Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors integrates a neurobiologically informed understanding of trauma, dissociation, and attachment with a practical approach to treatment, all communicated in straightforward language accessible to both client and therapist. Readers will be exposed to a model that emphasizes "resolution"—a transformation in the relationship to one’s self, replacing shame, self-loathing, and assumptions of guilt with compassionate acceptance. Its unique interventions have been adapted from a number of cutting-edge therapeutic approaches, including Sensorimotor Psychotherapy, Internal Family Systems, mindfulness-based therapies, and clinical hypnosis. Readers will close the pages of Healing the Fragmented Selves of Trauma Survivors with a solid grasp of therapeutic approaches to traumatic attachment, working with undiagnosed dissociative symptoms and disorders, integrating "right brain-to-right brain" treatment methods, and much more. Most of all, they will come away with tools for helping clients create an internal sense of safety and compassionate connection to even their most dis-owned selves.

The Fragmented Personality introduces a new model for diagnosing and caring for patients with personality disorder. This book reviews in detail the neuroscience of brain and mind development, including the neuroscience of psychoanalytic concepts, both for normal and disordered personalities. In contrast to the current static classifications of personality pathology, the authors' approach yields a dynamic and personalized diagnosis within a 3D diagnostic space in which each individual is uniquely positioned. In this model, two intersecting dimensions, one vertical, representing the person's qua.

"While the ideals of mental health have always been stability and integrity, for the postmodern "fragmented self," these ideals are outdated and inflexible. In "The Fragmented Personality", Drs. Svrakic and Jovanovic present a new model for personality disorder that, they argue, better services psychiatrists caring for patients in post-modern society. This new approach provides diagnostic flexibility and a dynamic nosology of mental disorders that "allows" the individual to move within a coordinate system. This yields a personalized diagnosis that is contextual, dimensional, and time-specific, as well as yielding information about the current position of the individual in relation to the important components of personality functioning. To complement this conceptual model, the text provides practical guidelines for the diagnosis, differential diagnosis, and treatment in the management of personality disorder." -- From publisher's description.

This is a book about the triumph of inner authority over the debilitating effects of trauma and abuse. In a simple and straightforward style, a three-phase model for treating dissociative identity disorder (previously known as multiple personality disorder) in introduced. The Collective Heart model is consistent with the current standards of care which emphasize caution and restraint. Additionally, the Collective Heart model has several unique features: It highlights the retrieval of personal authority rather than the retrieval of traumatic memories, identifies the fundamental inner unity underlying the fragmented personality system, and introduces techniques that facilitate communication between personalities and between each personality's conscious mind and the collective heart. Six chapters of fascinating case vignettes illustrate therapeutic techniques and show how clients tap into their underlying inner unity to create the conditions for their own maturation, making it safe for their alters to grow, heal, and eventually join the host as a seamless, harmonious whole.

This book argues mainly that attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and related autistic spectrum conditions reflect states of impaired self-regulation and of enhanced need for regulatory assistance from other people. It is useful and helpful for those who personally struggle with ADHD.

Winner, 2011 Written Media Award, International Society for Study of Trauma & Dissociation. How to effectively engage traumatized clients, who avoid attachment, closeness, and painful feelings. A large segment of the therapy population consist of those who are in denial or retreat from their traumatic experiences. Here, drawing on attachment-based research, the author provides clinical techniques, specific intervention strategies, and practical advice for successfully addressing the often intractable issues of trauma. Trauma and the Avoidant Client will enhance the skills of all mental health practitioners and trauma workers, and will serve as a valuable, useful resource to facilitate change and progress in psychotherapy.

Traumatic Dissociation: Neurobiology and Treatment offers an advanced introduction to this symptom, process, and pattern of personality organization seen in several trauma-related disorders, including acute stress disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the dissociative disorders. Our understanding of traumatic dissociation has recently been advanced by neuroimaging technology, empirically-based investigation, and an acknowledgment of its importance in psychopathology. The authors of this volume tie these findings together, tracking the condition from its earliest historical conceptualization to its most recent neurobiological understanding to provide even greater insight into traumatic dissociation and its treatment. Bringing together for the first time theoretical, cognitive, and neurobiological perspectives on traumatic dissociation, this volume is designed to provide both empirical and therapeutic insights by drawing on the work of many of the main contributors to the field. Opening chapters examine historical, conceptual, and theoretical issues and how other fields, such as cognitive psychology, have been applied to the study of traumatic dissociation. The following section focuses specifically on how neurobiological investigations have deepened our understanding of dissociation and concluding chapters explore issues pertinent to the assessment and treatment of traumatic dissociation. The interacting effects of traumatic experience, developmental history, neurobiological function, and specific vulnerabilities to dissociative processes that underlie the occurrence of traumatic dissociation are among some of the key issues covered. The book's significant contributions include A review of cognitive experimental findings on attention and memory functioning in dissociative identity disorder An appreciation of how the literature on hypnosis provides a greater understanding of perceptual processing and traumatic stress Ascertaining symptoms of dissociation in a military setting and in other situations of extreme stress An outline of key issues for planning assessment of traumatic dissociation, including a critique of its primary empirically supported standardized measures An examination of the association between child abuse or neglect and the development of eating disorders, suggesting ways to therapeutically deal with negative body experience to reduce events that trigger dissociation A description of neuroendocrine alterations associated with stress, pointing toward a better understanding of the developmental effects of deprivation and trauma on PTSD and dissociation A review of the relation of attachment and dissociation A discussion of new research findings in the neuroimaging of dissociation and a link between cerebellar functioning and specific peritraumatic experiences Useful as a clinical reference or as ancillary textbook, Traumatic Dissociation reorganizes phenomenological observations that have been overlooked, misunderstood, or neglected in traditional training. The research and clinical experience described here will provide the basis for further clinical and theoretical formulations of traumatic dissociation and will advance empirical examination and treatment of the phenomenon.