Candyce Roberts - Help for the Fractured Soul: Experiencing Healing and Deliverance from Deep Trauma

F or years I have been traveling around the United States equipping the Church to establish her people alive and free in Christ. I encountered a number of pastors and counselors who were trying to help victims of satanic ritual abuse (SRA). I first I thought it was an anomaly. This couldnt possibly be widespread. Could it?

I come from a very conservative background, and the idea that people actually worship Satan was not part of my experiential and educational grid. I could not even fathom why anyone would want to do that. But it is happening all over America, and their rituals contain abuses that defy the imagination. So horrible are the atrocities that the vast majority of victims dissociate in order to survive. For most victims, a relatively normal person presents him- or herself to the world, which some call the host personality, but these individuals are plagued by dissociated parts or other personalities. Each personality represents a portion of time in the persons past, and each has a story to tell.

Their diagnosis is dissociative identity disorder (DID), and treatment varies from one discipline to another. I have heard secular counselors admit that the Church should somehow be involvedeven though they dont believe the message. Their track record is abysmal, because you cannot resolve this problem without taking into account the reality of the spiritual world, and there is no wholeness without Christ. Even Christian counselors have little success unless they understand the spiritual battle for the mind.

All SRA survivors hear voices in their heads. Some are condemning, accusing and blasphemous. Others sound like human personalities, of which many are children. Those voices could be demonic, or they could be fragmented personalities. The pastoral error is to assume they are all demonic and try to get rid of them through various deliverance techniques. But what if some of those voices are personalities? You cannot get rid of them, because they are part of the person. The counselors error is to believe that the voices are all fragmented personalities and try to integrate them into the host personality. But what if they are demons? The survivor usually can tell one from the other.

I have helped thousands who have no dissociated parts find their freedom from deceiving spirits. But I have never seen an SRA victim who has a true DID without also having a demonic problem. It is possible, but I have not yet seen it, and neither have most of the Christian counselors and pastors that I know. Working with these dear people requires a lot of patience and discernment.

Another troubling observation is the varied explanations for the origin of the problem. Every year I would hear a new theory. I started to wonder what is wrong with this picture. For years I have said that the right prescription does not yet exist, but when it does it will likely be something like what Dr. Candyce Roberts offers.

Dr. Roberts has not succumbed to all the pat answers and quick fixes that so plague the industry. She has gotten away from counseling techniques borrowed from the secular world and learned to depend on the Wonderful Counselor who leads us into all truth and sets us free. She also has the right goal, which is not integration. A fractured mind is the problem, but integration is not an end. It is a beginning. The same reasoning holds for getting people free in Christ, which also is not an end, but a beginning. These people have a dysfunctional background and have never learned how to live the normal Christian life in a community of grace.

This book does not supply all the answers. No one book can, but it will make a valuable contribution to those who are struggling to get free and to those who are helping them. Dr. Roberts does not cover the demonic interference, and when I questioned her about it, she simply said, I do the same thing you do. So you may want to read The Bondage Breaker (Anderson, Harvest House) as a companion to this book if this is all new to you. In Dr. Robertss book, you will find a seasoned and sensitive journey to wholeness and inner healing.