[Music] hi I'm Joan cartan Hansen thank you for joining us for this dialogue web extra we're talking with Robert oxam I'm asking you about your your autobiography a fractured mind um uh living with multiple personality disorder what let's take you back and I hate to have you do the 30 second recount of your entire life but let me let me ask you starting with this many people don't believe that this is a true disorder that this is a this is you know it's just something someone ising could you talk to us a little bit about what multiple personality disorder or Associated into identity uh is but it's interesting that you you raised it because people do doubt um and it makes it for those of us who suffer from multiple personality now called dissociative identity disorder um it's sort of the second abuse that we Face to have to defend ourselves my my wife who has been there uh throughout all of this gets ferociously angry uh at people who doubt it because she's lived with it for for two decades now but essentially what um MPD or did is is is a fracturing of one's identity because of uh vicious abuse that occurs usually in the first 3 or four years of life before one's identity is completely uh formed and it's it's very understandable I think if if you think back to that if you have a combination of acute sexual and physical uh and emotional abuse for child to feel that he or she is just worthless and therefore to create another identity of a good child who is worth worth something and it's an attempt to survive while you still keep the other identity there to be abused you actually split yourself into two parts so that uh so that you can psychically speaking survive uh this is something that happens to hundreds of thousands probably millions of people around the world but abuse is probably uh the most hidden uh horror that we face in our society so people don't talk about it they certainly don't write books about it uh well should talk about it if we look at even just the physical consequences of child abuse you know a child who's abused now far more likely to have heart problems far more likely to have diabetes far more likely to have struggle in their adult life it should make should surprise no one that there's also psychological aspects to to abuse anything we can do to understand uh just how important it is to recognize that this is not just a national problem it's a problem that occurs in local communities and in families and if it hasn't occurred in your family it's occurred to somebody who lives next door or down the street or whatever it's that prevalent and learning how to identifying identify it learning how uh caretakers can help identify it learning for people where people can turn for that kind of help is absolutely essential to dealing with it but I I think in the case of severe dissociation which did really is that instead of seeing it as something that is off the map that isn't understandable it's extremely understandable that you want to in the face of that abuse uh save yourself and then the other identities all emerge in a sort of reverse genealogy out of trying to survive trauma into trying to work in society work in a family uh work in a spiritual sense and typically uh the inside of the human brain therefore goes into separate parts but not because you have something genetically wrong with you but you're trying to survive and it often happens to people with relatively High IQs who probably would have done very well had it not been for something tragic that happened to them early on I think all of us have at had that experience of putting on a separate face they get into a difficult situation you kind of you know that's we say we put on another face to deal with the situation is that a little bit of what it's like that essentially um I I think you put it very well we all have different identities you know in a way I feel like this isn't something that should be seen as mysterious and you just can't say it could it could possibly happen we ought to say that inside us we have a a face that we see at home a face that you see at work a face that you see at play a face that you see when you've had too many drinks there's there are a lot of different faces and that that we are quite aware that we behave differently uh depending on the context in a sense if you were to take that capacity for multiple identities that we're aware of that we can sort of manage and and then add severe trauma to it perhaps you could understand that you could have those different parts or faces actually become different identities with different names and different skills and all of that it's a spectrum it's not like it's out of The Human Experience is just how bad the experience was early on and what it did to the identity process well in your case you've you have managed to sort of recombine to three separate how how does that I guess the question how does that work for you in a day it's a very first of all it requires therapy yeah and um right here in in in Boise we have a remarkable Dr zukerman Who's uh uh a key figure in dissociation therapy it requires somebody who can guide you um through the process to first of all know you're not crazy that there and secondly you've got to understand what originally happened to you and then uh move into a process where you say in my case 11 in personalities doesn't create a very good working arrangement and then you go through a process in which you suddenly you in a multiple sense suddenly find out enough about yourself you know why it happened and there's an incentive to go through and this is sort of it's both a delight to find out about yourself but also amazing to watch the inner identities themselves begin to listen to each other begin to instead of being separate parts of your brain think of it as sort of walls in your head and we're breaking through those walls and and through with a therapist help you can begin to make mergers so that composite personalities emerge and fewer numbers of identities are there and then the ability to function easily on the outside more easily on the outside is uh is part of the process I don't mean to we just discussed it in a minute and a half or two minutes uh it this can take 15 or 20 years well it's a fascinating book so I would encourage people to read the book if they're interested because it is it is an interesting Journey you wrote something that I thought was beautiful that you were three U let's see if I get get this right three uh separate personalities linked by a common soul that is the biggest thing of all um there are a few things I Came Upon um because I hadn't realized I'm not an expert in Psychology or psychoanalysis but it it struck me that the the key thing was not to create a single identity you know there's some things you get out of having different personalities in terms of special insights of looking at things in a sort of triangulated way I'm not kidding there are advantages to this I wouldn't recommend this to anyone but the but the um the fact of the matter is that what is Central to making it work more cohesively is a common set of values you can have different identities as long as they're operating on the same sort of value scheme and then when you consider you know theologians can argue about what the soul is but to me it's a kind of creative believing energy inside yourself that allows you to relate to others into to a larger order and if indeed there is a single if there's a consensus is the best way to look at you use committee terminology with inside of dissociatives but if there's a consensus about that soul and about those values you both have something that draws you through the therapy process and at the end of all of it remember you're not supposed to be in therapy all your life there's a purpose on the other end of it that you can put your mind to I found that since I got through um you never get through it but through the most intensive part of therapy that the world of Art and art Mak emerged in in my life that had never been there before and so there's a richness But ultimately whether whether it's somebody playing a musical instrument or somebody making art or somebody writing uh the creative Pursuits uh do require what in Black communities they call soul and what I'll call a soul um it's a very very important part of the experience well before I ask you about your artwork if someone is curious or feels that they need to reach out what do you advise them to do uh first of all most uh going to almost any individual therapists frequently they will know about somebody in the community sometimes you go to those who are in welfare work or within the clergy whatever that there's there's another place um there are um there are newsletters for people who have um severe dissociation and know they do one of them is called beautiful name many voices and um and um there are in uh a number of communities even self-help groups where people can talk with each other the key thing is there are a lot of doors to enter walk in one of those doors and and if you sense that you've got a member of a family if you've got a friend where there's clearly something that either they said it that there's been severe abuse or there's evidence of some kind of response that's going on in the mind that seems like it's a reaction to abuse don't walk around it you know look at it because at its worst these um these disorders related to abuse can can destroy one's sense of purpose and value and can lead to doing damage to yourself so so Reach Out watch out let me ask you about your artwork you have you had that is one thing you you went through music and and now you're sculpting right tell me about it um spent my life being a u outer life being a um a specialist on Asia and never being an artist never even think I could do it I love to go to museums but I couldn't do that and uh it turned out that for uh a couple of reasons I ended up in the last few years doing sculptures based on Chinese Scholars rocks a great tradition in China why why Scholars would have these beautiful objects for meditation taken from nature I've done the same thing with wood Driftwood but I knew about the Chinese tradition so that was something that dragged me into it I've also been a tinkerer all my life I you know I like to work around houses and I'm the sort of person that you know fixes things and come up with Solutions lo and behold being a sculptor A lot lot of it is not great aesthetic insights a lot of is just hard work and knowing what tools to use but I think the most important thing is it relates to the story we're talking about here and that is when one is uh dissociated it doesn't mean you can't function on the outside world many people have uh jobs and do relatively well but you're not function functioning as well as you could you don't have all the the cylinders firing and in the artwork when I do it I can work from dawn to dusk I'm surprised that people call it artw workk it's it's a kick and it sounds unusual to say the whole of me is involved in it but it really is the first time in my life where I can work from dawn to dusk and can't wait to get up the next morning to do it so it's important as therapy I I hope I know that people are enjoying it his expression because I'm into my fifth exhibition now but uh most of all I think it's uh important to note that there are a lot of people who have this disorder who have a creative site to side to them so I've heard about other people in music I've seen examples of other artists uh you look at the world differently as a as a result of having multiple identities a most gra that's the definition of many great artists they they can look at the world differently and see they can look at the world differently and um you know it's uh I don't know if we have a minute for a story after a very poignant thing happened to me after 911 in New York uh a friend of mine uh was on a board doing South Manhattan Redevelopment on the same board was a woman who was a 9911 widow she lost her husband and my friend said how are the kids doing and she said the older one's not doing too well but the the younger one's doing pretty well by reading and I took him to the Barnes & Noble the other day and he found this book called The fractured mind I an 11year old reading fractured mind and a long story short we had lunch together a little boy who look a little like Harry Potter with a little bow tie and he asked me the best question that anybody has asked until today these are wonderful questions too but but but he looked at me right in the eyes and said look I read your book I got to the end and he said Gee there are things you can do they're a little special if you fight your way through this why do you call it multiple personality disorder and you suddenly realize in that is someone who leapt to see in what we see as a problem it's the solution that you take to the problem that can give you a sense of identity and specialness and so I would just say to you know anybody who's faced a world of trauma going through the therapy and coming out on the other side uh you may want to do it not just to try to become normal but to find out your specialness in the process and to me that's that's what the Art's all about well thank you so for running out of time I appreciate you taking time to talk with this thank you and thank you for joining us for this dialogue web extra [Music]