Penn State trustees authorize settlements with victims of Jerry Sandusky, Transference-focused psychotherapy with former child soldiers, Structural dissociation and its resolution among Holocaust survivors

Penn State trustees authorize settlements with victims of Jerry Sandusky
At least 30 men have come forward to claim that Jerry Sandusky, pictured leaving the Centre County (Penn.) Courthouse after having been sentenced in October, sexually abused them as children.
By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer, NBC News  July 12, 2013

Penn State University trustees gave the go-ahead Friday for the school to start making settlement offers to some of the child sexual abuse victims of former assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky.

No settlement agreements have been signed, the university said in a statement, adding that negotiations with men who have made claims against the school are confidential.

Freeh found that Graham Spanier, then the university's president, two other senior executives and legendary football coach Joe Paterno "failed to protect against a child sexual predator harming children for over a decade." Paterno died last year.

Spanier — who is awaiting trial on charges of perjury in connection with his grand jury testimony in the Sandusky case, as well as charges of obstruction, conspiracy, endangering the welfare of children and failure to properly report suspected abuse — filed a notice Thursday that he is suing Freeh for libel and defamation.....
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/12/19443833-penn-state-trustees-authorize-settlements-with-victims-of-jerry-sandusky
 
Ex-Penn State president to sue Freeh for libel over report on Sandusky abuse scandal  By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer, NBC News July 11, 2013  Former Penn State University President Graham Spanier filed a notice Thursday that he intends to bring a libel and defamation lawsuit against former FBI Director Louis Freeh, whose exhaustive investigation of the Jerry Sandusky child sexual abuse scandal sharply criticized Spanier's handling of the case.
http://usnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/07/11/19423087-ex-penn-state-president-to-sue-freeh-for-libel-over-report-on-sandusky-abuse-scandal
 

Transference-focused psychotherapy with former child soldiers: meeting the murderous self.

Nel Draijer, Pauline Van Zon
a Department of Psychiatry , VU University Medical Center/GGZinGeest , Amsterdam , The Netherlands.
Journal of Trauma & Dissociation (impact factor: 1.23). 03/2013; 14(2):170-83. DOI:10.1080/15299732.2013.724339
Source: PubMed

ABSTRACT This article describes the application of transference-focused psychotherapy (TFP) to the treatment of former child soldiers suffering from dissociative identity disorder. It focuses on the problems with aggression faced in psychotherapy. TFP provides a psychodynamic, object relations model to understand the aggression arising in psychotherapy, focusing on the transference and countertransference in the here and now of the therapeutic relationship. Aggression is considered an essential and vital inner dynamic aimed at autonomy, distancing, and the prevention of injury and dependency. In extremely traumatized patients there may be aggressive and oppressive inner parts that want total control-identifying with childhood aggressors-thus avoiding vulnerability. According to TFP it is vital that this aggression is addressed as belonging to the patients themselves in order to reach some form of integration, balance, and health. This is illustrated in a case description.
http://www.researchgate.net/publication/235619397_Transference-focused_psychotherapy_with_former_child_soldiers_meeting_the_murderous_self

Structural dissociation and its resolution among Holocaust survivors: a qualitative research study.
Carl F Auerbach, Shoshana Mirvis, Susan Stern, and Jonathan Schwartz

Journal of Trauma & Dissociation 10(4):385 (2009) PMID 19821175

This qualitative study investigated how Holocaust survivors managed to lead "normal" lives after experiencing incomprehensible horror. It was based on structural dissociation theory (O. Van der Hart, E. R. S. Nijenhuis, & K. Steele, 2006), which postulates that when people encounter traumatic events that they cannot integrate into their ongoing mental lives, their personalities may divide into 2 distinct action systems: the apparently normal part of the personality (ANP; involving systems that manage functions of daily life) and the emotional part of the personality (EP; involving systems related to the traumatic memory). Failure to integrate also leads to nonrealization of the traumatic experience. Research participants were 20 people randomly selected from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum's oral history archives. Their interviews were analyzed in terms of structural dissociation and nonrealization in order to develop a narrative about the stages of their post-war lives. In the 1st stage (Surviving the Camps: Formation of Traumatic Memories), the experience of surviving the camps created traumatic emotional memories. In the 2nd stage (Post-War Adjustment: Creating the ANP by Splitting Off the Traumatic Memories Into an EP), survivors' desire to create a normal post-war life led them to split off their traumatic memories. In the 3rd stage (Developing the Motivation to Remember), survivors' changed life context motivated them to confront the previously split-off material. In the 4th stage (Creating a Historical Self: Integration of the ANP and EP), survivors integrated past experience into their lives, although the impact of the trauma never fully disappeared.

DOI: 10.1080/15299730903143691
http://pubget.com/paper/19821175/structural-dissociation-and-its-resolution-among-holocaust-survivors-a-qualitative-research-study