Self-Help Books by Survivors

Ellen Bass, Courage to Heal : A Guide for Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse (New York: third edition, Harper Perennial Library, 1994).

This is an excellent place to start if you are just starting to deal with childhood sexual abuse, and a useful book for almost everyone. I read it years ago, and I still go back to it to see what it has to say on particular issues. I haven't read the new edition; the older one did not have much discussion of DID.

Lynne D. Finney, Reach for the Rainbow: Advanced Healing for Survivors of Sexual Abuse (New York: Perigee, 1992, first published 1990).

Finney is a survivor and a therapist. She tells a lot of her own story and I found that very helpful. This might be a particularly useful book for people in the middle of the dissociative continuum; she puts an emphasis on ego states (a common term for less extreme forms of multiple personality) and reserves an MPD (DID) diagnosis for the most severe cases.

However, I was uncomfortable with some of her ideas. She is big on hypnosis and the power of positive thinking and she is anti-medication. She used a number of unconventional therapies and ideas, including holographic breath work to release feelings and a spiritual philosophy that says evil is not real.

I would be careful about this book unless you are pretty sure that the ideas will appeal to you or you are comfortable with ignoring other people's opinions. She makes some strong controversial claims, such as: forgiveness of the abuser is necessary for healing. Her abuser was her father and he had MPD. This book was apparently an early classic--advertising for her later book Clear Your Past, Change Your Future claims that more than 50,000 copies of Reach for the Rainbow have been sold.

Eliana Gil, United We Stand: A Book for People with Multiple Personalities (Walnut Creek, CA: Launch Press, 1990). Launch Press, P.O. Box 31493, Walnut Creek CA 94598.

This 45 page booklet is probably not worth the price ($6.95), but it is a good simple explanation of what dissociation and multiple personality are, where they come from, and how to get started on the healing process. She stresses that multiplicity is a gift, not a form of mental illness, and that the internal system should be respected. This is probably most useful as a book for therapists to give to clients.

Anne Stirling Hastings, From Generation to Generation: Understanding Sexual Attraction to Children (Tiburon CA: The Printed Voice, 1994). The Printed Voice, 98 Main Street No. 538, Tiburon CA 94920.

This book uses a sexual addiction model to try to understand how to heal sexual abuse and abusers. It helped me understand a lot better about boundaries, and its non-shaming tone helped me to be able to face some of the ways in which my experience of abuse shaped me and my sexuality. It has a couple of chapters on women as abusers, and quite a lot of material on covert sexual abuse. I particularly recommend it to anyone who struggles with the fear of passing on the abuse.

Sandra J. Hocking and Company, Living with Your Selves: A Survival Manual for People with Multiple Personalities (Rockville, MD: Launch Press, 1992).

This small book is a good comforting introduction to the world of fairly severe DID. However, if you don't have clothes in your closet, you don't recognize and don't loose a lot of time, you may find that this book is more disturbing than helpful. Her definition of DID doesn't fit me very well.

Chrystine Oksana, Safe Passage to Healing: A Guide for Survivors of Ritual Abuse (New York: Harper Perennial, 1994).

This is a Courage to Heal style book about ritual abuse. It may come on a little strong for some tastes, but the author tries very hard to remind readers that everyone's experiences are different. It does not put a big focus on DID, but gives suggestions for healing a range of dissociative issues. I found this book useful as I started to face abuse that was sadistic and involved multiple abusers, even though I would not (at least at this point) consider the abuse I remember to be ritual abuse.

Bobbie Rosencrans, The Last Secret: Daughters Sexually Abused by Mothers (Brandon VT: Safer Society Press, 1997). Safe Society Press, P.O. Box 340, Brandon VT 05733.

This book is aimed partly at professionals and partly at survivors, but I think it could be very valuable to anyone who was sexually abused by a woman. It reports the results of a 1990 study of 93 self-selected women who experienced sexual abuse by their mothers. The book is full of the comments of the participants, and reading it made me feel part of a community in a new way. It deals mostly with the impact of abuse; the author promises a second book on the therapy process. The book acknowledges dissociation, but does not include explicit discussion of DID. The author writes here as a professional (MSW) but also wrote her own story under the pen name Kathy Evert.

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