The Minds of Billy Milligan is not a new book. The book was released a year after I was born and described the life of Billy Milligan - the first person to be acquitted by the insanity defense due to multiple personality disorder. I'm not sure when I came across this book and realized I wanted to read. I do know that it was difficult to procure. While some/many books can be found as an electronic copy with Libby, nearly all others have a paper copy in the library. Unfortunately, I couldn't find a paper copy in the local library either! So, to eBay, where I found a quite old paperback copy. This was both great and awful. On a positive, finally got a copy; the negative - it was about 8 point font and had to pick up reading glasses for the first time in my life. After all that, I did enjoy the book.
As I mentioned above, this book is about Billy and his 24 (yes, 24!) different personalities. Of course, there is some dispute about whether each or any of these are real. Unfortunately, Billy and/or these other personalities committed some burglaries and rapes which put him on trail and in jail and brought his condition out to the public.
The book is interestingly partitioned. In three parts, it begins with the trail phase and eventual decision about his sentence to a mental hospital. Then, it spends the majority of the book, recounting Billy's childhood all the way through the personalties taken over and eventual crimes. The final focus of the book was about Billy's time after sentencing going between mental hospitals while both sides appealed his case.
While I found the book quite interesting, Billy's timeline in the book ended only a few years after he was sentenced (when the book was published). Knowing there was probably much more to his story (there was), I did a pretty deep dive on the rest of his life. There is an uneven and somewhat interesting 4 episode docuseries on Netflix about him (bizarre editing, only need to watch the last two episodes).
What I've not explored in this review (because it's both complicated and controversial) is how incredible, sad, and bizarre Billy's case of multiple personality disorder (now classified as disassociate personality disorder) truly is. I mean, the guy had 24 different people supposedly living in his head; besides being hard enough to even keep track of that many, the way he seemed to truly change when each one of them took over the "spotlight" was like nothing else I ever read.
It's hard to know if this particular book would appeal to the average reader. While incredibly fascinating, it's quite long and can be a slog. While hard to believe, it's also quite sad and evident who much trauma and abuse can really change a person. Perhaps check out an article or video about Billy and decide if you want to go much deeper before jumping in.
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