“When we penetrate the smokescreen of controversies regarding false accusations, ‘recovered memories’, ‘recanters’, references to ‘satanic ritual abuse’ and the incorporation of elements of cultural myths into some accounts, we are left with the reality that in the vast majority of cases it is not the over-reporting or exaggeration of trauma that is the principal problem. Rather it is society’s unwillingness to know, the perpetrators’ strongly motivated efforts to hide their criminal acts, and the relative ease they are often afforded by societal institutions and practices in doing so. - The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (Viewpoint)” Ritual AbuseSociety DenialSatanic Ritual AbuseFalse MemoriesSmoke And MirrorsRecovered MemoriesFalse AccusationsSmoke Screen Author:Warwick Middleton
“SELFHOOD AND DISSOCIATION The patient with DID or dissociative disorder not otherwise specified (DDNOS) has used their capacity to psychologically remove themselves from repetitive and inescapable traumas in order to survive that which could easily lead to suicide or psychosis, and in order to eke some growth in what is an unsafe, frequently contradictory and emotionally barren environment. For a child dependent on a caregiver who also abuses her, the only way to maintain the attachment is to block information about the abuse from the mental mechanisms that control attachment and attachment behaviour.10 Thus, childhood abuse is more likely to be forgotten or otherwise made inaccessible if the abuse is perpetuated by a parent or other trusted caregiver. In the dissociative individual, ‘there is no uniting self which can remember to forget’. Rather than use repression to avoid traumatizing memories, he/she resorts to alterations in the self ‘as a central and coherent organization of experience. . . DID involves not just an alteration in content but, crucially, a change in the very structure of consciousness and the self’ (p. 187).29 There may be multiple representations of the self and of others. Middleton, Warwick. "Owning the past, claiming the present: perspectives on the treatment of dissociative patients." Australasian Psychiatry 13.1 (2005): 40-49.” PsychologyIdentityPersonalityAbuseSuicidePsychologicalControlAttachmentChild AbusePsychiatryDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMpdDdnosTraumas Author:Warwick Middleton
“The capacity for dissociation enables the young child to exercise their innate life-sustaining need for attachment in spite of the fact that principal attachment figures are also principal abusers.” AttachmentChild AbuseDissociationAbuse SurvivorsGroomingDissociative DisorderAbusive ParentsChild Abuse SurvivorsTrauma BondingPsychological Defense Author:Warwick Middleton
“I've had the same version from patients in a slightly different take, which is the patient looking at me with fixed eyes saying "I'm not multiple but I think some of the others are", or alternatively, fixedly, "we're not multiple". So whatever it is about multiple realities it affects us all. - 15 years as the director of a trauma and dissociation unit: Perspectives on Trauma-informed Care” SkepticismPsychiatryDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationMultiplicityDissociative DisordersSkepticsMultiple RealitiesPsychiatry HumorMental Health Humor Author:Warwick Middleton