Image and Mirage: Art Therapy With Dissociative Clients

This is an exceptional book that exposes the real life drama of working with clients diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). It challenges clinicians regarding the personal toll they endure when working with this clientele, but it also acknowledges the incredible life lessons that can be learned when working alongside the dissociative client. In the text, the author acknowledges all aspects of her clinical trials in great detail so that the reader can learn from her mistakes as well as her successes. She discusses what she has learned, observed, and accepted about people who live in imaginary inner worlds of dissociative phenomena. Presented is a system of personality parts created for survival, an arrangement of relationships within that system, symbolic habitats, dramas of protection, memories forgotten, stories untold, and fractured identity. The text is organized in nine primary sections: Image, Mirage, Confusion of Vision, Mockery, Images Articulating Portraits of Trauma, Integration Stages, Treatment Variables, Treatment Phases, and Reflection. Throughout the text, the author shares her clinical experience with the reader through graphic examples of verbal and visual means of treatment with art making, art therapy, and poetry. Exceptional examples of client-prepared artwork highlight the text. This book is a valuable addition to the current writings on the treatment of dissociative disorders. It is a seminal book focused on the creative process and visual language that is inherent in this population. It uniquely combines advances in art therapy to meet the dissociative client on his or her own creative level.