Valerie Sinason - Shattered But Unbroken: Voices of Triumph and Testimony

Dr. Amelia van der Merwe has worked in the area of violence and its psychological consequences since 1999. Her research has focused on community violence, intimate partner violence, and ritual abuse and its effect on psychological outcomes. She has worked at the University of Cape Town (SA), The Policy Research Bureau (UK), the Human Sciences Research Council (SA) and the University of Stellenbosch (SA) in both research and teaching capacities. This is her fourth book, and she has written many book chapters and journal articles on the effects of violence and abuse, specifically on child and adolescent emotional and developmental outcomes. She is currently doing post-doctoral research at the University of Stellenbosch.

Valerie Sinason is a poet, writer, child psychotherapist, and adult psychoanalyst. She is a founder director of the Clinic for Dissociative Studies and president of the Institute for Psychotherapy. She is an honorary consultant psychotherapist at the University of Cape Town Child Guidance Clinic, and chair of trustees of the First People Centre, New Bethesda, South Africa. She is a patron of Dorset Action on Abuse (DAA). She co-edited Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy after Child Abuse (Karnac, 2008) and in 2012, she published Trauma Dissociation and Multiplicity (Routledge). She has published more than 100 papers and chapters, and fourteen books, including two poetry collections.

Annalise is a survivor of ritual abuse, and has dissociative identity disorder.

Mary Bach-Loreaux is an American poet, artist and survivor whose work has been published in the UK ( Trauma, Dissociation and Multiplicity: Working on Identity and Selves ed V. Sinason, Routledge, 2012), quoted anonymously in other websites and books in Europe, as well as published online in Analysands Speak, The Psychoanalytic Experience (ed Esther Altshul Helfgott, Ph.D. Editor), online on FragLit, Spring 2009 in the print journal, Pine Mountain Sand and Gravel and in their just-released anthology, Quarried: Three Decades of Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel. Mary has shown one-woman watercolors and fine arts photography in survivor shows in American cities. She provided the cover drawing (but not the design) for Kathleen Sullivans book, Unshackled: A Survivors Story of Mind Control.

Paula Bennett is a UK writer and survivor of ritual abuse. After years of work on the traumatic impact of ritual satanist abuse Paula Bennett (not her real name) decided to use her own lived experience to help others. One of the few survivors to speak to the press about the British serial abuser Jimmy Savile she always has aided police and parliamentarians. She has written various pieces on ritual abuse and is working on more.

Lina Hartocollis , PhD, is associate dean and director of the doctorate in clinical social work (DSW) programme at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia. Her research and scholarly interests include cultural determinants of mental health diagnosis, clinical management of dissociative disorders, and doctoral education.

Wendy Hoffman is a survivor, a retired licensed clinical social worker whose practice specialised in treating the dissociated disorders, and a published writer. Her first major autobiographical book, The Enslaved Queen, A Memoir about Electricity and Mind Control (Karnac, 2014) has now been followed by her second autobiographical book White Witch in a Black Robe: A True Story About Criminal Mind Control (Karnac, 2016). That same year, she also published a book of poetry, Forceps: Poems about the Birth of the Self (Karnac, 2016).

Joanna has dissociative identity disorder, writes poetry and prose and has been published in books on DID including Trauma, Dissociation and Multiplicity: Working on Identity and Selves (ed V. Sinason, Routledge, 2012).

Richard P. Kluft , M.D., PhD, practises psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and medical hypnosis in Bala Cynwyd, Pennsylvania. He is clinical professor of psychiatry at Temple University School of Medicine and faculty at the Psychoanalytic Center of Philadelphia. Author of over 250 scientific papers, reviews, and chapters, and editor of several books, mostly involving trauma and dissociation, he has presented widely. His contributions have brought him numerous honours and recognitions. His most recent text, Shelter from the Storm , explores innovative and safe approaches to the abreaction of trauma. Also a novelist, Dr. Klufts Good Shrink/Bad Shrink (2014) explores the misuse of psychological science.

Christa Krger is a professor in the department of psychiatry in the Faculty of Health Sciences at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, as well as a specialist psychiatrist and head of a clinical unit at Weskoppies Psychiatric Hospital in Pretoria. Her research covers clinical, psychosocial, neurophysiological, and cultural aspects of dissociation. She also serves as research supervisor to masters level and doctoral candidates. She serves as a director on the board and on several committees of the International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) and is a fellow of the ISSTD.