With much satisfaction and great expectations, we are announcing the launch of Frontiers in the Psychotherapy of Trauma and Dissociation, the clinical journal of the ISSTD. It is dedicated to the promotion of creative clinical practices. Frontiers will complement the mission of the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation as the forum for conceptual and research articles. Articles will be available to ISSTD members via the Member’s Corner area of the ISSTD website.
The first five articles include an editorial from each co-editor.. The title for Steve Frankel’s editorial is “How Close Encounters of the Completely Unanticipated Kind Led Me to Becoming Co-Editor of Frontiers.” Andreas Laddis writes about “Sources for Psychotherapy’s Improvement and Criteria for Psychotherapy’s Efficacy.”
Frontiers proudly hosts three articles by senior clinicians who share their satisfaction with conceptual and technical discoveries that they made. The first two authors, Rick Kluft and Ellert Nijenhuis, demonstrate how each sought the meaning of trauma-related dissociation for their patients, i.e., the coping function of being disaggregated/dissociative identities or alters while enduring traumatic danger. On the basis of that understanding, each describes next how they create conditions of coping with that danger that make dissociation unnecessary. The title of Rick Kluft’s article is “Trying to Keep It Real: My Experience in Developing Clinical Approaches to the Treatment of DID.” His “pragmatic” approach is based on learning about the alters’ coping mode from each alter’s behavior and intentions toward one another and the therapist. Ellert Nijenhuis’s approach, on the other hand, is based on understanding human nature in its broadest sense first, as it is defined in the philosophy of “enactivism.” Then, he extrapolates to how dissociative parts serve human nature during traumatic danger. The title of his article is “From Passion to Action: A Synopsis of the Theory and Practice of Enactive Trauma Therapy.”
The third article is by Joy Silberg and Chevy Schwartz Lapin, with the title “Expanding our Toolkit through Collaboration: DIR/ Floortime and Dissociation-Informed Trauma Therapy for Children.” The authors tell the story of discovering trauma-related dissociation and posttraumatic play in children at Floortime, a facility for the treatment of children with autism spectrum disabilities. Unknown to Floortime clinicians, apparently those children suffered traumatic betrayal at the hands of caretakers. When she was invited to teach trauma therapy principles, Joy Silberg became fond of the Floortime technique designed for the engagement and emotional regulation of developmentally delayed children. Chevy Schwartz Lapin, in turn, describes how the principles of trauma therapy empowered her to take developmentally delayed children along to disclosure of entrapment in traumatic caretaking.
Happy reading!
Co-Editors
Andreas Laddis, MD, USA and Steven Frankel, PhD, JD, USA
Associate Editor
Martin Dorahy, PhD, New Zealand
Editorial Board
Laura Brown, PhD, USA
Elizabeth Bowman, MD, USA
Richard A. Chefetz, MD, USA
Constance Dalenberg, PhD, USA
Judith Daniels, PhD, Netherlands
Steven N. Gold, PhD, USA
Elizabeth Hegeman, PhD, USA
Richard Kluft, MD, USA
Christa Krüger, MD, South Africa
Karlen Lyons-Ruth, PhD, USA
Alfonso Martinez-Taboas, PhD, Puerto Rico
Ellert R.S. Nijenhuis, PhD, Netherlands
Warwick Middleton, MD, Australia
Sandra Paulsen, PhD, USA
Vedat Şar, MD, Turkey
Joyanna L. Silberg, PhD, USA
Kathy Steele, MN, CS, USA
Onno van der Hart, PhD, Netherlands
Victor Welzant, PsyD, USA