Through psychotherapy, recounted in a memoir, he learned that he had 11 personalities, or fractured parts of his identity. One of them told of childhood abuse.
Robert B. Oxnam, an eminent China scholar who learned through psychotherapy that his years of erratic behavior could be explained by the torment of having multiple personalities, died on April 18 at his home in Greenport, N.Y., on the North Fork of Long Island. He was 81.
His wife, Vishakha Desai, said the cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease.
In the 1ate 1980s, Dr. Oxnam was president of the Asia Society, a television commentator and an accomplished sailor. His psyche, however, was exceedingly frail. He had myriad problems, including intermittent rages, bulimia, memory blackouts and depression. But it was for excessive drinking that he first sought treatment, from Dr. Jeffery Smith, a psychiatrist.
The first personality to emerge in that therapy was Tommy, an angry boy, followed by others, like Bobby, an impish teenager, and Baby, who revealed what appeared to have been abuse when Dr. Oxnam was very young.
In his 2005 book, “A Fractured Mind: My Life With Multiple Personality Disorder,” Dr. Oxnam recalled the session when Tommy first spoke to Dr. Smith. All that Dr. Oxnam could remember from the 50-minute session, he wrote, was telling the psychiatrist that he didn’t think the therapy was working for him. But Dr. Smith told him that he had been speaking to Tommy all that time.
“He’s full of anger,” Dr. Smith told him. “And he’s inside you.”
“You’re kidding?” Dr. Oxnam replied.
His 11 personalities took up residence inside Dr. Oxnam’s brain and acted out in real life, and nearly all appeared during therapy with Dr. Smith. Wanda had a Buddhist-like presence who was once submerged in the cruel personality known as the Witch. Bobby, who loved Rollerblading with bottles balanced on his head, had an affair with a young woman, a revelation that startled Dr. Oxnam and his wife.
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