When the Other Woman Is His Mother: Book One/Boys As Incest Victims and Male Multiple Personality Disorder/for Partners and Professionals [Paperback]

It's been about 15 years since I read this book, and it was a real eye opener, almost a life saver then because I didn't know very much about what 'mental illness' is. But I was in therapy, like the author my marriage was in turmoil, somewhat akin to the kind of 'War of the Roses' situation, where both parties want the same thing.
Until I'd read the book it did not occur to me that the problem really was a separate personality that lived, undetected within my husband. When Ms. Brodie described the slow process that led to her and her husband being told he had a multiple personality, I'd had some experiences of my own, IT was possible to begin to realize there was a completely different 'person' within him, that spoke to me , did things I could see then later said hadn't happened or been said in my husband. I had been told by that hidden person to do things without suspecting it lived apart from the 'normal man' within my husband. When a psychiatrist finally told me I wasn't the one that had a serious problem it was a mercy to be told that I was 'confused' because I didn't know my husband had a seriously different mindset than mine and also that he had 'memory problems'.
And that this particular problem was basically untreatable unless the individual is willing to undergo a lot of reality checking and extensive self observation. There are those who can't see they need to do that. Someone else may get therapy instead.

A few times I'd noticed he seemed to 'forget' something he'd just said and at times even told me I imagined things, that I was hallucinating when I repeated back something I'd recently heard him say. (which I began to do.) Then my sister in law mentioned one day that her husband often 'forgot' what he'd said. And at times he'd told her she was imagining he'd said things that he hadn't said and he got very angry. It wasn't until I read this book that the idea of a separate person, a detached mindset began to take root in my thinking. It caused me to question right away some things he said, and then I found out that within a few seconds there was no memory of the immediate past.
There are authors that have written about why separate personalities develop but I believe nobody can be certain about that. It is important to know that disassociation or multiple personalities or something like that, can be causing the anguish and tragedy that cause so many problems in marriage and in families.

I recommend this book whole heartedly even though we get psychological information everywhere now, it was a new information to me. Also I'm not sure mental 'illness' is understood even now. Having read more myself about what a 'normal' life is, and how important early life experience is to achieving it I suggest reading some older books that are usually easy to find now.
The Re-creating of the Individual by Beatrice Hinkle (I found the 1923 version on Amazon, excellent book, an encyclopedia of knowledge from a female mind) and C. G. Jung's Psychology of The Unconscious which has an introduction by Beatrice Hinkle. What ever mental illness really is, information is available to the persons that are willing to let go of those 'hidden persons' within them. At this point I realize I had one myself. It was interacting with the invisible persons within others more than I suspected. This is a detailed, very much personalized review, it may help someone.

Theodore Reik wrote that no studies have been done of the effects of one person's unconsciousness on that of another. It may be that is what happens already. I recommend his Listening With the Third Ear too. Amazon has made it so easy to find books that were once very nearly impossible to find.

not easy material to read but you should if you want to understand the socalled mother-sons.

A well-researched and well-written book. My congratulations go out to the author for giving us this particular perspective on what is clearly a very controversial topic. Admittedly, most people don't respond well to relationships that cross over culturally accepted boundaries - the limits we have set for ourselves for a variety of social reasons.

What I did not see in this book was an acknowledgement and appreciation for those of us who operate quite comfortably well beyond any of these boundaries. In these cases our sense of personal identity is not lost by virtue of the fact that our identities exist quite independently of any contemporary human constructs.

The objective mind will recognize this as the basis of all of the currently reported pathologies which result from the development of relationships which are deemed unorthodox or unconventional or even perverse. With what social construct and personal characterization does the individual identify? That is to say, does the fact that you're wearing the "son" costume preclude any possibility of enjoying a special relationship with the person who is wearing the "mom" costume? Furthermore, if "mom" decides she wants to be a bit demanding and domineering, what's to prevent us from having a bit of fun with that, too? We'll eventually outgrow the need to indulge that drama just as easily as we outgrow an old pair of jeans. They just won't fit anymore. Oversimplified, perhaps, but accurate.

The real problem here would appear to be not as much in the activities within the relationship itself as in their contrariness to who we have been told we are and how it is we have been told to behave within that framework. It is this internal contradiction which creates the cognitive dissonance manifesting in feelings of anger, shame and guilt.

The problem therefore exists not in any absolute reality, but only in the individual's relative mental environment. I hope this helps those who are suffering the effects of such an experience.

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