As someone with "DID Lite" (I have an "inner community of 18 alters, or voices, but I have not lost time, the dividing line between "heavy" and "lite" dissociative competencies), I found Oxnam's book to be quite fascinating, and I am glad it joins the scant literature on the subject. I am also grateful that he avoided the focus on obsessive detail about the specifics of physical and sexual trauma; it goes without saying that those of us with this diagnosis have sustained trauma well beyond the "normative". Morever, the bio of a professionally successful male contravenes the usual assumption, as Miller notes, of DID as being the expression of relatively "helpless" women (Sybl, Eve) so completely popularized in the media. I am successful in my profession, where I have carved a reputation of some merit and minor noteriety, I note, have been happily married for over twenty years and am the loving stepfather to a now-grownt son. And, as Oxnam did, I come from am 'acceptable" family where "this sort of thing simply does not happen" - it still being the steriotype that sexual abuse occurs only to poor and unwashed, not those from gilded addresses and families of documented pedigrees.

Miller's review is rightfully sceptical, but has several moments of naievete that I cannot help but note. She suggests that DID may be an expression of a certain kind of rigid personality in conjunction with the "right" therapist, a concept that I'm afraid does not "test" emperically. In fact, the reverse is true; those of us with this diagnosis tend to be highly creative, quite bright and more than passingly intense. I note that my therapist has suggested that, without DID as a coping mechanism, I would have sustained a psychotic break as a child, and ended up with a highly marginalized capacity to function.

Miller touches on the issue of the "believability" of the diagnosis, and notes the hysteria on the subject about a decade ago. The public hysteria about this diagnosis and its (potential) prevalance is driven, I fear, by a continued deeply embedded cultural denial in the relatively common presence of sexual abuse in our culture. Frankly, my emperical experience in the "recovery community" in which I travel is that DID (both "heavy" and "lite") is far, far more common than most clinicians are willing to believe or accept. Thus, I veiw the debates about the prevalance of DID with some personal wry amusement.....

My own journey has caused me to venture through four therapists including a (worthless) classic psychoanalytic process (five days a week) that was considered the most elegant therapy availabe in the early '70's when some of my emotional distress presented itself. Currently, I am now working with a brilliant trauma therapist, with whom, using EMDR as a facilitative tool, I can return to the point of memory, determine the point of origin of an alter, and begin the process of assimilation. Oxnam's book does not dwell on that aspect of the process; I find assimilation to be quite joyful as an experince.

Oxnam's book and Miller's valient effort at a thoughtful review are wonderful, if flawed, contributions. FOr those of us who continue to function, daily, with this operational system in place as we strive to heal, the book validates the pragmatic aspects and demystifies the process for others. Not for me - my own path is well-defined, I confess. But it is nice to have company in the published press that goes beyond the hysterically saturated simplistic accounts of celluloid documentations such as "Sybl" and All about Eve".

Ric