How can we help our patients process their traumatic memories without their becoming retraumatized and overwhelmed severely all over again? Shelter from the Storm explores how therapists can confront this complex challenge. No one can completely eliminate the pain of those who have suffered mistreatment, but Shelter from the Storm proposes ways to reduce and contain the anguish inherent in trauma work. Helping those who suffer Dissociative Identity Disorder, Dissociative Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, or Posttraumatic Stress Disorder can prove a challenging task. Painful, terrifying, and mortifying memories rarely yield their grips on our patients' minds and present-day lives without the help of strenuous therapeutic interventions. It may prove difficult or impossible to free the presents and the futures of those who have suffered unwanted misfortunes in their pasts without helping them abreact some or much of their overwhelming experiences. But therapeutic approaches to traumas once powerful enough to cause mental disorders may themselves prove threatening and destabilizing to those who are already vulnerable and distressed. Preventing trauma treatment from retraumatizing trauma survivors and working to minimize the discomfort they suffer during their psychotherapies are the driving forces behind Shelter from the Storm. Dr. Richard Kluft has over 40 years of experience treating traumatized and dissociative patients. He has brought over 200 Dissociative Identity Disorder patients to integration. His therapeutic innovations have received numerous awards and honors here and abroad. Here he brings together elements from psychoanalysis, psychodynamic psychotherapy, hypnosis, behavioral therapy, cognitive therapy, and EMDR in support of his work with the traumatized. He presents his approaches through the lens of The Fractionated Abreaction Technique. His exploration of this approach is conversational and unconventional. Shelter from the Storm is not a traditional textbook. Kluft allows the Fractionated Abreaction Technique to speak for itself through the voice of its personification, The FAT Man. Kluft and The FAT Man engage the reader directly. Throughout their humorous and often irreverent dialogs they offer a compassionate and empathic perspective on how to go about working effectively with the most grim, tragic, terrifying, and soul-shattering aspects of man's inhumanity to man.
About the Author: Richard P. Kluft, M.D., Ph.D., practices psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and medical hypnosis in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. Over the last 40 years Rick has brought over 200 patients with Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly Multiple Personality Disorder) to complete integration. Cornelia B. Wilbur declared him a pioneer in the dissociative disorders field. "Of course you're a pioneer, Rick!" she said. "Just count the arrows in your back!" Rick Kluft has written nearly 235 scientific articles and book chapters, and edited or co-edited four books on dissociative disorders, incest, and trauma treatment, including (with Catherine G. Fine, Ph.D.) Clinical Perspectives on Multiple Personality Disorder. He has taught his approaches to treatment in twelve countries. His teaching, clinical, and research work have brought him many awards, most recently the 2009 Pierre Janet Award for Clinical Excellence honoring his clinical innovations in hypnosis, a 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to the understanding and treatment of dissociative disorders, and the 2012 Milton Erickson Award for his research into the causes of adverse side effects of hypnosis and how they can be prevented. Rick is a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Temple University School of Medicine, and on the faculty of Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. He has served as President of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation, the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis, and the Society for Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis. Rick relishes all forms of comedy, devours mysteries, and enjoys opera, travel, fishing, sailing, and walking. Rick plugs away at a novel.