Billy Milligan
Encyclopedia : B : BI : BIL : Billy Milligan
William Stanley Milligan (born 1955) was the subject of a highly publicised court case in the state of Ohio in the late 1970s. After having committed several felonies including armed robbery, he was arrested for a series of rapes on the Ohio State University campus. In the course of preparing his defense, public defenders determined that Milligan had multiple personality disorder. Examination by psychiatrists suggested that two of Milligan's 24 selves had committed the crimes without the others becoming aware of it. Milligan pleaded an insanity defense, the first multiple to do so. He was sent to a series of state-run mental hospitals, such as the Athens Lunatic Asylum, where, by his report, he received very little help. While he was in these hospitals, Milligan displayed 23 "selves." Among these were Arthur, a prim and proper Englishman, Allen, a con man and manipulator, Ragen Vadascovinich, a Yugoslavian communist who had committed the robberies in a kind of Robin Hood spirit, and Adalana, a nineteen-year-old Lesbian who craved affection.
Finally Milligan received treatment from Dr. David Caul, who convinced him that his "selves" could voluntarily integrate at will. However, when Milligan maintained this mindset for any protracted length of time, his "selves" claimed that talents they possessed as individuals were diminished. Milligan still refers to this situation with the words "The whole was less than the sum of the parts." Caul claimed he taught Milligan's "selves" how to communicate with one another. Caul's famous quote on treating multiples is "It seems to me that after treatment you want a functional unit, be it a corporation, a partnership, or a one-owner business."
Released in 1988 after a decade in mental hospitals, Milligan now lives in California where he owns Stormy Life Productions and makes films. He still claims to be multiple. He is supervising a film about his life, The Crowded Room. As of 2006, this film is still in development.
Daniel Keyes authored a biography called The Minds of Billy Milligan. Another book by Keyes, The Milligan Wars, has been published in Japan, but not yet in the United States, at first due to Milligan's ongoing lawsuit against the State of Ohio for the allegedly inadequate treatment he received in Ohio facilities. The book will be published when the film is released.
External links
- [The Minds of Billy Milligan] Best-selling book by Daniel Keyes.
- [Daniel Keyes] Homepage of the author of Minds of Billy Milligan and Milligan Wars.
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.