This ground-breaking book examines the role of crime in the lives of people with Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder, a condition which appears to be caused by prolonged trauma in infancy and childhood. This trauma may be linked with crimes committed against them, crimes they have witnessed, and crimes they have committed under duress. This collection of essays by a range of distinguished international contributors explores the complex legal, ethical, moral, and clinical questions which face psychotherapists and other professionals working with people suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Contributors to this book are drawn from a wide range of professions including psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, counselling, psychology, medicine, law, police, and social work.

For the first time, the controversial issue of physical contact in the consulting room is explored by distinguished psychoanalysts and psychotherapists representing a diverse range of psychoanalytic viewpoints. The contributors focus on the unconscious meanings of touch, or absence of touch, or unwelcome touch, or accidental touch in the psychoa

Personality Disorder is a baffling, confusing and rather bizarre condition. Although Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) is a formal DSM-IV diagnosis, it is still very controversial, and many professionals claim that it is extremely rare, does not exist or is fictitious. There are many reasons why professionals may be reluctant to acknowledge DID: it is, indeed, baffling, confusing and bizarre. However, there are, perhaps, other reasons for the "low popularity" of this condition. DID, like Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), appears to be caused by trauma. But unlike PTSD, it appears to be caused by prolonged trauma, trauma which started in early childhood or infancy. Listening to accounts of people with DID is confusing due to the multiplicity of speaker(s)-it is also upsetting. The traumatic content of the stories is upsetting. The un-proved claims about terrible crimes are unsettling. We are faced with very difficult legal, ethical, moral and clinical questions, not knowing how to respond, what to believe, how to think.This book focuses on the most unsavory aspects of DID, namely, the forensic. It explores the role of crime in the lives of people with DID: crimes committed against them, by them and crimes that they have witnessed. The various papers reflect the experiences and thoughts of a range of professionals who have worked with this group: a GP, a psychiatrist, a police officer, a lawyer, psychotherapists and counselors and, most generously, a person who has DID.

Out of all medical and therapeutic treatments, psychoanalysis remains one of the very few that uses no physical contact. Sigmund Freud stopped using the "pressure technique" in the late 1890s, a technique in which he would press lightly on his patient's head while insisting that they remember forgotten events. Today, touch remains virtually non-existent in adult psychoanalysis.For the first time, this book explores the controversial issue of physical contact in the consulting room. The contributors--psychoanalysts and psychotherapists representing a diverse range of psychoanalytic viewpoints--focus on the unconscious meanings of touch, absence of touch, unwelcome touch, or "accidental" touch in the psychoanalytic clinical situation. There are plenty of clinical vignettes and the discussions are grounded in clinical experience, offering a range of very different opinions on this much-neglected subject.This is a book for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and all readers interested in this issue. Contributors include Brett Kahr, A. H. Brafman, Camilla Bosanquet, Valerie Sinason, Pearl King, Nicola Diamond, Em Farrell, Maria Emilia Pozzi, Robert Langs, Nick Totton, Emma Ramsden, Angela Pryor, Sarita Bose, Sharmila Charles, Gwen Adshead. With a foreword by Susie Orbach.