Book Description
A true story about personal journey in the following domains:Psychiatric Hospital(s), DID, Borderline PD, PTSD, Schizoaffective Disorder, Bipolar Disorder, Transsexualism, and Infantilism.First time a book is published that resonates with the psychiatric hospital progress notes.MoreFEEDBACK: I finished reading the book last night at 03:12 AM. I could not let go of it. I could not close my laptop. I went out to meet some friends but hurried back. This time it's a winner: taut, tense prose; a plot as captivating as any thriller's; a real-life story that reads like a nightmare and that ends in personal redemption. Couched in a lean and muscular text, all the important themes are here: self-discovery, one against the many, iconoclastic rebel faces down the system, justice for all, mental illness as a mechanism for social coercion. What a ride! What a treat! Brilliant. Sam Vaknin Ph.D. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (6)

5150 is a must read!
A true story about a woman caught in a life or death struggle with a psychiatrist whose ego feels he must defeat her at all costs.The psychiatrist forgets all about healing and enters into combat with the patient -- it's his will versus hers.The battle scenes are vividly captured through Kathi's eyes as well as through the chart notes that revealthe terrifying specter of the thoughts of the staff as they try to force their will upon Kathi.

Kathi sought healing and instead found a system corrupt with ego, force, coercion and just plain insanity.Cuckoo's Nest had Nurse Ratched and 5150 has it's Dr. Mason.Both are frightening but Ratched is fiction.This book is a must read for anyone who wants to understand the oppression of the psychiatric system and the egos that drive that oppression.Thank god Kathi survived to tell the story.

A Must Read
5150 is an extraordinary and compelling account of mistreatment at the hands of the mental health system after an extremely abusive and terrifying childhood.It is also a testament to the human spirit.Kathi Stringer has been subjected to more cruelty than it seems possible anyone could endure.She emerges from true hell to help others, but hardly intact.Grippingly written, this book uniquely intersperses hospital progress notes with the narrative and gives an objection by objection account of legal proceedings by a lawyer really fighting for her client.This is a real world account by someone labeled crazy who is everything but.This is an important and highly recommended book, especially for mental health professionals, family members, and others who are interested in knowing how involuntary commitment is experienced.

5150The One Who Flew Into The Cuckoo's Nest
This book goes to a different level,I haven't read anything like it.I felt a different emotion with every turn of the page.When I could put it down, I recapped the previous pages over and over in my mind.I wish I had a tenth of the strength this author has.A great read, a shocking education.

A journey into Hell and out to Reality.
Kathi Stringer has written a personal account of her journey through the hell of the misinformed and sometimes biased world of the mental patient that very little is known of. She illustrates how misinformation, bias, and control over-ride the need for realistic investigation, research and compassion when it comes to over-burdened public systems. She has also, shown the ability, like people similar to herself, to rise above the quagmire they sometimes find themselves thrust into, to combat the system and make things better for herself and others. I found her trial, sadly, similar to others who have shared the abuse, neglect, and isolation she has endured. I enthusiastically suggest that this is a helpful tool for any social-worker, psychiatrist, psychologist or therapist that may deal with someone who exibits similar personality traits to Kathi's. It is a very useful tool for assisting one to understand, somewhat, what she has been through. The book is interesting, informative and realistic.

Joseph Silverthorn, Professor and Researcher
Bremerton, Washington

Don't Miss 5150!
Kathi has given a brutally honest account of the inner workings of a mental ward's functioning. With the actual progress notes juxtaposed with Kathi's real-time thoughts and emotions it is clear the staff never bothered to check-out the reality she was experiencing. This book makes you wonder who's more out of touch the patient or the staff and doctors. For sure, Kathi's excellent lawyer is well grounded. But, you must read the book and travel all the twists and turns to arrive at the surprising ending.

"5150" is a well written, uniquely told autobiography and an exciting courtroom drama. Don't miss it.

Lynne Stewart, Senior Editor
The Thermometor Times/DBSA Newsletter & DBSA-CA Newsletter
... Read more

Book Description

Herschel Walker is widely regarded as one of football's greatest running backs. He led the University of Georgia to victory in the Sugar Bowl on the way to an NCAA Championship and he capped a sensational college career by earning the 1982 Heisman Trophy. Herschel spent twelve years in the NFL, where he rushed for more than eight thousand yards and scored sixty-one rushing touchdowns.

But despite the acclaim he won as a football legend, track star, Olympic competitor, and later a successful businessman, Herschel realized that his life, at times, was simply out of control. He often felt angry, self-destructive, and unable to connect meaningfully with friends and family. Drawing on his deep faith, Herschel turned to professionals for help and was ultimately diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder.

While some might have taken this diagnosis as a setback, Herschel approached his mental health with the same indomitable spirit he brought to the playing field. It also gave him, for the first time, insight into his life's unexplained passages, stretches of time that seemed forever lost. Herschel came to understand that during those times, his "alters," or alternate personalities, were in control.

Born into a poor, but loving family in the South, Herschel was an overweight child with a stutter who suffered terrible bullying at school. He now understands that he created "alters" who could withstand abuse. But beyond simply enduring, other "alters" came forward to help Herschel overcome numerous obstacles and, by the time he graduated high school, become an athlete recognized on a national level.

In Breaking Free, Herschel tells his story -- from the joys and hardships of childhood to his explosive impact on college football to his remarkable professional career. And he gives voice and hope to those suffering from DID. Herschel shows how this disorder played an integral role in his accomplishments and how he has learned to live with it today. His compelling account testifies to the strength of the human spirit and its ability to overcome any challenge. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is an article from MedSurg Nursing, published by Jannetti Publications, Inc. on February 1, 1997. The length of the article is 3753 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: Nursing management for patients with dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder, includes early diagnosis, accurate communication, and consistency among caregivers. DID usually develops from instances of childhood physical or sexual abuse. Early identification of DID allows the staff to make appropriate preparations. Communication with staff, physicians, the patient and the primary psychiatrist will help create consistent care and build toward a positive prognosis.

Citation Details
Title: Care of the dissociative identity disordered patient on a medical-surgical unit: nursing implications.
Author: Maria A. Holden
Publication: MedSurg Nursing (Refereed)
Date: February 1, 1997
Publisher: Jannetti Publications, Inc.
Volume: v6Issue: n1Page: p47(5)

Distributed by Thomson Gale ... Read more

Book Description
If people change radically as a result of mental disturbance or brain damage or disease, how should we acknowledge that change in the way in which we respond to them? And how should society and the law acknowledge that change, particularly in cases of multiple-personality and manic-depressive disorders? This book addresses these and a cluster of other questions about changes in the self through time and about the moral attitudes we adopt in the face of these changes. The result is a broad-ranging interdisciplinary discussion at the boundaries of psychiatry, philosophy, law, and social policy. Theories of personal identity are applied to, and clarified in light of, the appearance of multiple selves in a variety of personality and identity disturbances.

Divided minds force us to clarify our thinking about human subjectivity, Radden points out, and when they result in a succession of "selves," they provoke interesting ethical and legal issues. Radden provides a clear and thorough discussion of basic issues faced by clinicians and philosophers contending with the unity of consciousness and personal identity, particularly in the area of dissociative disorders, where issues of unity of consciousness have a direct impact on clinical and forensic decisions.

Part 1 takes up the divisions and heterogeneities associated first with the normal self and then with the pathological self and identifies a "language of successive selves." Part 2 provides an extended analysis of personal responsibility and culpability with regard to extreme multiplicity. Part 3 takes up the notion of a metaphysics of successive selves. And part 4 addresses theoretical concerns associated with clinical material in an effort to further our understanding of the concepts of self-consciousness and subjectivity.

A Bradford Book ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Psychiatry Research, published by Elsevier in 2006. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Abstract:
Biased attention for threatening stimuli has been associated with many forms of psychopathology. Attention to threatening faces presented below perceptual thresholds was assessed in patients diagnosed with dissociative identity disorder using a pictorial emotional Stroop task. Patients were tested in two different identity states, in one of which they claimed strong awareness of trauma. Attentional bias for social threat proved state-dependent in the patients and deviated from the patterns observed in controls. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Pratiques psychologiques, published by Elsevier in . The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
The object of this article is to study the contribution of a discourse analysis software in comprehension of a case of dissociate personality disorder. Results obtained inform about the psychopathology of this case and give certain elements useful for the diagnostic discussion. ... Read more

Book Description
This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Behavior Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
Dissociation comprises a range of psychological processes, which have largely been the subject of psychodynamic discussion. Dissociative phenomena are for the most part unaddressed by cognitive theorists. Current measures are atheoretical and our understanding of dissociation has been hampered by the absence of clear psychological models. This paper describes a new cognitive model of dissociation and the development and validation of a theoretically based measure-the Wessex Dissociation Scale (WDS). The WDS has adequate internal consistency, shows convergent validity with the Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES-II), and is equivalent to the DES-II in its associations with severe psychopathology. However, the WDS has some advantages over the DES-II, in that it is sensitive to milder manifestations of dissociation, demonstrating links to less severe pathologies. The findings described here provide preliminary support for the usefulness of the cognitive model, and the varied consequences of dissociative processes. The clinical and research utility of the model and the scale are discussed. ... Read more

Book Description

Book Description
You peer into the mirror and have trouble recognizing yourself.
You can't remember if you actually did something or only thought you did.
You feel as if you're going through the motions of life.

These are all symptoms of dissociation--a fragmented state of consciousness involving feelings of disconnection and amnesia that affects 30 million individuals in North America alone. The surprising truth revealed in The Stranger in the Mirror, a groundbreaking book based on eighteen years of pioneering research, is that millions of people have dissociative symptoms that have gone undetected or untreated. This hidden epidemic has occurred simply because people have been unable to identify their problem, or were not asked the right questions about their symptoms. Since dissociation can be a person 's standard response to trauma, its symptoms are a common reaction to such life--threatening events as a car accident or such intense, lasting traumas as rape. There is a strong possibility that you or someone you know suffers from some dissociative condition. Because dissociative experiences are often illusive and hard to describe, they are rarely reported to therapists.

The Stranger in the Mirror offers the general public unique guidelines for identifying dissociative symptoms, as well as for treatment and recovery. It not only debunks many myths surrounding dissociation but also offers some startling revelations. For example, normal people experience dissociative symptoms in everyday life, and dissociation is as widespread as anxiety and depression and may explain such intriguing phenomena as past lives and near-death or out-of-body experiences.

Based on rigorous scientific testing, Dr. Marlene Steinberg has developed a breakthrough diagnostic tool for dissociation, one embraced by the mental health community as the "gold standard." The book's questionnaires, based on this test, will help you identify your own dissociative symptoms and will alert you to possible underlying dissociative causes of such pervasive conditions as anxiety, depression, manic-depression, attention-deficit hyper-activity disorder (ADRD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or even schizophrenia. If you have concerns about your own or a loved one's psychological health, this is a must-read book.

Filled with gripping and moving case histories of people with multiple personality or other dissociative conditions, The Stranger in the Mirror will take you behind the closed doors of the psychiatrist's office on a fascinating journey through the therapeutic process, providing enlightening insights into how all of us respond to trauma and overcome it. The innovative method of treatment described in this important book--the "Four C's," comfort, communication, cooperation, and connection--can benefit anyone in search of a healthier sense of self and a heightened capacity for joy.

Customer Reviews (23)

Wonderful read--highly recommended!
What I particularly noticed when I read this book was the amount of compassion Dr. Steinberg appears to have for her patients and dissociative individuals in general. Dr. Steinberg is the creator of the SCID-D, known as the "gold standard" for testing for dissociative disorders. She also has a great deal of experience in treating dissociative patients. Clearly, she is well qualified to write this book. Personally, I found this remarkable blend of professional insight and human compassion to be a delightful breath of fresh air.

No single text, in and of itself, I feel, can make anyone into an "expert" on any subject. Period. However, if one has a desire to learn about and understand dissociative symptoms and disorders, this is an excellent resource whether one is a complete neophyte in regard to the subject of dissociation, or simply desiring to gain a richer understanding of what they already know about dissociative disorders.

In my honest and humble opinion, I find this to be an excellent read which I have already recommended to others I know in my personal life. In all likelihood, I will probably read this book again soon as I have certainly kept thinking about the information presented within its pages since I read it. This is truly a wonderful book.

Pivotal Life Changing Book
To express the impact this book has had on my life goes beyond words. It absolutely turned my life upside down and started me on a journey toward wholeness and healing, after years of being misdiagnosed, and spinning my wheels. I recommend this book first and foremost to anyone with chronic mental illness. The quizzes at the end of the chapters are extremely helpful as a preliminary assessment of where one might lie on the dissociation continuum. This book should be required reading for everyone training in a mental health or medical field.

Self-care is for everyone.
Everyone dissociates.When you drive home on auto pilot and don't remember the trip, when you walk into a room and can't remember what you went in there for, when someone is in an accident and goes into an altered state where they keep functioning even though injured until they're safe again, getting help and can experience the pain.

This books describes the author's diagnostic tool for evaluating dissociative experiences. She has developed a matrix of five categories of dissociation and five levels of severity.She stresses that if the dissociation is causing problems for an individual, the condition responds well to appropriate treatment no matter what the severity.

One goal is to de-stigmatize persistent dissociative conditions and to remind all professionals that everyone should be treated with respect, no matter what behaviour they exhibit.No one's personality should be treated as a freak show.

Another gaol is to encourage everyone to take care of themselves, to nurture their inner environment for a healthier life and she provides some great ideas on how to do that.

I believe the author accomplishes these goals.This is a very readable, fascinating, helpful book.

Excellent resource for therapists and laypeople
This is probably my all-time favourite book on dissociation.Readers will find an easy to understand description of all of the different types of dissociation and a discussion of the extent to which we all range in levels of dissociation.

Written mostly in everyday language, it is an interesting read for professionals as well as clients or the public in general.

Particularly interesting are the excerpts of the SCID questionnaire so that you can try to get some idea of where on the dissociative continuum you may fall, and what particular types of dissociation you experience.

Important, but only one slice
Steinberg's book is a helpful selection of her own cases and diagnostic criteria for dissociative identity disorder (DID), formerly known as multiple personality disorder. In my opinion, the standardized criteria are the most valuable part of the book. (They form a subset of complete criteria published elsewhere.) They should be as much part of the professional training of mental health workers as the better-known criteria for depression, anxiety, and psychosis. The only drawback is that she concentrates mostly on full-blown DID (fully developed personality alters) and doesn't give much space to more limited and more common dissociative disorders (DDs) such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Steinberg's criteria are similar to those included in the DSM-IV and to the Dissociative Experiences Scale and Somatoform Dissociation Questionnaire developed in the 1980s.

An aura of hocus-pocus still surrounds DDs, and many mental health professionals are scared away from the subject. The terrible abuse often suffered by DD victims is not easy to think about or accept. The "identity" part of DID is a disorder of the imagination - on top of an automatic dissociative defense, child victims create alter identities from altered states of consciousness, so they can be "someone else" or "somewhere else" or "sometime else" during abuse, compartmentalize the weird from the normal, and stifle powerful, ambivalent feelings towards abusive loved ones. (Abusers often reinforce this with threats and make-believe.) The result is freaky, although similar in many ways to brainwashing and cults. In addition, a powerful, though medically unsound, reaction developed in the 1990s against the political and legal misuse of trauma by fringe elements of the mental health profession, witch-hunters looking for Satan and radical feminists crusading against patriarchy. (In the West, patriarchy is as dead as the dodo. The whereabouts of Satan remain unclear.) Steinberg's book is a useful corrective to this reaction, insofar as it keeps DID victims and their loved ones from being intimidated by misinformed bullies.

After the diagnostic criteria, the most important service Steinberg renders is to clarify why dissociation is often missed. As mental health screening has improved, DD sufferers are caught more often, but then misdiagnosed by being labeled with their secondary problems - typically, mood and anxiety disorders, but also obsessive-compulsive behavior and fuzzy "personality" problems. Standardized diagnostic criteria are essential to identify DDs and differentiate them from other conditions.

Here emerges the major flaw of Steinberg's book, her lack of historical awareness. DDs, together with post-traumatic stress and borderline personality disorder, were well-known 100 years ago. All three were lumped under the label of "hysteria" and often treated, with some success, using hypnosis and drugs. The main thing missing in those days was an understanding of the physiological basis of stress. (Hormones were discovered in 1915, and the "fight-or-flight" response, the key to stress, in the 1930s. The remarkable later work of Pavlov with his poor dogs was largely unknown in the West until the 1960s.) The main thing wrong was a certain Victorian reticence. Otherwise, leading psychiatrists and psychologists were on the right track. Then several developments derailed good medicine. The best-known is the rise of psychoanalysis. Reversing his brilliant start with Studies in Hysteria, Freud and followers claimed (although not consistently) that traumatic memories were really childhood fantasies or expressions of a speculative "death instinct." Military psychiatrists eventually rejected such ideas when applied to soldiers, once they accepted that every man in combat, no matter how well trained and led, has his limit. Why should this not hold all the more of abused children, isolated and unprepared? Truly, this was an elaborate strategy of ignoring or blaming the victim.

But the most important misstep came after 1920 from the then-new concept of schizophrenia. Certain dissociative symptoms sound superficially like schizophrenia, and a reign of misdiagnosis descended. This reign continues, except the fad misdiagnoses today are increasingly anxiety and manic-depression. The focus on symptoms that can be treated by the band-aid of psychoactive drugs is also very strong. The cure of DDs requires intensive psychotherapy that typically lasts a few years. (Many DD patients are misdiagnosed for 10+ years.) However, if carried to its end, the therapy is almost always successful, and patients achieve a complete fusion of alter states. But before that can happen, patients have to endure a long road of reconditioning and personality re-integration. These techniques overlap with post-traumatic stress and borderline personality treatments such as desensitization, DBT, EMDR, and hypnosis.

For mental health professionals, the DID book of Colin Ross is the best, followed by James Chu's Rebuilding Shattered Lives. Ross explains the history of DID and how the recent "false memory" controversy is not new. The keys to traumatic amnesia are dissociation and alteration of consciousness under chronic helplessness, not "repression" in the Freudian sense, which is closer to phobia. This one fact cuts through all the confusion of the last 25 years on the subject and demolishes the medical and historical misinformation pushed by such ideologues as Elizabeth Loftus, Sally Satel, Frederick Crews, and Richard McNally. Dissociation is real and has been part of psychiatry for over 150 years. The literatures on combat trauma, cults, and brainwashing, not familiar to most mental health professionals, cover much of the same ground, including selective and complete traumatic amnesia. The recent wars in Bosnia and Kosovo have produced another chapter of related medical forensics and prosecution of war crimes. (The medical forensics are presented in publications from NATO and the war crimes tribunal at the Hague.) Even more recent is the priestly child sex abuse scandal, where the same issues appeared again. Just when the ideologues seemed triumphant, terrible events overtook the ideologues.

Unfortunately, in a media- and journalism-saturated society, it is possible for academics, literary critics (!), and talking heads with no clinical knowledge but dogmatic prior beliefs to pose as medical experts. Modern medicine has seen similar, earlier struggles, like the rejection of germs. Steinberg's book is a guide for perplexed onlookers, patients, and concerned friends and relatives, backed by the only authority that counts in science: experience. ... Read more

Book Description
Theory and practice using the ego state concept.Ego states are the parts of our personality that cause us to act different ways in different situations. Ego state theory links normal personality functioning with its extremes, such as found in multiple personalities. The therapy integrates psychoanalytic practice and hypno-analytic techniques to discover and explore covert ego states, thereby effecting behavior change. With clear language and case extracts, the recognized originators of ego state therapy explain this fascinating theory and how to put it into practice. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Review of Ego States by Watkins & Watkins
I am taking a graduate course on Advanced Thereupitics Techniques.Though this book was recommended I consider to be a MUST READ book.Much basic understanding came from chapter two. It helped me understand Freud's cathexis and how it connects the conscious and unconscious mind. Cathexis is an energy that binds thoughts together.

My metaphorical understanding is as follows: Tom (Conscious) and Dick (unconscious) are in a locked room looking at each other.The lights (cathexis) are turned off and Dick moves without sound to another location in the room.In Tom's mind's eye, he pictures Dick exactly where he was before the lights went out.However, the darkness (broken cathexis) has broken the visual bond so they are no longer visually in touch with each other even though they are still in the same room.

This is just one example of the insight that I gained from reading this book.This book is helping me understand and use NLP and hipnotherapy techniques with greater effectiveness. ... Read more