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Richard A. Moskovitz, Lost in the Mirror: An Inside Look at Borderline Personality Disorder (Dallas TX: Taylor Publishing Co., 1996.
This is a self-help book by a professional for people with borderline personality disorder. He says that most, but not all, borderlines have been sexually abused as children, and he identifies dissociation and lack of a coherent identity as key symptoms of BPD. He even says: "I believe that Dissociative Identity Disorder represents an extreme along the spectrum of dissociative experiences that characterize BPD." (p. 176) In other words, what he means by BPD is probably the same pattern that other therapists call mid-continuum dissociative disorder. I believe that his approach is less useful than the mid-continuum approach, because he wants clients to focus from the beginning on the continuity between their parts instead of loving and healing the separate parts first before trying to put them together. But his approach is certainly better than the old prejudices about borderline personality disorder, and his approach is generally caring and sensible.
Nancy J. Napier, Getting Through the Day: Strategies for Adults Hurt as Children (New York: WW Norton, 1994)
A wonderful book if you like Jungian approaches, particularly if you aren't sure whether you are multiple or not. Lots of specific suggestions, many of them using guided imagery, for managing memories, functioning in the world, and healing. I read this book soon after my diagnosis and found it very helpful.
Anne Wilson Schaeff, Beyond Therapy, Beyond Science: A New Model for Healing the Whole Person (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1992).
Anne Wilson Schaeff, who is probably best known for her books on codependence, writes here about how 12 step programs are better than conventional therapy. I agree with some of her criticisms of psychology, but this book did not convince me to give up on therapy. What I did find useful was her description of what she calls deep process work, which fits my experiences of processing memories and unresolved childhood feelings better than the usual discussion of abreaction. You can find more information about her approach at Beyond Therapy.
Peter C. Whybrow, A Mood Apart: Depression, Mania Other Afflictions of the Self (New York: Basic Books, 1997).
The author of this book, a research psychologist, wants most of all to get the reader to really grasp that mental illness is not primarily biological or primarily the result of experience but rather a complex mix of the two. His focus is primarily on bipolar disorder and depression. He makes his point with extended stories hybridized from the experiences of his own patients, and from reflections on his own less severe experiences. This book lacks the beautiful writing of Kay Jamison's An Unquiet Mind (listed above), but it does a good job of explaining a variety of issues for the lay reader. What I found most interesting is the author's reflections on how we weave our disorders into our sense of our selves and therefore find it very hard to see them as diseases that are not our fault and can be treated. If you don't like the medical/biological model at all this book is not for you, and if you know a lot about medical/biological theories you may find his explanations tedious. But it is a thoughtful and very moderate development of medical/biological ideas.
next: Memoirs by Therapists
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