Robert Oxnam

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Robert Bromley Oxnam is a China scholar and former president of the Asia Society. He ran the Society for more than a decade, and led financial-cultural tours of China for Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, and former U.S. President George H. W. Bush. He also spent time on the Board of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. He became well-known in the public media after his 2005 autobiography, A Fractured Mind, in which he revealed that he suffers from dissociative identity disorder.

1 Career
2 Problems
3 Dissociative identity disorder
4 Diagnosis
5 See also
6 References

[edit] Career

After an academic career as a China scholar, Oxnam presided over the Asia Society – the leading sponsor of cultural, educational and artistic contact between the United States and Asia – from 1981 to 1992.^[1] He was frequently tapped by political leaders to help them figure out how to deal with the Chinese due to political unrest in China in the late 1980s. He accompanied former U.S. President George H. W. Bush as an on-the-ground adviser on a goodwill trip to China in the late 1990s.^[2]

[edit] Problems

In the 1980s, he suffered from alcoholism and bulimia. He flew into frequent, irrational rages, and his first marriage soon fell apart. He saw a psychiatrist, but his problems – including blackouts – continued. According to his autobiography, several nights a week he performed what he calls his addiction ritual. "It required," Oxnam writes, "two packs of cigarettes, Polish sausage, a gallon of ice cream, a two-pound bag of peanuts, a bottle of scotch, and a pornographic movie on the VCR."^[3]

He would wake up with burns and scratches on his body, but had no idea what had caused them. He would find himself hanging around Grand Central Station in New York City, lost in the crowds in a kind of trance, and he would hear voices.

[edit] Dissociative identity disorder

And then in 1990, one day, what seemed like seconds after he had begun a session with his psychiatrist, Dr. Jeffrey Smith, the doctor informed Oxnam that their time was up. Smith said: "I spent this past fifty minutes talking with ... Tommy. He's full of anger. And he's inside of you."^[3] Oxnam asked: "Tommy? Who's Tommy?”.^[2] In short, Smith explained, Oxnam was suffering from dissociative identity disorder.^[3]

He had 11 independent identities--he would eventually discover--some old, some young, some male, some female, many of them known to one another but not to the "real" Robert Oxnam.^[3] Among them were 'Tommy', the angry adolescent, the 'Witch', a frightening presence, and 'Bobby', the troubled young Rollerblader.^[2]

After listening to Smith, Oxnam was shocked. Eventually he accepted the diagnosis, and Smith began teasing out the hidden personalities, helping Oxnam discover them one by one.^[3]

Oxnam went about his business at the Asia Society, meeting and greeting the Dalai Lama and other dignitaries, and giving no hint of his private problems.^[2]

He also realized the voices he heard belonged to his several personalities.^[2]

In 1991, as Oxnam was hosting a dinner for former U.S. President George H. W. Bush, the chatter inside his head was relentless. He wanted all of his personalities to be quiet and remembers thinking "Just be quiet, let me do this. We'll have the event, everything will be fine and then you can speak up."^[2] The talking continued right through the President's speech and most of it was 'Bobby.' He remembers 'Bobby' telling him, "This is boring," and "Aw, that's cool. Look at the Secret Service people up in the balcony."^[2]

Vishakha Desai, an Asia scholar, married Oxnam soon after 'Bobby' and the other personalities revealed themselves.^[2]

[edit] Diagnosis

Oxnam was physically, emotionally and sexually abused as a young child. According to experts on dissociative identity disorder, childhood abuse is often the reason behind multiple personalities.^[4]

Although dissociative identity disorder has an entry in psychiatry's official manual, the DSM-IV, it is highly controversial. According to Joe Scroppo, a clinical psychologist and director of North Shore University Hospital's Forensic Psychiatry Program in Manhasset, New York, "I believe he believes he had all those separate personalities, but I don't think that's necessarily the way it is." According to Scroppo, therapists use multiple personality as a metaphor for a patient's mental state, and then both the patient and therapist begin to mistake the metaphor for reality.^[4]

In 2005, Oxnam published his autobiography, A Fractured Mind, in which he revealed the secret lives he led.