Day Breaks Over Dharamsala: A Memoir of Life Lost and Found

By Janet Thomas

(Excerpt from the first chapter.)
I do bear one visible scar. It’s four inches long and reaches down the inside of my left forearm. On my left hand are five-year old fingers and a thumb that does not bend. There is not much feeling in this hand. It is a hand that is always cold, always numb, always looked after by my other hand–the right one, the one that writes, that does everything. “The scar is real,” it writes. It is a huge scar. It is connected to medical experiments and electric shocks to see if the severed nerve would grow, and electric shocks to make sure I didn’t remember the electric shocks. And shocks to obliterate the memory of the sexual exploitation, the manipulation of my mind, and the banishment of my self to a place of hiding so profound it would take me fifty years to get her back.
So, if I don’t “remember” being cut, does it make the scar unreal? This is what I would ask those who think recovered memory is a hoax, that there is only truth in the literal and sequential naming of memory and recognition. The real truth is that the scar on my arm is of little consequence. But the reasons it is there scared and scarred the very soul out of me. My five year old self lives in my five year old fingers. It is a hand I hold dear. A hand that tells me the truth and always holds me accountable to what it knows.

A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder

Author: Robert B. Oxnam

(Publisher’s note) As a child Oxnam worried about how the fractured Humpty-Dumpty could be fixed. This nursery rhyme later became a metaphor for his “fractured mind.” Oxnam was outwardly a successful China scholar and president of the Asia Society. Inwardly, however, he struggled with self-doubt and inadequacy, blackouts and alcoholism. He sought treatment from psychiatrist Jeffrey Smith, who, during a session in 1990, found that Oxnam’s problem was not alcoholism but multiple personality disorder when Tommy, an angry boy, emerged as the first of Oxnam’s alternate personalities.

First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple

By Dr. Cameron West

(Publisher’s note) West, a psychologist, relates a deeply painful narrative of his battle with dissociative identity disorder (DID). He describes the horrors he endured, both mental and physical, as a child who was grossly abused by his mother, attributing the fragmentation of his adult life to these appalling experiences and telling how his long, happy marriage and family relationships were nearly ruined by the effects of DID. The book is not entirely dark; it provides hope and encouragement to DID victims and suggests how they can be helped through the support and understanding of others. It’s also a practical guide for future clinicians, offering insight into a perplexing condition.

The Flock: The Autobiography of a Multiple Personality

Author: Joan Frances Casey, with Lynn Wilson

(Publisher’s note) In this extraordinary, convincing account of her psychological fragmentation and arduous journey toward wholeness, the pseudonymous Casey displays the impulse toward health that seems a driving force of nature. She begins her story, with all names and locations changed, at the University of Chicago, where, as a graduate student, she sought counseling in 1981. Unlike Casey’s previous experiences of quick-fix therapy, this time the psychotherapist, Wilson, proved a sensitive listener.

When Rabbit Howls

By Truddi Chase and Robert A. Phillips

(Publisher’s note) Phillips, a Washington, D.C., therapist, explains that “The Troops” are the multiple personalities approximately 80 men and women of the pseudonymous Truddi Chase, who first consulted him in 1980. He further maintains that the patient, a successful businesswoman now in her 50s, has been “asleep” since she was raped at the age of two by her stepfather, who continued to sexually abuse her for 14 years. The cluster of personalities, speaking through a troop member dubbed the “Recorder,” talk about their suffering for the primary victim who, it is also revealed, was mistreated by her mother as well. There are sensational episodes described by beings identified as social Alvira, hard Nails, alert Gatekeeper and others. Although the novelistic overtones in the text strain credibility, the book nonetheless proves to be a convincing, affecting case study. Author Tour.
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.

All of Me 

By Kim Noble

Kim Noble is an accomplished artist whose work has been exhibited around the world. She is a mother with a 13-year-old daughter. She is a bubbly and vivacious woman. To meet her you wouldn’t think anything was wrong. But when Kim was younger than five years old, her personality splintered and fractured. In 1995 she was finally diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) which has been described as a creative way to cope with unbearable pain. Now her body plays host to more than 20 different personalities, or ‘alters’.

 

Unshackled: A Survivor’s Story of Mind Control

By Kathleen Sullivan

The indictment in these pages is a Paean to survival…its stunning revelations must be acted upon – NOW. — Gordon Thomas

Secret Weapons : Two Sisters’ Terrifying True Story of Sex, Spies and Sabotage

By Cheryl and Lynn Hersha with Dale Griffis, Ph.D., and Ted Schwarz

(Publisher’s note) For the first time publicly, two sisters tell their incredible true story of a childhood filled with torture, rape and brainwashing at the hands of the intelligence community to turn them into the perfect spy/soldiers.