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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"New Wave" book on DID, November 19, 2007
This review is from: I Am More Than One: How Women with Dissociative Identity Disorder Have Found Success in Life and Work (Paperback)
Books on DID seem to fall into several categories. "My Particularly Strange Life with DID" is one sort, and "One Therapist's Harrowing and Slightly Creepy Experience with a DID Client" is another. Both these sorts of books, while educational, tend to stress the more sensationalistic aspects of DID. If this is the sort of book you are looking for, this is likely *not* the book for you.
Instead our author investigates the concept that people with DID can indeed lead functional lives in the world and in the professional workplace, and shows us how, often with the invaluable assistance of their alters, they go about dong so. As a result of this mission, she mindfully foregoes the gory details of the childhood abuse that other books often stress, and instead concentrates on how, with the help of their inners, her professionally successful interviewees manage to make their way through the world in the here and now.
One thing worth noting : The folks in this book have all had extensive therapy and as a result have come a long long way down the path toward resolving the issues that brough about their DID in the first place. As a result, it would not be fair to say that this book presents an accurate overview of the situation that all people with DID find themselves in. Many people have not come as far as those in this book, and are still in the midst of their struggles.
However, through illustrating how such people can indeed live healthy professional lives through developing a cooperative ability to live in harmony with their inner families, this book places itself squarely in the middle of a developing "New Wave" of thinking on the subject of multiple personalities. A new mode of thinking that is begining to frame alter personalities in a considerably more positive light than in the past, and as worthy personal resources that, given the choice, many people with DID would not choose to do without.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An honest and respectful view of Dissociative Identity Disorder, June 5, 2007
This review is from: I Am More Than One: How Women with Dissociative Identity Disorder Have Found Success in Life and Work (Paperback)
In her new book, I Am More Than One, Jane Hyman takes on and succeeds at a difficult task, one which few authors manage to accomplish: communicating to her readers the deep respect with which she holds the women she interviews, even though their experiences are so foreign to her. It is clear from the beginning that Jane wants us to understand these women's experiences from their own perspectives, without denying the clinical descriptions of their illness. The stories in this book are riveting; the women are sharply and almost affectionately drawn, but as much as possible Jane "gets out of the way" of her subjects. Most chapters focus on a theme such as work, family, or relationships, but my favorite is a chapter that plunges us into the life of one woman in her own words, without an attempt to relate her to the others in the book.
This book has much in common with others Jane has written. Each treats its subjects with the same repect and sincere desire to understand -- and to pass that understanding on to the reader. They are not meant to be self-help books; rather she leaves the reader to interpret the stories herself and decide what is relevant to her -- if anything. In particular, Women Living with Self-Injury,[[ASIN:1566397219 Women Living With Self-Injury] the predecessor to this book, shares many of the same engaging qualities of I Am More Than One; ]I recommend reading it for more of the same honest look at topics that are seldom discussed in books, magazines or TV shows.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Strength-based research--Brava!, May 21, 2007
This review is from: I Am More Than One: How Women with Dissociative Identity Disorder Have Found Success in Life and Work (Paperback)
Jane Hyman is a health writer (see "Our Bodies, Ourselves") who approaches the complexities of so-called mulitple personality from a perspective of health rather than pathology. She allows the women in this book to define their own lives rather than attempting to diagnose or label them. And there are many lives at stake here, for each of the women leads a number of seemingly separated existences, mostly developed in response to trauma during their childhoods. What I admire most about Jane Hyman's work is that she tells their stories and leaves the judgments of their stories to the reader.
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