“Spiritual abuse is the use or misuse of a position of power, leadership or control in which a child or adult is made to feel that they, their families or those they love are doomed in this life and in an after-life if they do not follow unquestioningly what they are asked to say or […]
The conviction and sentencing of Australian Cardinal and high-ranked Vatican official George Pell for sexual abuse of two 13 year old choirboys in the mid-1990s is generating a tsunami of media report and debate. In stark contrast to the period prior to delivery of the verdict late last year (when a suppression order in relation […]
March 5 was Dissociative Identities Awareness Day, also known as DID Awareness Day. I wonder how many of us knew this? I have to admit this Awareness Day has mostly just passed us by in Australia, where I work. As a therapist who spends most of her week with highly dissociative people, I am rather […]
Just as we reflect on how the Wildfires have come so close to some ISSTD members, and effected the very therapists who are usually there to support others in their trauma, some feel-good news surfaces. ISSTD Member Susan Pease Banitt, LCSW was contacted by a childhood friend, who is a Social Worker in California, who […]
I have wondered, before now, if the dystopian stories embedded in our lives and creative culture prepared us or numbed us for disaster. Now, I can say, they do not do either. The day before the fire, I noticed and commented on an odd vacuous energy in the air – as if the oxygen had […]
This past September, I spent several weeks in Croatia teaching in a first-of-its-kind art therapy postgraduate program at the J.J. Strossmayer University of Osijek, Academy of Arts and Culture. This new art therapy training program was created in collaboration with faculty from the Art Therapy Program at the George Washington University in Washington, DC. Located […]
Today, December 3, is International Day for People with Disabilities. What does it mean to have an international disability day? For those I have spoken to in the U.K., Europe, Australia and South Africa – being named means being seen, valued, represented. We know the impact on black citizens in the U.K. before black actors […]
In a world where children (or adult survivors) reporting sexual abuse are frequently ignored, accused of lying, or of having over-active imaginations, Australia’s Royal Commission into Institutional Response to Child Sexual Abuse has been a beacon of hope. The Royal Commission was announced in 2012 and the scope of the 6-year process was enormous, with […]
October is Domestic Violence (DV) Awareness Month in the USA. Many other countries have similar months at different times of the year. During this time it is very important to bring these situations and circumstances to the forefront of our minds. We know that interpersonally violent situations are very damaging for everyone involved, and children […]
I was a teenager when ritual abuse was first reported in Australia. A series of newspaper articles in the mid-1990s claimed that women were entering psychotherapy only to ‘recover’ memories of grotesque and improbable abuse. The general thrust of coverage was that the movement against child abuse had gone too far, and that therapists and […]
