Treating Children with Dissociative Disorders

"Dissociative disorder in adults – ‘the presence of two or more distinct identity or personality states’ is well known. Despite the fact that the majority of traumatic experiences associated with Dissociative Disorder derive from Adverse Childhood Experiences, there is less familiarity with the condition in childhood and young people. This detailed text aims to redress this failure, by describing the latest clinical and trauma research, integrating attachment, neurobiology, child development, mental health and family systems offering unique perspectives on the phenomena of dissociation, and presentations in children and young people.

Through clinical examples of detailed highly skilled therapeutic work with seriously traumatised children and young people, the concept of dissociation is brought to life – a key response to overwhelming toxic and damaging traumatic stress through the life-course. These result in the presence of self-states that either influence the child internally or directly by taking executive control over their bodies. An elemental dramatic relationship is enacted in the inner world of the child or young person, between figures who can guide, protect and cope, or are destructive to the self or other.

The detailed therapeutic task is described, understanding the nature and origins of dissociative responses, and the extensive work of creating a coherent narrative of experiences. Separate self -states need to be integrated to establish a coherent, mature, individual, who can put their experiences in memory, to be open to relationships, to be creative and not to repeat and promulgate disastrous toxic ways of being." Arnon Bentovim, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist; Formerly Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital and the Tavistock Clinic, UK

"This is a long awaited and much needed book. Brave, theoretically deep, imbued with rich clinical experience, daring to state what we fear to hear, and written by some of the finest and most experienced clinicians in this field, this is a must-read for anyone trying to get to grips with this complex and challenging area of work." Graham Music, PhD; Consultant Psychotherapist, Tavistock Centre, London; Author, Nurturing Natures, The Good Life and Nurturing Children

"Offering detailed case histories and guidelines for treatment of children with complex symptoms (including discrete dissociative states of consciousness), this rare book takes us deep into the under-explored realm of multiple types of extreme trauma suffered by young victims, ranging from family violence, emotional or sexual abuse, to cyber-crime exploitation on the darknet. Experienced practitioners sensitively elucidate the ‘undoing’ of seemingly inexplicable disturbances in memory, identity, affect, soma and behaviour as aftereffects of protective dissociation, regarded here as a ‘psychological escape hatch - the only getaway at the time of the trauma’." Professor Joan Raphael-Leff, PhD; Retired Psychoanalyst/Transcultural Psychologist; Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society; Member, IPA; Leader, Academic Faculty for Psychoanalytic Research, Anna Freud Centre

"Dissociative disorder in adults – ‘the presence of two or more distinct identity or personality states’ – is well known. Despite the fact that the majority of traumatic experiences associated with Dissociative Disorder derive from Adverse Childhood Experiences, there is less familiarity with the condition in childhood and young people. This detailed text aims to redress this failure, by describing the latest clinical and trauma research, integrating attachment, neurobiology, child development, mental health and family systems offering unique perspectives on the phenomena of dissociation, and presentations in children and young people.

Through clinical examples of detailed highly skilled therapeutic work with seriously traumatised children and young people, the concept of dissociation is brought to life – a key response to overwhelming toxic and damaging traumatic stress through the life-course. These result in the presence of self-states that either influence the child internally or directly by taking executive control over their bodies. An elemental dramatic relationship is enacted in the inner world of the child or young person, between figures who can guide, protect and cope, or are destructive to the self or other.

The detailed therapeutic task is described, understanding the nature and origins of dissociative responses, and the extensive work of creating a coherent narrative of experiences. Separate self-states need to be integrated to establish a coherent, mature, individual, who can put their experiences in memory, to be open to relationships, to be creative and not to repeat and promulgate disastrous toxic ways of being." Arnon Bentovim, Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist; Formerly Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital and the Tavistock Clinic, UK

"This is a long awaited and much needed book. Brave, theoretically deep, imbued with rich clinical experience, daring to state what we fear to hear, and written by some of the finest and most experienced clinicians in this field, this is a must-read for anyone trying to get to grips with this complex and challenging area of work." Graham Music, PhD; Consultant Psychotherapist, Tavistock Centre, London; Author, Nurturing Natures, The Good Life and Nurturing Children

"Offering detailed case histories and guidelines for treatment of children with complex symptoms (including discrete dissociative states of consciousness), this rare book takes us deep into the under-explored realm of multiple types of extreme trauma suffered by young victims, ranging from family violence, emotional or sexual abuse, to cyber-crime exploitation on the darknet. Experienced practitioners sensitively elucidate the ‘undoing’ of seemingly inexplicable disturbances in memory, identity, affect, soma and behaviour as aftereffects of protective dissociation, regarded here as a ‘psychological escape hatch – the only getaway at the time of the trauma’." Professor Joan Raphael-Leff, PhD; Retired Psychoanalyst/Transcultural Psychologist; Fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society; Member, IPA; Leader, Academic Faculty for Psychoanalytic Research, Anna Freud Centre