The Myth of Sanity: Divided Consciousness and the Promise of Awareness

Martha Stout

Feb 2002 · Kuthengiswe ngu-Penguin

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Why does a gifted psychiatrist suddenly begin to torment his own beloved wife? How can a ninety-pound woman carry a massive air conditioner to the second floor of her home, install it in a window unassisted, and then not remember how it got there? Why would a brilliant feminist law student ask her fiancé to treat her like a helpless little girl? How can an ordinary, violence-fearing businessman once have been a gun-packing vigilante prowling the crime districts for a fight?

A startling new study in human consciousness, The Myth of Sanity is a landmark book about forgotten trauma, dissociated mental states, and multiple personality in everyday life. In its groundbreaking analysis of childhood trauma and dissociation and their far-reaching implications in adult life, it reveals that moderate dissociation is a normal mental reaction to pain and that even the most extreme dissociative reaction-multiple personality-is more common than we think. Through astonishing stories of people whose lives have been shattered by trauma and then remade, The Myth of Sanity shows us how to recognize these altered mental states in friends and family, even in ourselves.

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Martha Stout, Ph.D., served on the faculty in psychology in the department of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School for more than twenty-five years and was a clinical associate at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She practiced as a clinical psychologist specializing in recovery from psychological trauma and PTSD. Dr. Stout has taught psychology at the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York, the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology, and Wellesley College. She is the author of, among numerous other publications, The Sociopath Next Door, The Paranoia Switch, and The Myth of Sanity.