Books: Psychology & Trauma Therapy

This book by Judith Hermon, M.D. goes through the history of trauma research to where it is today.  It was helpful to me to see the societal dissociation and dissociation by researchers from the trauma that they were learning about. However, with the two World Wars, there was no more denying the effects of trauma and the need for counseling to be applied not just to war veterans but people of all ages who have faced traumatic events in their lives.

Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder by Frank Putnam was really a springboard for many of the current research on trauma resulting in DID. His name is often mentioned in current works and articles.

Uncovering the Mystery of MPD by James G. Friesen, PH.D. is another foundational work. Friesen also considers the spiritual aspect to the disorder, citing SRA and considering those spiritual consequences as applied to counseling people.

Diane Mandt Langberg, PH.D. wrote this book on healing from sexual abuse.  I also read her book, On the Threshold of Hope: Opening the Door to Healing for Survivors of Sexual Abuse which is from a Christian perspective.

She also has a a book I have not read yet but is on an important subject for survivors of trauma: suffering.  I have heard Dr. Langberg address it in videos of seminars that she has taught.  It is called Suffering and the Heart of God: How Trauma Destroys and Christ Restores.

Dr. Langberg also has many online seminars on healing from trauma.  She has worked in war-torn countries to train counselors to help people in their country who have experienced the terrors of war.  I will post more when I have time to look them up again.

This resource on the effects of trauma physiologically by Bessel Van Der Kolk, M.D. is helpful in normalizing the body memories that often come with trauma. 

In it, Dr. Van der Kolk writes about how the nervous system and brain responds to trauma initially and how that carries over into PTSD and body memories after the trauma is over.  

This book was useful to me (though I only read through Ch. 5) because I had many body memories from when I was preverbal, so I wouldn't understand why I was choking or felt raped. I learned to have more compassion on myself and ground myself in the fact that the trauma was over now and I am safe.

The Haunted Self: Structural Dissociation and the Treatment of Chronic Traumatization by Onno van der Hart, Ellert R. S. Nijenhuis, and Kathy Steele has one theory on how DID comes to be and how to heal from it. I appreciated their concept of different ways a person's DID system can be structured and their labeling of the part/s that present/s to society most often as the "Apparently Normal Part/s." I thought it was a little confusing to label the other category "Emotional Part/s" because many of these don't necessarily contain emotions.  All in all, there were useful nuggets to glean from their concepts.

The Dissociative Identity Disorder Sourcebook by Deborah Bray Haddock, M.Ed., M.A. L.P. was more practically helpful because it covered a broader spectrum of thought on the development of DID and counseling people who have it.  It also gave tips for finding counselors and self-help for safety in it.

Becoming Yourself: Overcoming Mind Control and Ritual Abuse is written for survivors to go through as a workbook.  It is very intense but useful.  However, it is secular and I think is a bit tedious, stuck in the programming, rather than going to the heart of the issue.

She also has Healing the Unimaginable: Treating Ritual Abuse and Mind Control. This book is written for therapists and she encourages survivors in the Introduction not to read it, but to read the previous book.