Dear Members,
Our next virtual book club offering is the article "The First Individual with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) that One Knowingly Treats." This article in our own e-journal, Frontiers in the Psychotherapy of Trauma and Dissociation, is written by psychiatrist, Warwick Middleton, past president of ISSTD and a veteran of treating severe trauma/dissociation in Australia. We have found this paper to be of great value in identifying the confounding experience of stumbling upon one’s first case of DID. We are hoping all of our members find much to identify with here in Warwick’s accounts which also lend food for thought in how we orient a thoughtful treatment for such patients. While there could be some disagreements in the minds of members regarding some ideas in this text, we look forward to a lively discussion to include both experienced and newer therapists to the field. There is much wisdom here for all.
About the Author
Warwick Middleton MB BS, FRANZCP, MD., holds appointments as Professor in Psychiatry, University of Queensland, Adjunct Professor, School of Public Health, La Trobe University, School of Behavioral, Cognitive & Social Sciences, University of New England, and, Department of Psychology, University of Canterbury. He has made substantial and ongoing contributions to the bereavement and trauma literatures and was with Dr Jeremy Butler author of the first published series in the Australian scientific literature detailing the abuse histories and clinical phenomenology of patients fulfilling diagnostic criteria for Dissociative Identity Disorder. He chairs The Cannan Institute as well as its research and conference organizing committees. In 1996 he was the principal architect in establishing Australia’s first dedicated unit treating dissociative disorders (the Trauma and Dissociation Unit, Belmont Hospital – Healthe Care) and he continues as its Director. He is the first researcher to ever do systematic research into ongoing incestuous abuse during adulthood. Dr Middleton has been in full time private practice since 1995.
He is a Past President of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) and a recipient of that Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He chaired an editorial grouping that put together a Special (double) Issue of the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation (“The Abused and the Abuser: Victim – Perpetrator Dynamics”), published in 2017 and published also in expanded and updated book-form in 2018 (Routledge).
Routledge).
Best,