Robert B. Oxnam: An American Novelist and China Scholar with an Autobiography about His Life with Multiple Personality Disorder

In 1989, Robert B. Oxnam (1942- ), an eminent Asia Studies scholar, published the first of his two novels (1).

In 1990, he was diagnosed as having multiple personality disorder.

Note: Normal multiple personality, which is relatively common—I estimate that it occurs in 90% of novelists and 30% of the general public—does not need treatment. In contrast, multiple personality disorder, found in 1.5% of the general public (according to DSM-5), needs psychotherapy, due to distress and dysfunction. Normal multiple personality and multiple personality disorder have nothing to do with schizophrenia and are not psychoses.

In 2005, Oxnam published an autobiography about his life with multiple personality disorder (2), which was reviewed in The New York Times and featured on the CBS television news magazine, “60 Minutes.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/01/arts/01oxna.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0

Autobiography Mentions Novel

“Cinnabar was a mystery thriller featuring an unsuspecting Columbia University professor who inherits a mysterious red lacquer box from his dead wife that lures him into the swirling world of modern China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. 

“It seemed like a good idea—a mental break from my rigorous professional life and yet another way to bring China alive in an unconventional fashion—but, in retrospect, I have almost no memory of how the book emerged. All I remember is sitting down at the computer, over a few vacation periods and some long weekends, and transcribing what already seemed to be written. So Cinnabar was composed in a strange stupor, perhaps a prolonged series of my mysterious blank periods. At the time, it seemed odd, but not alarming.

“Nothing prepared me for the bombshells when the book reached the market. The reviews were lukewarm to outright hostile. Cinnabar was an embarrassing bomb in spite of my best intentions” (2, p. 37-38).

Gratuitous Multiple Personality

The novel, written before Oxnam was diagnosed, manifests its author’s multiple personality in the way that its caucasian American protagonist is given dual—American and Chinese—identities. This duality, which includes resorting to plastic surgery, is rationalized as a disguise to evade murderous villains. But the villains are not fooled by the disguise for even a second. So the dual identity was really unnecessary. It is gratuitous.

Gratuitous multiple personality in a novel—even if it is only metaphorical multiple personality, as here—may reflect the novelist’s own multiple personality. In this case, the novelist’s multiple personality is confirmed by his autobiography.

1. Robert B. Oxnam. Cinnabar: A Novel of China. New York, St. Martin’s Press, 1989.

2. Robert B. Oxnam. A Fractured Mind: My Life with Multiple Personality Disorder. New York, Hyperion, 2005.