Trauma and Dissociation-Informed Psychotherapy

Relational Healing and the Therapeutic Connection

By: Elizabeth Howell

Narrated by: Emily Durante

Length: 7 hrs and 20 mins

Publisher's summary

A fresh look at the importance of dissociation in understanding trauma.

A new model of therapeutic action, one that heals trauma and dissociation, is overtaking the mental-health field. It is not just trauma, but the dissociation of the self, that causes emotional pain and difficulties in functioning. This book discusses how people are universally subject to trauma, what trauma is, and how to understand and work with normative as well as extreme dissociation.

In this new model, the client and the practitioner are both traumatized and flawed human beings who affect each other in the mutual process that the promotes the healing of the client-psychotherapy. Elizabeth Howell explains the dissociative, relational, and attachment reasons that people blame and punish themselves. She covers the difference between repression and dissociation, and how Freud's exclusive focus on repression and the one-person fantasy Oedipal model impeded recognition of the serious consequences of external trauma, including child abuse.

The book synthesizes trauma/dissociation perspectives and addresses new structural models.

©2020 Elizabeth Howell (P)2020 Tantor

Concise, accessible and yet thorough enough

I listened to this book as a patient who has been diagnosed with a trauma-based dissociative disorder. Over the last several years I have read many books on the topic, including most of those she references. I think she does a good job of highlighting the main points, the connections between them, and translating what that means.

The best part, from the perspective of a patient, is how she normalized and related to the experience of traumatic dissociation with her personal example of her experience of 9-11.

She did focus a lot of Freud, which makes sense because he is the elephant in psychiatry and this book was written for therapists. However, for people who didn’t study him in detail it was maybe too much. (In contrast, the basic psych classes I took talked about him in a historical context, more like the person who discovered the first small pox vaccines that killed some people when administering it. A major leap forward but with a lot of flaws and risks.)

From a totally personal perspective, I felt she described some of the breakthrus I’ve had in my relationship with my therapist and gave them an understanding I didn’t have before. I had an incident in my first 6 months of therapy with my current therapist where she stood up for me and advocated for my care - even though I had also made an error and admitted it. And she did so without my asking her to. It was a relationship experience I had never had before and changed the course of our work together.

Wonderful Explanation of Dissociation and Trauma

So much information to take in. Loved it and will definitely listen or read again.

Very informative

Mispronunciation was easy to dismiss in light of the very clear information presented. Provided patient and therapist perspectives.

Pronunciation could be better for psych terms

Not the biggest issue, but it was just annoying to hear the reader pronounce affect (which in the psych field is pronounced by being heavy on the A) like effect every single time.

Excellent information

This book goes into great depth and is great for therapists or those interested in trauma and psychology. It’s unfortunate the speaker mispronounces many terms and names.

Material excellent. Reader terrible.

The reader so clearly has no knowledge of the subject matter and consistently mispronounces common psychological terms. It is horribly distracting and made it almost impossible to understand those sentences. I had to rewind and re-listen many times because of her mispronouncing ‘affect.’ Other terms are also mispronounced or at times incorrect words are substituted. Terrible. Having no confidence in the reader, and knowing that the reader is not teaching me, nor understanding the material but simply deciding text, severely limited my enjoyment of this wonderful book. I am very disappointed. Please. Choose readers who have SOME knowledge of what they are reading.

Fantastic

Fantastic review of trauma, dissociation, and psychotherapy. I must read for psychoanalytic or psychodynamic psychotherapists.

A very important resource for healing the world 🌎

As a mental health clinician, seeking to help my clients and myself with insidious and problematic dissociation, this book is the most comprehensive, relevant, and compassionate resource I have found. I plan to study it and successfully implement this information to help heal the world, by first healing myself.

Essential

This book is synthetic and essential for any modern psychotherapist. Should have been published centuries ago! XD