The Virtual Book Club (VBC) has been in operation since 2014. It was the brainchild of Lynette Danylchuk which I was invited to adopt from the beginning and have had many others’ help along the way. The VBC’s mission is to bring both scientific and clinical literature in the field of trauma and dissociation to our members free of charge to discuss and learn from each other while the authors of those pieces are also in attendance. We focus on both journal articles and books, devoting typically ten days for articles or chapters, and two to three months for books. Past books have included: “Psychosis, Trauma, and Dissociation” by Andrew Moskowitz, Ingo Shafer, and Martin Dorahy; “Trauma Model Therapy” by Colin Ross and Naomi Halpern; “The Truth about Trauma and Dissociation: Everything You Didn’t Want to Know and were Afraid to Ask” by Valerie Sinason; “Healing the Traumatized Self: Consciousness, Neuroscience, Treatment” by Paul Frewen and Ruth Lanius; “Neurobiology and Treatment of Traumatic Dissociation: Towards an Embodied Self” by Ulrich Lanius, Sandra Paulsen, and Frank Corrigan, among many others.
In 2023, we chose the recently released second edition of the edited tome, “Dissociation and the Dissociative Disorders: Past, Present, Future” by Martin Dorahy, Steve Gold, and John O’Neil. This is a massive reference book for the field of dissociation, and we were able to focus on eight of its 49 chapters this past year with each of their respective authors in participation. These discussions were quite stimulating and edifying for all of us. Like many of our discussions, we had the pleasure of offering a one-hour virtual meeting with the authors toward the end of our scheduled time, a newer tradition we have been employing to have real-time Q&A’s.
In 2024, we are thinking about the possibility of continuing to discuss more chapters from the reference book we used this past year as there is much more to plumb. We are also planning to invite more volunteers to help with planning, scheduling, and moderating discussions for the VBC as we have had staff turnovers of late. There is so much new literature emerging in our field, and we need more curious minds to keep track of recent developments and ideas to share with our membership. Please contact me at rhohfeler@altllig.com, or membership@isst-d.org if you are interested.