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The Minds of Billy Milligan

By Daniel Keyes

(52)

| Mass Market Paperback | 9780553263817

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5 Reviews

3 people find this helpful

a very good book... kinda chilling tho. If you are interested in psychology and DID, i'd recommend it. To me, it doesn't matter if the book is fictional or not, it's still an interesting read. side note, i'd also recommend flowers for algernon by daniel keyes. Every one in my highschool (or junior h ... (continue)

a very good book... kinda chilling tho. If you are interested in psychology and DID, i'd recommend it. To me, it doesn't matter if the book is fictional or not, it's still an interesting read. side note, i'd also recommend flowers for algernon by daniel keyes. Every one in my highschool (or junior high, i forgot) had to read it for english class and 99.9% of them loved it.

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ahka said on Jun 10, 2008 | Add your feedback

1 person find this helpful

*** This comment contains spoilers! ***

Billy Milligan has had a very hard life rarely ever catching a break. When he was finally getting the help he needed the court system ripped him out of that environment and stuck him in the worst possible place. A maximum security mental facility where they drugged, & beat him. They did this becaus ... (continue)

Billy Milligan has had a very hard life rarely ever catching a break. When he was finally getting the help he needed the court system ripped him out of that environment and stuck him in the worst possible place. A maximum security mental facility where they drugged, & beat him. They did this because they simply didn't believe in his illness.
There have been studies that have shown that brains of MPD's show different brain waves than those who don't. In addition, if these test are run while different personalities are in place the brains waves appear to be from two entirely different people.
When Billy was at his worst the foreign personalities didn't even speak English which is something I found to be fascinating.
It's hard to imagine that someone like Milligans step father, Chalimar Milligan, who so cruelly abused Billy, can go through life without recourse while Billy spends his entire life suffering and being abused when it all started with Chalimar. It's just so unfair.

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Angie said on Mar 11, 2008 | Add your feedback

My thoughts

This was an interesting book about someone who learned that he was rarely in charge of his actions. One scene that stuck in my mind was when "Phillip" decided to go to New York and "David" came forward and couldn't carry the weight of the duffel bag.

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krin5292 said on Nov 15, 2011 | Add your feedback

it affected my mental for quite sometime after reading it, but i really loved it. Try to believe in everyone.

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Sh6wn said on Mar 3, 2010 | Add your feedback

This book drowns me both physically and mentally. It's a long thick book with tiny words packed on decaying yellow pages. However, I just couldn't let go once I was exposed to the world of Billy Milligan.
It's my first time reading about Multiple Personality, learning the details of how one p ... (continue)

This book drowns me both physically and mentally. It's a long thick book with tiny words packed on decaying yellow pages. However, I just couldn't let go once I was exposed to the world of Billy Milligan.
It's my first time reading about Multiple Personality, learning the details of how one personality alters to another one, how they communicate with each other and cope with responses to their strange behavior from the outside world. What's more important is the way psychiatrists gained confidence and cooperation from the patient and tried to fuse the different personalities into one. It's seemingly a marathon battle which the patient is mentally fragile and easily unfuses when there's pressure from the outside. But it highlights the significance of a caring heart with love, patience and understanding. The book has pointed out that this quality outweighs the effects of medication and therapies.
Another insight I've gained from the story of Billy is the cruelness and selfishness of our society. Billy was once posted threat to the society as he has raped 3 women, but the crimes were committed when he was insane and seriously mentally ill. However, the society didn't give him a chance to lead an ordinary life during his therapy and he wasn't even respected as a patient in the mental health hospital. 2 lines deeply move me written by Billy when he was constantly physically abused by the staff in hospital: We know that a world without pain is a world without feeling..... But a world without feeling is a world without pain........ He once regained his trust on people by the loving hearts of the psychiatrists in Athens, but desperately abandoned and edged out by the media and people in the community. Therefore, he chose to stop communicating with the outer world and numb himself in order not to experience the sorrow. Such vulnerability wasn't given empathy or care...... The media just pointed their fingers on the superficial criminal and dramatized the whole incident. It's so sad that there's no one digging out the cause of Billy's mental illness and his reason of committing those crimes....... His stepfather's insane abuse was neglected and Billy was brought to the spot to bear all the cost and pain........ It's sadder that our society nowadays still carries out the same practice. The media always accuses the superficial sinner, not criticizes the one behind the scene and presents the true story to the public.

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Bus Reader said on Oct 28, 2009 | Add your feedback