Abstract of Multiplicity and Victimization - Pat McClendon's Clinical Social Work

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ABSTRACT of "Multiplicity and Victimization: ... "

Note: I've been told by several people that this abstract does not do justice to the article, and that they were glad that that read on.

Although ego-state therapy (Watkins & Watkins, 1988 and Watkins, 1993) is essential in the treatment of dissociative disorders and multiple personality disorder, it is seldom used with the general client population. Since all people have multiplicity (Beahrs, 1982), I believe that ego-state therapy is underutilized; it can be used to address people's multiplicity or different levels of consciousness. Ego-state therapy is equivalent to doing family/group therapy within the individual. State-dependent learning and memory are involved who we are in a given context; we are a microcosm of our environment (Rivera, 1989). In cases of victimization, dissociative disorders and multiple personality disorder are overlooked in the rush to punish the victimizer and empower the victim. Drug and/or alcohol abuse is frequently involved in cases of victimization. Many victims and victimizers are chemically dependent and are medicating the pain of their own victimization that they experienced as children. Drugs and alcohol need to be recognized as chemical dissociators (Beahrs, 1982; Braun, 1986; and Ross, 1989). The cycle of victimization can not be broken unless the victimizer's and the victim's multiplicity are therapeutically acknowledged and confronted. Ross' (1989) general trauma model is the beginning of a paradigm shift away from viewing psychiatric symptoms as psychopathological and biomedical; to, viewing them as natural outcomes of trauma. Go to "Multiplicity and Victimization: ..."