Valerie Sinason - Clinic for Dissociative Studies

[childadvocate]

copied with permission

Valerie Sinason, Director CDS – Valerie Sinason is a poet, writer,
child psychotherapist and adult psychoanalyst. She is Director of the
Clinic for Dissociative Studies. She specialises in work with abused/
abusing and dissociative patients including those with a learning
disability She has written over 12 books and 100 papers and lectures
nationally and internationally. http://valeriesinason.co.uk/index.html

The Clinic for Dissociative Studies was set up with the aid of the
Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust in 1998 as one of the few national
centres of specialist expertise in the care and treatment of people
with dissociative disorders. As an Independent Provider to the NHS it
is commissioned by PCTs, mental health trusts and local authorities
nationally to provide diagnosis, outpatient treatment and training.  
http://clinicds.com/

Working with Dissociation in Clinical Practice Using an Attachment
Perspective – 18-19th June and 2-3rd July  2011, Summer course in
collaboration with The Bowlby Centre  – This 4-day continuing
professional development course introduces key concepts for working
therapeutically from a relational perspective with adults suffering
from dissociative experiences. Dissociation will be explored as a
survival strategy which begins when an individual is faced with
repeated early emotional, physical and/or sexual trauma at the hands
of attachment figures. http://clinicds.com/news.html 
http://clinicds.com/resources/bowlby+2011+perfect++with+phil+.gif

Introduction chapter from “Attachment Trauma and Multiplicity” by
Valerie Sinason – DID and Ritual Abuse – In America the largest amount
of DID is diagnosed in connection with allegations of ritual Satanist
abuse….It is worth noting that both at the Portman Clinic and in the
Clinic for Dissociative Studies we have not found evidence of
fundamentalist religious beliefs, recovered memory or Munchhausen’s as
issues in those alleging this kind of abuse. 

Indeed, the pilot study on patients alleging ritual abuse that Dr
Robert Hale, then Director of the Portman Clinic and I submitted in
July 2000 included the finding that the only two out of 51 subjects
who had any link with evangelist religious groups made contact with
them after disclosing ritual Satanist abuse, and only because no-one
else would listen to them….I have stated elsewhere (Sinason, 1994)
that the number of children and adults tortured in the name of
mainstream religious and racial orthodoxy outweighs any onslaught by
Satanist abusers. http://clinicfordissociativestudies.com/short%20att%20tram%20mult%20Introduction%20for%20web.htm 
 

 
Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse

Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse
discusses the clinical issues around the treatment of survivors of
ritual Satanist abuse. Authors from the United States and the United
Kingdom look at the historical foundations of ritual abuse and
clinical accounts from children and adults. The book has definitions
of ritual Satanist abuse. It discusses issues in psychotherapy
involving clients suffering from ritual abuse. 1

Valerie Sinason is the director of the Clinic for Dissociative
Studies, London and a psychoanalyst and consultant research
psychotherapist at the Psychiatry of Disability Department at St
George's Hospital Medical School, London. 2

The book has been reviewed by the International Journal of Psycho-
Analysis 3, the British Journal of Psychotherapy 4 and Survivors of
Spiritual Abuse 5.

References

1 Sinason, V. Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse Routledge, New York
1994 ISBN 0-415-10543-9

2 Attachment, Trauma and Multiplicity Working with Dissociative
Identity Disorder Valerie Sinason (editor)(2002) Brunner-Routledge,
Hove, East Sussex, UK ISBN: 041519556X
http://www.routledgementalhealth.com/attachment-trauma-and-multiplicity-9780415491815

3 Johns, M. (1998) Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse. Edited by
Valerie Sinason. London: Routledge 1994. Pp. 320 International Journal
of Psycho-Analysis Volume 79 p. 1255-1258 http://www.pep-web.org/document.php?id=IJP.079.1255A

4 Black, D. M. (Autumn 1995). "Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse
edited by Valerie Sinason". British Journal of Psychotherapy 12 (1):
119-131. "Most of the book is written by therapists who have lived
through a very real trauma themselves: that of slowly coming to
believe that the appalling stories they are hearing may be literally
true. Some therapists have further paralleled their patients'
experience by meeting disbelief or dismissiveness in their
professional colleagues. Far from an overeagerness to accept these
stories, virtually every contributor describes initial extreme
reluctance to believe them, only gradually overborne by the weight of
the evidence....we also meet the courage and devotion of many
impressive therapists, who have persevered and very often won
through, and we are also, very practically, given a great deal of
helpful and directly useful information: what to do and who to turn
to if we think we may be faced with these issues. This book is not
fun, but it is admirable and necessary."
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/119961579/abstract

5 Review of Treating Survivors of Satanist Abuse edited by Valerie
Sinason 
http://web.archive.org/web/20060925195442/http://www.sosa.org/treating.html