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pluralstories“Mental illness is often in the eye of the beholder. Too often on this PLANET it refers to those who think and act differently from the majority.”
Blurb: In 1990, a psychiatrist at a mental hospital in Manhattan ends up overseeing the case of prot, a man who insists he's an alien from the planet K-PAX. When the shrink discovers that prot is the headmate of a man in bad shape and also will be returning home to K-PAX soon, the race is on to figure out what happened. In the process, anarchist prot ends up changing the lives of patients, doctors, and others alike. First book in a series, but stands alone. (Also a movie version from 2001.)
Why is it worth your time?: It's pretty good and engaging. This is a book about a clash between two perceptions of reality: that of prot (who sees himself as an alien from K-PAX) and that of the fictional psychiatrist (who sees prot as a mental illness symptom). The author, I think, does a pretty good job of portraying the psychiatrist as deeply flawed and somewhat oblivious about it, but that psychiatrist IS the narrator. Your ability to tolerate that psychiatrist's character will make or break this book for you, I think. This book also spends more time than any other entry in this catalog of a nonhuman headmate's alien view of the world, and also the other world they come from. Prot is only on Earth for brief periods, and a lot of the book is about K-PAX.
Plural Tags: nonhumans [aliens], otherworld, mpd/did, switching, abuse not mentioned
Content Warnings: Obviously, the entire premise of this book is of institutionalization, written from the perspective of a psychiatrist who is well-meaning but flawed, so ableism is all over the place here, and the book is not always aware of it. Others contain spoilers; see comments
Access Notes: This book is pretty easy to find in libraries, or at least it used to be. Available in ebook, audiobook, and paper book formats. Plus there's a 2001 movie version starring Jeff Bridges as the therapist and Kevin Spacey as prot, but I haven't seen it since then and cannot vouch for quality. Also available in German as Wie von einem fremden Stern.
Misc Notes: First book in a five-book series, now complete.
Blurb: In 1990, a psychiatrist at a mental hospital in Manhattan ends up overseeing the case of prot, a man who insists he's an alien from the planet K-PAX. When the shrink discovers that prot is the headmate of a man in bad shape and also will be returning home to K-PAX soon, the race is on to figure out what happened. In the process, anarchist prot ends up changing the lives of patients, doctors, and others alike. First book in a series, but stands alone. (Also a movie version from 2001.)
Why is it worth your time?: It's pretty good and engaging. This is a book about a clash between two perceptions of reality: that of prot (who sees himself as an alien from K-PAX) and that of the fictional psychiatrist (who sees prot as a mental illness symptom). The author, I think, does a pretty good job of portraying the psychiatrist as deeply flawed and somewhat oblivious about it, but that psychiatrist IS the narrator. Your ability to tolerate that psychiatrist's character will make or break this book for you, I think. This book also spends more time than any other entry in this catalog of a nonhuman headmate's alien view of the world, and also the other world they come from. Prot is only on Earth for brief periods, and a lot of the book is about K-PAX.
Plural Tags: nonhumans [aliens], otherworld, mpd/did, switching, abuse not mentioned
Content Warnings: Obviously, the entire premise of this book is of institutionalization, written from the perspective of a psychiatrist who is well-meaning but flawed, so ableism is all over the place here, and the book is not always aware of it. Others contain spoilers; see comments
Access Notes: This book is pretty easy to find in libraries, or at least it used to be. Available in ebook, audiobook, and paper book formats. Plus there's a 2001 movie version starring Jeff Bridges as the therapist and Kevin Spacey as prot, but I haven't seen it since then and cannot vouch for quality. Also available in German as Wie von einem fremden Stern.
Misc Notes: First book in a five-book series, now complete.
Content Warnings
Date: 2022-08-25 10:14 pm (UTC)Again, this is a book written from the perspective of a psychiatrist at a mental hospital, and the whole book is based around forcibly institutionalizing a man who is harmless and not in distress by being an alien--it's kinda the book version of that jerk on the Internet saying that otherkin need to be institutionalized. At times, other doctors in the book immediately jump to suggesting surgery and drugs for this guy. (Later, prot says he's hanging around of his own free will, and it appears he can indeed escape at any time, but still!)
There is another multiple in the book, but a minor character. She stops switching and becomes "just her real self" at the end, which is treated as for the best; prot and Robert do not, though prot leaves (for a few years--obviously he comes back in the second book). The fictional psychiatrist treats both systems under the real person/secondary personality dichotomy, though I think it's pretty clear he's supposed to be an unreliable narrator.
Also, this book has weird Christian themes. Prot is a messiah figure who comes from the heavens, from a place where everyone lives in joyful harmony and never suffers, and he takes a deserving human back with him. Later books in this series, as I recall, amplify this aspect. It's like a Rapture, just with aliens/headmates rather than angels. So that might be weird to read.