This concise yet thorough volume offers expert advice on when and how to begin therapy, what clinical signposts to watch for, and what basic errors to avoid.
Geared to the needs of mental health practitioners unfamiliar with dissociative disorders, this volume presents a comprehensive and integrated approach to diagnosis and treatment. Each step--from first interview to final post-integrative treatment--is systematically reviewed, with detailed instructions on specific diagnostic and therapeutic techniques and examples of their clinical applications. Concise yet thorough, the volume offers expert advice on such topics as how to foster a strong therapeutic alliance, how to manage crises, and what basic errors to avoid.
Putnam's Diagnosis and Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder is an excellent text for advanced undergraduates or graduate students. The detailed presentation of stages of treatment is especially useful, and the discussion of boundary management and other therapeutic issues is timely and thought provoking. --David Rainey, Ph.D., Psychology Department, John Carroll UniversityDemystifies MPD and places it squarely in the mainstream of contemporary knowledge about the impact of childhood trauma. The book promises to be a synthesis of the ideas, techniques, and treatment philosophies about MPD. It delivers on these promises and more. It places MPD in its historical perspective as the disorder that clarifies much about the nature of human consciousness, and now has the potential of helping to unravel the psychobiological linkages between mind and body. The sober, detailed, step-by-step guide through every conceivable aspect of the complex therapy of these patients provides a balanced guide for all clinicians dealing with multiple personality and other dissociative disorders. Putnam's work will be the standard in the field for a long time to come. In breadth of scope, clarity of style, and lucidity of ideas it may even surpass Janet's classic works on the subject. --Bessel van der Kolk, MD, Massachusetts Mental Health Center Trauma Clinic Director, Harvard Medical School, Author of Psychological Trauma-An encyclopedic volume, certainly the definitive textbook of the disorder.--Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 2/5/1989
