even when there were more than two selves) was a known and accepted thing in those times. They key was thought to be, not child abuse, but a sensitive nature, open to feelings and emotions.
Click here to read about this book ! To learn more about trance speakers, you might want to read Anne Braude's wonderful book Radical Spirits: Spiritualism and Women's Rights in 19th Century America, and Barbara Goldsmith's Other Powers: The Life of Victoria Woodhull.
Title: The Watcher's Mask
Author: Laurie J. Marks
Publisher: DAW, 1992
ISBN: 0886775108
Echoes of Ursula K. LeGuin and Elizabeth Hand resonate through this compelling tale of a society in which some children are born multiple, and their places in both traditional and urban societies.
Click here to buy The Watcher's Mask now through amazon.com
Title: People in Pieces: Multiple Personality in Milder Forms and
Greater Numbers
Author: Alan Marshall
Publisher: Rainbow Books
ISBN: 0-935834-94-x
Click here to buy People in Pieces now through amazon.com
|
Title: Amongst Ourselves Author: Karen Marshall with Tracy Alderman Publisher: New Harbinger ISBN: 1572241225 Moral of this story: There's plenty of help out there if you're an abuse survivor, but the therapist who can help you with household management issues is rare and precious. Most therapists only understand MP from a survivorship perspective. This book gives the lie to the old assumption that as persons in the household evidence to the front and relate memories of abuse, they will then disappear and be integrated into a whole person. Although this book is really for abuse survivors who happen to be multiple, it does have some good qualities, notably its plain language. |
|
Click here to buy Amongst Ourselves now through amazon.com
Title: Multiple Personality Disorder: An Hispanic Psychological
Perspective
Author: Alfonso Martinez-Taboas. Translated by Carlos S. Alvarado and
Nancy L. Zingrone. Contributions by Richard Kluft.
Publisher: Puente
ISBN: 0-9634501-0-7
Click here to buy Multiple Personality: A Hispanic Perspective now through amazon.com
|
Title: Against Therapy Author: Jeffrey Masson Publisher: Common Courage '93 ISBN: 1567510221 Please read this before opting for any kind of mainstream psychotherapy. You owe it to yourself and to your household, if any.
Also by Jeffrey Masson:
|
 |
|
Title: The Assault on Truth : Freud's Suppression of the Seduction Theory Author: Jeffrey Masson Publisher: Pocket ISBN: 0671025716 This is -the- book on the subject. Some of it will look very familiar to you if you've been abused in any way and then attempted to tell someone about it, only to be accused of false memory syndrome. |
|
Title: Welcome Home, Stranger: An Account of Multiple Personalities
Author: Daniel Matthews
Publisher: Random House NZ
A New Zealand correspondent says this was written by a frontrunner in a multiple household, who is gay. Looks like the same old stuff to us.
Click here for more on Welcome Home, Stranger
Click here for even more on Welcome Home, Stranger
Click here to
buy Welcome Home, Stranger through amazon.com
Write to our NZ Correspondent for his perspective on this book
Title: Satan's Children
Author: Robert Mayer, Ph.D.
Publisher: Putnam, 1991
ISBN: 0399136274
Click here to buy Satan's Children now through amazon.com
Title: Through Divided Minds
Author: Robert Mayer, Ph.D.
Publisher: Doubleday, 1988
ISBN: 0380719207
Don't say we didn't warn you, on either of Mayer's books. Mayer allows his gender bias and contempt for his patients to undermine whatever good he might have done in helping households develop more stable operating systems. He played God with hundreds of lives, while admitting he didn't know what the heck he was doing.
Click here to buy Through Divided Minds now through amazon.com if you want to really get mad.
Title: : Mindsplit
Author: Peter McKellar
Publisher: London: Dent (arthur dent), 1979
ISBN: 046004348X
Click here to buy Mindsplit now through amazon.com
|
Title: Skye Sparkler
Author: Kim Metzger Publisher: Xlibris ISBN: 0738853275 This doesn't have anything to do with plurality either, but it's a fun read. A young woman accidentally turns herself into a super-powered heroine -- who, to all appearances, is just twelve years old -- and she can't change back! How does tiny blue-haired Skye convince people she's the same person as ordinary thirtyish Marcy? What happens as a consequence of her instinct to help people with her amazing powers? Identity and responsibility are the themes here, with liberty, large fries and a coffee to go. |
 |
|
Title: Women From Another Planet,
Our Lives in the Universe of Autism Author: Jean Kearns Miller Publisher: Authorhouse 2003 ISBN: 1410734315 Amazon's Roguealleycat sez: "Wow. A look at our real, whole lives for once... meant as a crossroads between feminism and the neurodiversity movement, and a discussion of life as autistic women." If you are interested in more books by autistic authors, try Amanda Baggs' Autistic Authors Booklist.
|
|
Title: For Your Own Good:
Hidden Brutality in Child-Rearing, and the Roots of Violence Author: Dr. Alice Miller Publisher: Noonday ISBN: 0374522693 If you think you were never abused, read this book. Most people do suffer some form of brutality in childhood -- often covert, emotional or intellectual stifling -- and it does affect their thinking and feeling in later life. "It made me stronger" often simply means "it made me numb". This is not a whiny book, nor is it a Bradshaw feel-good hugfest. Child abuse exists, and it isn't always what you think. Don't revisit it on your kids. |
 |
This book is now available in its entirety on line. Click here to read For Your Own Good in free e-text.
|
Title: Multiple Selves, Multiple Voices: Working with Trauma, Violation and Dissociation Author: Phil Mollon Publisher: Wiley, 1996 ISBN: 0471963305 Another in the long line of books presenting the trauma/dissociation model for multiplicity (note the publication date). Mollon believes multiplicity is a matter of "trauma and pretense". Might be worth a few laughs. |
 |
Title: Sorority of survival : memoirs of a multiple /
Author: Newman, Katherine A.
Publisher: New York : Kroshka Books, 1996
ISBN: 1560723467
Click here to buy Sorority of Survival now through amazon.com
Title: Multiple Personalities, Multiple Disorders:
Psychiatric Classification and Media Influence
Author: Carol S. North
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0-19-508095-5
This book is soooo funny! Full review coming up. For a good laugh, or maybe to get steaming mad, order Multiple Personalities, Multiple Disorders through amazon.com
|
Title: Moira Author: Martin Obler Publisher: New Horizons ISBN: 0312968205 We've never actually read this one but have seen two reviews. One said that this is a badly written novel with an inexplicably horrible ending. Another said that it fairly well described classical MPD and might be a good introduction for clinical psychology interns. It's probably the same old stuff. Worth it? Read it and tell us what you think. |
|
|
Title: Through the Eyes of Aliens Author: Jasmine Lee O'Neill Publisher: Jessica Kingsley ISBN: 1853027103 Like multiplicity, autism is not a disorder and need not be dysfunctional. The brains of autistic people are simply hardwired differently. This book explores autism's benefits and beauties for the first time, and explains what may look like bizarre, stereotyped behavior. Like multiples, autistics need to be accepted as they are, not forced to behave in an allegedly normal fashion. That is the basic theme of this book, the author providing examples from her own life. By and large, we agreed with and enjoyed her explanations. However, we had some serious problems with a few of her assertions. Many autistics are not nearly as able to interact in mainstream society as Miss O'Neill. It's too overwhelming and requires the processing of a lot of sensory input that a lot of autistics simply can't handle no matter how intelligent they may be otherwise. She did say that she was using the word "autism" to describe what most people think of as Asperger's autism as well as classic or Kanner's EIA. I see why she did it, and I'm still not sure it wasn't a mistake. This book runs the risk of romanticising autism even as it seeks to demystify it, especially the old myth of a connection between genius and autism. Having worked with severe classic-style autistics who are also (at least apparently) mentally retarded, I cannot agree with her claim that all autism is a beautiful form of genius. Autistics are just as likely as multiples to display a range of intelligences. Like multiples, autistics will not be served by being universally classed as geniuses. Intelligence is a slippery concept anyway. After my experience growing up with autism which I thought at first was "Asperger" simply because I had no speech delays -- I wasn't diagnosed until I was almost thirty --and working with "classic" or "Kanner" autistic teens, I think we need educational programs that will take the unique qualities and deficits of autistic people into account, and teach basic self-care in a way that can be understood and adapted to the individual's strengths and comprehensions, without brutalisation or an insistence on completely "normal" behavior. - Bluejay Another book explaining autism in more pragmatic terms is Demystifying the Autistic Experience. Roguealleycat@amazon sez: "The first book I read portraying autism as a good thing. I disagree with the author on a few points, but that perspective about autism is rare and vital in a hostile world." A Note on Autism by an anonymous, autistic reader
Read an article about autism, by the author If you are interested in more books by autistic authors, try the Autistic Authors Booklist.
Balance this book by reading A Child Called Noah |
 |
|
Title: Becoming One Author: Sarah Olson Publisher:LPC ISBN: 0962387983 We have trouble not calling this book "How we all got squished together" or, "How I squished everybody together" or something. Another one of those rambling accounts of abuse and courageous healing that became popular after When Rabbit Howls became a bestseller. We got a review copy of this one in the mail. Totally unasked for. |
 |
Title: Criminal Responsibility and Multiple Personality Defendants
Edited by Sabra Owens
Publisher: ABA, July 1997
ISBN: 1570734607
Exploration and analysis of the use of multiple personality disorder defenses in the crinimal justice system; with table of cases.
|
Title: A Fractured Mind Author: Robert Oxnam Publisher:Hyperion ISBN: 1401302270 I notice that most of the amazon.com reviews do not believe Oxnam was multiple and that he is faking it to get publicity or bolster a sagging career in middle age. I think this may be because he was such a highly visible public figure, such a familiar face on Nightline and The MacNeill-Lehrer News Hour, and spoke so rationally and competently about China, that he does not fit most people's preconceived notion of who a multiple is. That's of course providing they even believe that multiplicity exists. It seems that today if you say the words MPD or multiple personality, the majority of people in this culture automatically translate in their minds to "excuses made by a loser with weak character". In other words, we're exactly where we started fifty years ago. If classic MPD is supposed to be a coping strategy to allow normal or higher levels of daily functioning while putting aside abuse or other unpleasant experiences instead of taking time to process them, then the majority of MPD clients should be like Oxnam -- or Chase, with her real estate business. MPD should enable success, not failure. Difficulties with continuity, as well as the intrusion of unwanted images or ideas which may or may not be early memories, take place as an MPD operating system begins to change or fall apart. Such clients are still told, as Oxnam was, that the multiplicity is the problem, when what they may need is help putting together a different operating system that will allow them to return to their previous level of functioning. - A. Temple Review of A Fractured Mind at Pavilion, by an anonymous contributor |
Title: From Multiplicity to Oneness
Author: Sasha Pedersen, Marilyn Picard
Publisher:
Here's the press release sent
to us regarding "From Multiplicity to Oneness".
Click here to buy From Multiplicity To Oneness
through amazon.com
|
Title: Nightmare: Uncovering the Strange 56 Personalities of Nancy Lynn Gooch Author: Emily Peterson ISBN:0931933544
Obvious courageous healing potboiler capitalizing on success of Sybil.
|
 |
|
Title: The Magic Daughter Author: Jane Phillips Publisher: Penguin ISBN: 0140244557 Don't get your hopes up. - Gabe This would make a good don't-let-this-happen-to-you book. It is about a very, very badly managed household with practically no communication. Unlike most books on so-called MPD/DID, Phillips concentrates not on childhood horror stories (though of course there are some) but on everyday life with a household whose operating system is so out of whack they can't even get it together enough to accomplish routine tasks. As this lady researched her own memories (she didn't seem to have repressed anything, just put things she already knew into place) she found evidence that she was multiple long before any sexual abuse occurred, but her doctor would not listen; he was one of those who believed multiplicity originates only with sexual abuse. In fact, this lady looks to have been emotionally and physically abused because she was multiple. She may even have been born naturally multiple, and had her operating system destroyed by parental violence. How often does this happen and professionals just assume it's the other way around? Jordan and Jay |
|
Title: Healing the Divided Self: Clinical and Ericksonian Hypnotherapy
for Post-Traumatic and Dissociative Conditions
Author: Maggie Phillips and C. Frederick
Publisher: New York: W.W. Norton, 1995
Claire Frederick of the ISSD says this book is a good resource.
Click here to search for Healing the Divided Self on Advanced Book Exchange
Title: Household Management [alternate: Multiple Personality Gift]
Author: Jaclyn Pia
Publisher: R&E Publishers, PO Box 2008, Saratoga, CA 95070
Phone: (408) 866-6303 Fax: (408) 866-0825
ISBN: 0-88247-890-7
A system of organization for households in chaos. Simplistic at times,
but probably good for situations of extreme stress.
Click here to buy Household Management now
through amazon.com
Check out
the complete text on line
Title: Managing Our Selves: Building a Community of Caring
Author: Elizabeth Power
Publisher: E. Power & Assoc.
ISBN: 1-883307-01-5
Tuesday, January 24, 2006: At present, the Managing Our Selves books are available only through Sidran. These include Building A Community of Caring and God in Our Midst.
Sidran also sells Taking Charge Of Change, The Trouble With Feelings, and Boundaries Precious Boundaries which are not specifically related to multiple personalities.
Visit Elizabeth Power's new website: http://www.bemindfulnow.org.
Click here to buy Managing Our Selves now through Sidran
|
Title: Victims of Memory Author: Mark Pendergrast Publisher: Upper Access Book Publishers ISBN: 0942679164 Pendergrast is out to set the record straight on the recovery movement, pro and con (mostly con). An exhaustively researched book, written by a scholar whose own daughters have accused him of molesting them. Like Joan Acocella (who drew heavily on Victims of Memory for her research) Pendergrast exposes the mental health racket that grew out of the recovery movement, labeling people as victims and multiples whether they were or not. You may not agree with Pendergrast at all, but he certainly has done his homework. Put your prejudices and fears aside, buy this book and read it carefully. Consider his findings in light of your own therapy. Make your own decisions. This book is going in our permanent collection as a reference guide. |
|
Title: The Dissociation of a Personality: In Search of the Real Miss
Beauchamp
Author: Morton Prince
ISBN:0942679164
Publisher: New York: Gryphon, 1992 (Written in 1906)
This is the fellow whom we all have to thank for the concept of integration. Line forms behind me, peashooters at the ready. Andy
Click here to buy Dissociation of a Personality now through amazon.com
Title: Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality
Author: Frank Putnam, M.D.
Publisher: Foundations of Modern Psychiatry, 1989
Putnam is at the forefront of study on the biochemical and neurological reality of multiplicity. We don't necessarily agree with all of his conclusions, and he advocates some atrocious methods of discovering whether a patient is multiple. Still, he is worth reading.
Click here to buy Diagnosis and Treatment of
Multiple Personality now through amazon.com
Title: Divided Minds and Successive Selves: Ethical Issues in Disorders
of Identity and Personality
Author: Jennifer Radden
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262181754
Learn more
about Divided Minds & Successive Selves: statement by the Author
Read a
review of Divided Minds and Successive Selves by Christian
Perring
Click here to buy Divided Minds & Successive
Selves now through amazon.com
Title: Infinite Boundary: A Psychic Look at Spirit Possession, Madness,
and Multiple Personality
Author: D. Scott Rogo
Publisher: New York: Dodd Mead, 1987
ISBN:0396089682
Published just three months after When Rabbit Howls, this book purports to explore the comparative history of mediumship, possession and multiplicity. After kind of a shaky beginning in which we learn that gender dysphoria and transsexuality can be cured through exorcism, he continues with a look at the famous case of Frederic Thompson, the jeweler who was apparently possessed (quite beneficially) by the departed spirit of painter R. Swain Gifford, takes a half-turn at Spiritualism with complete credulity (they couldn't possibly have been faking those effects could they?) and psychic surgery, and after a lengthy recap of the Doris Fischer case, finishes us off with a remarkable interview with Ralph Allison. Allison's theories are clearly the basis of Truddi Chase's speculations about multiples and ESP, and they're all laid out here for our benefit. You'll be pleased to know that according to Allison, we are ALL, without exception, super- psychics, and many of us are psychic vampires to boot. Another one of Rogo's interviewees is M. Scott Peck, who touts his "people of the lie" theory. It's possible that this book (along with Michelle Remembers and the original Courage to Heal was source material for the SRA hysteria that went into high gear a couple of years later.
Click here to buy Infinite Boundary through amazon.com
Title: The Osiris Complex: Case Studies in Multiple Personality
Disorder
Author: Colin A. Ross
Publisher: Univ. of Toronto Press
ISBN: 0-8020-2858-6
More than adequately exemplifies the current mode of thought in the mental health industry concerning multiplicity. Having declared multiplicity a disorder, they've spent the last twenty years playing the game for all it was worth... making money and prestige by exploitive therapy of abuse victims, multiples, and those who were simply looking for meaning in their lives. Now that the public has seen behind the curtain, it's not fun any more, so it's the DID dustbin for us; multiple personality officially no longer exists.
Click here to buy Osiris Complex now through amazon.com
|
Title: Discovering Your Subpersonalities: Our Inner World and the
People In It Author: John Rowan Publisher: Routledge, New York ISBN: 0-415-07366-9
We didn't even know what a "subpersonality" was, so we had to look it up: What Are Subpersonalities Click here to buy Discovering Your Subpersonalities now through amazon.com |
 |
|
Title: Set this house in order: a romance of souls Author: Matt Ruff Publisher: Harper Collins, 2003 ISBN: 0060195622
|
 |
Two reviews of this controversial new novel are found at the Pavilion Library:
A review of Set This House in Order by Ruka of Amorpha
A review of Set This House in Order by David of the Jinkies
|
Title: Jekyll on trial: multiple personality
disorder and criminal law Author: Saks, Elyn R., 1955- Publisher: New York University Press, 1997 ISBN: 0-814-78042-3
|
 |
Title: Jennifer and her Selves
Author: Gerald Schoenewolf
Publisher: Donald Fine, 1991
Pretty stereotypical account by a doctor who didn't mind embellishing things for effect. One of our correspondents said: "Not too bad a book, even if I did want to smack the author upside the head a couple times. (He got integration and co-consciousness mixed up, for one!) But I cheered him when he realized he might not have any business trying to get them to integrate; what if Jennifer was (gasp!) better off this way? If nothing else, he said one very interesting thing: Sybil and crew's integration wasn't permanent.... they came back and she just let them stay. If that's true, I imagine she figured/realized she had no choice. I'm hoping it's true! ... It WAS the first book I've ever read that said multiplicity is .. a lifestyle option.... But the therapist tried to tell a couple of system residents that they weren't real and/or not a different person than Jennifer and/or just her walking, talking unconsious. Mildred [of Jennifer's household] tried to set him straight, and neither was listening to the other!"
Teresa has an interesting review of Jennifer and her
Selves.
Click here to order Jennifer and her Selves
through amazon.com
|
Title: Sybil Author: Flora Reta Schreiber Publisher: Warner, 1973 Still in print. Bears re-reading due to the recent controversy over the authenticity of the material. |
|
Sybil Remake: The best place to look for updates on the remake at this point is probably http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0499260/board, the IMDB discussion board for the Sybil remake.
Please try to keep in mind that what you see in the film is only very loosely based on the real events in the life of Shirley Mason. The novel by Flora Schreiber is not a psychiatric case history. It is a fictionalized narrative, exaggerated for shock value, and the film even more so. In fact, it was deliberately made to resemble a horror movie.
To see if a store close to you rents copies either of the DVD release or the old VHS version (which was drastically cut); Formovies.com Sybil Listing If you are still interested in the old VHS version or want to try for the old 192-minute version; Video Addicts Want List Here, post a message saying you want a copy of the Sybil film. Don't forget to mention our website.
Click here to read about the Sybil controversy
As of May 2006, we do not sell Nancy L. Preston's book Life After Sybil because amazon.com does not yet offer it, nor does any other online bookstore. We'll be sure to carry it when it comes out. Miss Preston was interviewed for the DVD and that interview is included in the extras.
Title: Internal Family Systems Therapy
Click here to buy Internal Family Systems
Therapy now through amazon.com
Title: My Mom is Different
Click here to buy My Mom Is Different now
through amazon.com
My Mom Is Not Your Entertainment Hilarious parody by a member of the Flatlanders system.
Title: : Multiple personality; an experimental investigation into the
nature of human individuality
Sidis believed there was such a thing as adult onset multiplicity, caused by physical injury. He has a lot of case studies of people who never showed signs of amnesia, dissociation or other selves until they were in an accident, mostly when they had a head injury. He also has the usual "hystero-epilepsy" cases. This is a fascinating side trip. Even if it was written by a guy with delusions of grandeur who forcibly overeducated his own son to make a genius out of him, leading to the kid's mental breakdown later in life.
Wednesday, December 21, 2005 12:31:29 PM This book is now online. Multiple personality; an experimental investigation into the nature of human individuality by Sidis
Click here to look for this book at Advanced Book Exchange
Title: A Mind of My Own
Chris continues telling her own true story, begun in I'm Eve. While she continues to maintain her stance that multiplicity is a mental illness for which the only cure is integration (she reports a brief confrontation with Truddi Chase over this issue), the book's still worth reading. Surprisingly enough, particularly with her pro-integration stance, Chris does not believe in fragmentation and asserts that her actual selves (not what was described by her former doctors) were separate entities. "Despite authorities' claims to the contrary, my former alters were not fragments of my birth personality. They were entities, whole in their own rights, who coexisted with my birth personality before I was born. They were not me, but they remain intrinsically related to what it means to be me." More at Multiple Personality Before Eve. Costner is not quoted directly in this article as stating that the 'alters' were remnants of who she was in past lives, but she does confirm her belief in reincarnation in this book.
An interview and review of Chris Costner-Sizemore's life
Click
here to buy A Mind of My Own now through amazon.com
Title: I'm Eve
Chris Sizemore tells her life story which was erroneously reported by Dr.
Corbett Thigpen in "The Three Faces of Eve".
Click
here to buy I'm Eve now through amazon.com
About the Sybil Film
Due to high viewer demand, a 30th anniversary edition of Sybil has been released on DVD in North America.
Another source tells us: "There was a campaign to stall the shoooting and revise the script to reflect more closely what really happened with Shirley Mason, rather than a simple remake that followed the original. The producer felt he only wanted to update a classic with newer actors. A group from the False Memory Syndrome Foundation started a letter writing camapaign, but the film has been completed -- but the date of airing keeps getting pushed back."
Please do not email us with inquiries, but if you have news about what is happening with the remake we want to hear from you. Everything we find out will be announced here and at http://www.astraeasweb.net/plural/controversy.html#sybil. Keep checking back there and especially at the IMDB message board.
Click here to buy the Sybil novel now through amazon.com Used copies also available through this link.
Author: Richard C. Schwarz
Publisher: New York: Guilford, 1995
ISBN: 0-89862-273-5
(acid-free paper)
Author: Deborah Sessions
Publisher: Sidran
ISBN: 0-9629164-3-9
Author: : Boris Sidis
Publisher: New York, Greenwood Press, 1968 (orig. published 1904)
Author: Chris Costner-Sizemore
Publisher: Morrow, 1989
ISBN: 0688081991
Author: Chris Costner Sizemore with Elen Sain Pittillo
Publisher: New York : Jove, 1978
ISBN: 0515075140
|
Title: Magic Castle Author: Carole Smith Publisher: St. Martin's Press ISBN: 031217196X The real story here is not little Alex and his violent behavior which was interpreted by his mother and doctor as multiple personalities, but his mom's fight against the mental health industry to try to get some help for his real problems. One wonders if the SRA stories were invented by her, for example. It's not at all clear whether he was actually multiple, or whether the idea of MPD was used as a kind of therapeutic tool that he could work with to sort out his genuine issues. |
 |
|
Title: Muses, Madmen, and Prophets: Rethinking the History, Science, and Meaning of Auditory Hallucination Author: Daniel Smith Publisher: Penguin 2007 ISBN: 1594201102
Recently, a series of British studies uncovered the fact that mentally healthy people hear voices. As these findings become accepted by modern psychiatry, professionals must abolish their prejudices. Hearing voices will no longer mean an automatic diagnosis of schizophrenia or psychosis; societies and movements have been formed to study what it really means to hear voices. Here, Daniel Smith explores the place of voices in Western history, with a special focus on Joan of Arc, Socrates and Daniel Paul Schreber. Readers of Julian Jaynes' The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind |
 
|
might be interested in what Smith has to say.|
Title: The Fasting Girl: A True Victorian Medical Mystery Author: Michelle Stacey Publisher: Tarcher/Putnam 2002 ISBN: 1585421359
Stacey's take on Mollie focuses on her anorexia and its context in Victorian
America. Stacey based a lot of her book on Mollie Fancher, the Brooklyn Enigma: An Authentic Statement of Facts in the Life of Mary J. Fancher by A.H. Dailey (Brooklyn: Eagle Book Printing, 1894). This book is out of print. Click here to look for copies of Mollie Fancher through Advanced Book Exchange: One does occasionally turn up, usually going for about $75-100. Anthony Walsh has got a lengthy document on Mollie which includes a bit more about her other selves. The doctor who looked after her apparently documented them in some detail. The People's Almanac 2 has much more about Mollie's group, which you can read at Trivia Library: Mollie Fancher, the Brooklyn Enigma. |
 |
|
Title: The Stranger in the Mirror: Dissociation, the Hidden Epidemic Author: Marlene Steinberg Publisher: Cliff Street ISBN: 0060195649 Another in a recent series of books by professionals assuring us that dissociation is real and happens to everyone, and promoting the idea of the "dissociative spectrum" with, of course, multiplicity at the extreme end. And, of course, being multiple is still a disorder. The author seems to be a little out of touch with present-day realities -- she uses dissociation and multiplicity to explain why some people feel they are the opposite gender from their bodies, and to let us know that anyone who believes in reincarnation is delusional. Remember, DID is an identity disorder - they're trying to depoliticize it by telling us no one really has more than one person per body. The goal is to keep multiples as clients, just reshuffling the deck a little. |
 |
|
Title: Demystifying the Autistic Experience Author: William Stillman Publisher: Jessica Kingsley ISBN:1843107260 Reviews at Amazon say: "Presents autism in a positive light, and describes why we do things instead of dismissing us as uniformly defective and inappropriate." "He proves autism is not this wild unmanagable condition that requires massive intervention." Describes the reasons behind the things autistics do without being flowery or assuming autistics are all geniuses. Roguealleycat@amazon sez: "Some great points and people should read it, although he has some notions of respectful language that are certainly not universal to the autistic community." And, that the author "does not make it sound as if those of us who are happy with ourselves either lack insight or aren't autistic enough to appreciate how disabled we are." If you are interested in books by autistic authors, try Amanda Baggs' Autistic Authors Booklist.
|
 |
|
Title: The War of Desire and Technology at the Close of the Mechanical Age Author: Sandy Stone ISBN: 0-26-219362-0 By the Author of Violation and Virtuality. How the internet and other means of communication have undermined the established illusion of one-self-per-body. Go for it. |
 |
|
Title: The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness Author: Martha Stout Publisher: Viking ISBN: 0670894753 As far as we can tell, the real message of this book is that behavior we all thought was normal or merely idiosyncratic is actually symptomatic of a treatable mental disorder. Think about it: we've all heard that dissociation is a natural response (whether to trauma, or whatever). If that's the case, then why is modern psychiatry trying to cure it rather than merely observing it? It's wise to ask ourselves as we read this and other such books: Who benefits? If we accept the dissociation belief system -- particularly this New Wave variety which discounts multiplicity as just another dissociative delusion -- what do we get out of it? What does the doctor get out of it? |
 |
Title: Trance and Possession in Bali: A Window on Western Multiple
Personality, Possession Disorder, and Suicide
Author: Luh K. Suryani and Gordon D. Jensen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0-19-588610-0
A well-written, detailed but completely understandable exploration of possession trance, its relation to multiplicity, and their place in the healing rituals of traditional, indigenous cultures.
Click here to buy Trance and Possession in Bali through amazon.com
Selves in Bali The concept of self in Bali.
|
Title: The Myth of Mental Illness (Revised Edition, 1984) Author: Thomas Szasz Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0060911514 This book is forty years old (updated in '84) and is as relevant today as the day it came out. Szasz uses clear, simple language to expose the facts behind the stigmatization of those who are different. He insists that most of the things we call mental illnesses are merely variances in normal human behaviour, or normal emotional states like loneliness or insecurity that could be helped in ordinary ways. You may not agree with everything he says, but that's not why this book is listed here. |
 |
|
Title: Insanity: The Idea and Its Consequences Author: Thomas Szasz Publisher: Harper Collins ISBN: 0815604602 Szasz restates his claims, presents his findings and explains his theories in plain language. He even gives you a bit on why he uses plain language. This book may be a better introduction than "The Myth of Mental Illness" if you've never read Szasz before. His theme is always the same: what we term mental illness is, by and large, behaviour which is explicable and reasonable given the society in which we live. Society's vigorous repression (through drugs, electroshock, etc.) of those who are different has become a form of institutionalised hate crime. We have come to regard the mental health industry as a kind of religion, as the standard against which normalcy is measured. |
 |
|
Title: The Medicalization of Everyday Life Author: Thomas Szasz Publisher: Syracuse Univ. Press ISBN: 0815608675 Once more, Szasz takes a look at our lives and times and how the pharmaceutical industry, in cooperation with the mainstream media and the legal system, have formed a government of social control. Medical and health decisions are made for us, "for our own good", every day. Find out what the system is doing to you and your kids -- how much of your life can you take back? |
Title: William James on Exceptional Mental States
Editor: Eugene Taylor
Publisher: Amherst: Univ. of Massachusetts Press, 1984
ISBN: 087023451X
According to Robert H. Wozniak's page on William James, James didn't believe normal people had a single self -- that's an illusion, he thought. He lived at about the same time as Mollie Fancher and there is much more about him in The Passion of Ansel Bourne. This book consists of transcriptions of scholarly lectures by James in 1896, covering Dreams and Hypnotism, Automatism, Hysteria, Multiple Personality, Demoniacal Possession, Witchcraft, Degeneration, and Genius. "The first four talks establish James as the master of a modern dynamic psychology of the subconscious, while the remainder articulate the pathological working of the subconscious in the social sphere."
Click here to buy William James on Exceptional Mental States through amazon.com
Title: Mending Ourselves: Expressions of Healing and Self-Integration
Author: Edited by Lynn Wasnak
Publisher: Many Voices Press
ISBN: 0963727702
Click Here to buy Mending Ourselves
One of the very few books out there on life after the integration process. A series of short essays like Multiple Personality from the Inside Out and just as readable. If you are opting for integration, this one is highly recommended.
|
Title: Wounded Innocents Author: Richard Wexler Publisher: Prometheus, 1995 ISBN: 0-87975-936-4
"The war against child abuse has become a war against children. In the name of "child protection" innocent families are disrupted nearly two million times every year and thousands of children are needlessly torn from their parents and thrown into foster care--even as children in real danger are ignored. While the problem of child abuse is serious and real, journalist Richard Wexler charges that our solutions to the problem have actually made it worse--in fact, hurting the very children that they were intended to help." From the Lifting the Veil review. Read about the New York City Admin. for Children's Services and what they do to families in the name of "protecting the children".
|
 |
|
Title: First Person Plural Author: Cameron West Publisher: Hyperion 1998 It is another courageous healing story. It has aroused some controversy because of the relative ease with which he learned to communicate with his people once he realized they were there. This isn't unusual though, despite what you're told in some of those cheap dime novels. People reading this book and comparing it with their own MP experiences, remember that as Truddi Chase says no two MP households are alike, we all have different ways of communicating, perceiving the world, processing information, and different people handling different things for different purposes. West does in fact have a degree in psychology, but it is from the Association of Humanistic Psychology, not the standard APA, and he explains in the text that he worked for the degree in order to better understand multiplicity in general as well as his own condition. He is not a practicing therapist. Compulsive Reader's Coral Hull reviews First Person Plural
Cameron West's Website |
|
Title: A Rainbow for Patti
Author: Carol West
Publisher: Behavioral Science Center
ISBN: 0-938837-11-7
21 Dec 2006: The author says: "Contrary to most of the books published on Multiple Personality Disorder, A Rainbow for Patti is a gentle, non-threatenting introduction to this disorder. It is written at a child's level, and is only 45 about pages, with several illustrations done by child selves. It is designed for therapists to use in introducing the subject to clients, as well as to help family and friends of those with MPD to understand the disorder. It does not mention abuse, and is not frightening in any manner. It is also a heart-warming story of self-acceptance, hope and inner strength. "The book was professionallly published in 1993, but due to the publisher going out of business, I am now the distributor. I have more than 100 copies of the book, and they can be purchased by contacting me at az.curly.q @ hotmail . com. $14.95 includes S&H.
Title: The Multiple's Guide to Harmo