I wrote this as a prologue to the Greek version of Easy Ego State Interventions and realized that it will make a good post: I have been looking through the lenses of ego state therapies since 1981. During that year, my first out of graduate school, I took a course in Eric Berne’s Transactional Analysis
Dear Readers, Ego state work has been around since before Freud, and in latter years, has been the main stay of many practices. Interventions can range from "How old did you feel when you were yelling at your wife?" to "Let's identify those dissociative states that take over your body." I've been working with this
These articles refute the myths that introverts are anti-social, shy, and wimpy. My resident introvert husband endorses both of them. Carl King's review of The Introvert Advantage (How To Thrive in an Extrovert World), by Marti Laney, Psy.D. called 10 Myths about Introverts. A funnier, snide 2003 Atlantic Article by Johnathon Rauch called Caring For Your Introvert.
The New York Review of Books carried and a scathing and mostly right-on article about the medicalization and over-medication of mental illness by Marcia Angell. It's a review of three books about the history of psych meds, the power of the drug companies, and the minimization of psychotherapy. Read it here.
Tim Brunson at the International Hypnosis Research Institute wrote a nice review of TTH. He liked the book though he thought it didn't have enough hypnosis in it and wanted it to discuss research and wished the "Self-care for Trauma Therapists" chapter was longer. Otherwise he said extremely positive things about the book and me
My copy of the new book arrived today. Here is what Diana Fosha says about it:"This is a thorough, accessible, and very practical book, filled with resources and sound ideas, filtered through the intelligence and experience of a savvy, compassionate, down-to-earth, and very experienced clinician. It is like a travel guide to the land of
Here is the last paragraph of the Introduction to Trauma Treatments Handbook, Protocols Across the Spectrum. You're seeing it before the publishers do. Before I send it in, do you have anything to add about why we do this work? I'll publish what you write, unless it's spam. As trauma therapists, we are privileged
I'm 13 chapters into writing Trauma Treatments Handbook, Across the Spectrum. Here's the advice I'd give anyone doing the same thing: Get a second screen for your computer. Keep the reference page, internet search materials, etc. open on the second screen. It will save you days of searching for the right open file. Start the
Book Signing Party! On Beautiful Bainbridge Island June 14, 2-5PM Sandra Paulsen, Ph.D & Robin Shapiro, MSW, LCSW will be there to sign and read excerpts of their 2009 books. We may have a special guest reader, Yaak Panksepp.Bring your checkbook if you want to buy a book. Save shipping costs! Location: 9054 Battle
Yesterday I held my new book in my hands. It's hard for me to make meaning of 14 months of work being encapsulated in a 1 1/2 pound book. As I paged through it, I recalled the process of writing; my appreciation of the content of other people's chapters; editing squabbles; waiting, waiting, waiting for
I'm reading piles of books in preparation for writing a trauma therapy survey book. My friend and colleague, Barbara Hinsz lent me Glenn Schiraldi's The Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Sourcebook. (McGraw-Hill, 2000) It's a great self-help book, one of the best I've seen. Schiraldi's a good writer. I never wanted to fix his sentences. He's simple without being simplistic.
A long time client came back to see me. She'd been ill and after weeks in bed, depression had colonized her, again. She mentioned, " that it's stupid, but what was really bothering me is this itch on the back of my head." She'd been to the doctor, who found nothing wrong with her scalp,
I recently took on several new clients and am on my 3rd session with several new people, I'm struck by how much temperment affects people's experience of trauma. Some people have iron constitutions. It's hard to scare these people. It takes a truly life-threatening trauma for them to experience PTSD symptoms. Others are traumatized by
Dear Readers, Excuse me for the dearth of posts this summer. Last night I sent in the the 26 chapters, "Front Matter" and Glossary for the book on which I've been spending 20 or 30 hours each week. I had whittled my practice down to two days each week. I belayed most of my social
The Book has a title now: EMDR Solutions II, for Depression, Eating Disorders, Performance and More. It has a cover photograph, too. and the photo has a story. (Full disclosure--the photographer is my husband.) See it and read it at http://www.dougplummer.com/archives/ireland2/fall9.html I'm in full-blown editing mode: going through each chapter, attaching a header, reformatting it,
The Reading Group (Brena Lever and I) met last week to discuss Parenting from the Inside Out by Daniel Siegel and Mary Hartzell. At that moment Seigel happened to be meeting with the Dalai Lama, Dan Goleman, and some other child psychology types, about a mile from my house, to discuss how to grow compassionate
My new favorite book is Instinct to Heal by David Servan-Schrieber (Rodale, 2003). It is simple enough for most clients and innovative and interesting enough for most clinicians. I recommend it to psychiatrists, any kind of physician or "alternative" medical practitioner and all psychotherapists. Why? Instinct to Heal gives clear explanations, references to good research
The next book in the reading group will be The Neuroscience of Psychotherapy, by Louis Cozolino (W.W. Norton, 2003). It's easier to read than you might think, and written by a psychologist, not a medical person, who struggled through the medical/scientific texts in order to bring we clinicians the good news. According to Cozolino, we
Ana M. Gomez has written a lovely book for children or anyone about trauma and EMDR: Dark, Bad Day. . . Go Away! It's simple, and complete, and true. The drawings by Carlos Serrano Acosta are lovely and expressive. And it has a good and true happy ending. There's a "Note for Professionals" in the
The Tranforming Power of Affect (Basic Behavioral Science, 2000) is the best therapy book I've read in many years. It is a readable, comprehensive, and creative survey of attachment research and how to apply it to your adult clients. Diana Fosha comes from the Short Term Dynamic Therapy lineage of Davanloo and Malan, and adds
The reading group had its first meeting. We discussed the first four chapters of Healing Trauma: attachment,mind, body, and brain edited by Marion Solomon and Daniel Siegel.(W.W. Norton & Co. 2003) It's a difficult book. Several chapters speak about brain physiology. Several are in "academic speak" in which all sentences must have at least 10