Books
(redirected from Main.Books)
Shuffling editions and bundles around, stay tuned for more, in the meanwhile you can find Poetic License on Amazon (link below) and the other books in the series (in progress) at Leanpub.
The United Front series
Buy the in-progress United Front series through Leanpub as ebooks!
The United Front series (2013-current) - Positive, proactive and collaborative self-help for people with multiple personalities. This series is based on the United Front Boot Camp (see "United Front Boot Camp") and the System Trust Issues episodes of the Many Minds on the Issue podcast, as well as myriad years of helping plurals, multiples and traumatized DID systems work together. We present methods of increasing communication and collaboration amongst your inner people, building leadership skills, and ways to navigate external situations and life as a functional multiple system. Click to learn more about the bundle on Leanpub.
Right now this is the only book bundle in the store and contains United Front "trilogy" of books: Recruits: Building Internal Community, Rebels: Reforming the Good Guys, Adventurers: Enjoying External Life.
If you pay for the current bundle, you'll get to read the books as they're written and get the whole book bundle as they become are completed AND you can participate in each book's private online forums on Leanpub to help give feedback while they're being written. See The United Front bundle for more info!
If you purchased our former The Crissing Link: United Front or the bundle that contained United Front while it was part of The Crissing Link series — please contact us for a coupon for the new series bundle and thank you for your support!
Coming Soon: United Front: Ship's Log 2021 dated planner New.
The Crissing Link Series
Have you ever felt different? How different are you? If you've ever felt out of place, and thought perhaps people would notice and say something, then you will resonate with this series. People with mental health issues are often troubled by shame and misunderstanding. Being plural is often considered to be at the top of the heap: ridiculed and stigmatized by the media, people who discover they are multiple and attempt to come out of the closet to anyone are certain to be misunderstood and vilified.
In a feat of courage and strength, Rev. Criss breaks down the barriers and declares herselves to the public. Having figured out that her imaginary playmates weren't so imaginary, the 16 year old Crisses begin a 30+ year-long journey of selves-discovery, figuring out who owns their body, how to work together, and how to pull their collective life together — and come out a winner.
Their first book introduces you to some of the major players in their life, taking you through their history and introducing you to 18 of The Crisses. This sets the stage and the backdrop of The Crissing Link series: memoir, manifesto, & more. The Crisses aren't satisfied with just changing their shared life for the better — they want to pioneer a better life for everyone with a mental health issue.
Purpose
The purpose of this series is to help assist people with mental differences, and most especially plurals, multiples, or those who experience being many. The books cover topics from a point of view of empowerment and taking control of one's life, feeling less alone in the world through techniques for improving internal communication, assistance with therapeutic models in an age when therapy sessions are limited in length and duration, and a spiritual challenge to find healing in the middle of all the echoes of pain and trauma.
These books are suitable for people with PTSD, traumatic experiences, childhood abuse issues, depression, anxiety, and other non-multiple mental health issues as well, but all except Poetic License are written primarily with multiple readers in mind.
The Crissing Link series contains
- Poetic License (2009) - A poetic journey through the labyrinth of multiplicity.
- This is simply an introduction to the series and both an autobiographical overview of our life (thusfar), a who's-who of 18 major players in our internal landscape, and an overview of a philosophy without going into the trenches. Safe for almost all ages, most appropriate for ages 13+.
Poetic License: Available in paperback and Kindle ebook on Amazon
- Split Decision (2013-current) - One multiple's tales of falling apart and coming back together.
- This is a memoir and will take you into the trenches and take you through the subjective roadbumps and triumphs in my life -- told as stories, and in subjective detail. While perhaps safe for nearly all ages, this one will be triggery. Will update after I'm done.
- Multiple Choice New (2013-current, NOW FREE!) - A multiple system's arguments with the concept of integration.
- A manifesto, and surveys of psychiatric literature, essays debunking psychology's myths and suppositions on the necessity of integration, exposing the real choice that lays ahead both for the reader if multiple, and for the world of psychology.
- Case Histories New (1986-current) - Our past life memories.
- Memories we've been having since 1986 and writing down, which read more like fiction or fantasy.
- Core Discoveries New (2015-current) - As inside, so outside. (And vice versa.) A multifaceted philosophical journey.
- In all honesty, the root of all things important in the universe is Love. When love and sex have become confused from childhood molestation, it can arise to sexual addiction and acting out. These are tales meant to help take you on the journey from sex to soul to Higher Self with us. Sexually explicit.
Are these books of interest to non-multiples?
Poetic License is a simple overview of my life and what goes on in my head. It is suitable for non-multiples of all types, and almost all ages.
United Front (now it's own series) and Multiple Choice are self-help books intended for multiples, and probably mostly suitable for multiples, those who love them, and those who help them through therapy. They may also be of interest to those in the psychology profession, or those doing research on the internal workings of multiples (such as students, authors, screenplay writers, actors looking to play multiples on stage or screen, etc.). All the teachings in United Front can be applied to anarchistic external groups of people, though. So the book could be of use to restoring order amidst chaos and lack of leadership. Multiple Choice could be of interest to persons with health issues who are unhappy with how "the establishment" thinks they should be treated.
Split Decision and Core Discoveries are memoir-style, and suitable for anyone with literary interest in multiplicity. Age recommendations will follow the writing of these books, as I'm uncertain yet where it will go. However, we expect Core Discoveries to be sexually explicit -- anywhere from steamy romance to many-x-rated.
Other Books by The Crisses (Rev. Criss Ittermann)
- The Passionizing™ Planner: Practicing the art of following your heart. - an undated, start-anytime, self-coaching planner. Softcover version and Lay-flat hardcover version. The cover art looks lousy, but it prints fine.
- The Passionizing™ 2018 Dated Planner. A more advanced and gadgety 2018 self-coaching planner. Lay-flat hardcover version. The cover art looks lousy but it prints fine.
- How to Get Your Web Content DONE!: How to write, what to write, and why you’re writing it - ebook on Amazon.com
- SURRENDER™ to Passion: Worried to Wonderful in 28 Days - how to change panic energy and anxiety into heart-centered living. Print & ebook through Amazon.
If you're in the NY area or want a signed copy, then contact us.
Other Self-Help Books for Multiples
Amongst Ourselves by Tracy Alderman & Karen Marshall
Help through the trouble spots...
Amongst Ourselves is a groundbreaking workbook for people diagnosed with (or who believe they have) Dissociative Identity "Disorder" (or Multiple Personality "Disorder"). The book encourages inward exploration that is best done when you're relatively new to multiplicity, working with a therapist, working on rooting through the messier parts of your multiplicity, etc. It's quite different from United Front which is centered around internal relationships and improving communication and collaboration: this book is more for digging through hot-spot issues such as safety, triggers, etc. It does not approach multiplicity from a strongly "you must integrate" angle, but it also doesn't approach the self-help work from the position of respect for your internal parts: everyone is "alters" and it is assumed that they're all a part of "you". Much of the book addresses the 2nd person ("you") although it's not difficult to read it as "you-plural".
However, as of the writing, Karen (the multiple on the project) had not integrated nor considers it strongly as an option for themselves.
When you get this book, you also need a brightly colored journal or a 3-ring binder, and plenty of writing instruments -- you are expected to work through the exercises as you go. It is also a good book for friends, family and loved ones to look at or read; it is full of straightforward discussion of what is needed.
Other Memoirs
Mending the Shattered Mirror by Analie Shepherd
Chilling account of therapist abuse
We haven't read the book — we got bits of the story first-hand from the author when we tabled at Healing Together in Orlando (February 2019). Knowing some of the story, in a time of our life when we're getting more and more angry at psychology as a whole and specific bad therapists and researchers in particular just wouldn't work for us.
But this book talks about the dangers of allowing a therapist to lower the therapeutic boundaries, to encourage reparenting in the therapeutic relationship. What starts out as a casual lunch with a client outside of the therapeutic distance becomes a hand on the shoulder, a hug, a little with their head on the therapists' lap becomes — something scary, frightening, and all-encompassing.
Please read our page on reparenting, protect yourself, and if you need it — read this cautionary tale!
When Rabbit Howls by Truddi Chase
Unbelievably disturbing, but could be helpful...
I recommend this book with great caution & caveats.
I don't think Truddi wrote this book for people who are multiples. This book is very dramatic, immersive, and can cause a great deal of triggered flashbacks for those of us who have suffered several types of child abuse. It was written for the masses, before abuse survivors all over the world were collaborating on the Internet. That said, it reads like a thriller novel, it's a real page-turner, you could lose sleep over it. Victims of abuse will likely find it very disturbing indeed. However, there is actually therapeutic value in that, so if you are a victim read the book in collaboration with a therapist to explore the issues it brings up.
I underlined passages, from a few words to whole paragraphs. In a separate book, I wrote down the things that twigged us the most and we worked through each item as to why -- often drawing or autowriting from residents that are not (or cannot be) co-aware. Scary scary stuff. In fact, we put trigger warnings on the cover of that journal -- going through it is a real Multiple Moment trippy thing because we still don't "get" much of what our youngests and most-damageds have shared in that book -- and are afraid to dig further.
Truddi's book helped me in the way that anthropologists are helped by archaeologists -- the things that twigged us in this book helped us piece together details of our own abuse issues and paint a more complete picture that might resemble what happened to us during the times that we have no memories. Whether that had real value to us on a daily basis is uncertain. Life now has a subtle horror film soundtrack behind it.
However, this is a great read for people interested in multiple personalities who want to get a REAL glimpse into the child molesting devils that walk this earth, and those who don't believe in ritual abuse...the level of sickness this book goes into is unparalleled in the other books I've read.
Clinical Works
Diagnosis & Treatment of Multiple Personality Disorder by Frank W. Putnam
Central work on MPD/DID
This is my clinical bible on being multiple. I don't base my being multiple on it -- it's where I turn to when I want to argue with the field of psychology as a whole. Putnam goes into the anatomy of multiplicity, the roles often adopted by residents, helpful tips for therapy to help with triggers and other issues, he mentions non-human alters, he mentions how integration is not always the answer and even when attempted it doesn't always work.
Putnam now works with children with dissociative disorders and has also written a work on the development of DID in children.
Ok, that all said, there are plenty of things I disagree with given my insights into my own experiences with myself and other multiples -- but this book is very helpful nonetheless. I don't expect that any one book would get "everything right" for such a complicated, unusual, and ill-understood mental landscape. What I do expect is that people who write about it write from either a wealth of experience, clinical understanding, personal experience, or bountiful qualifications that they are merely stating their opinion. Dr. Putnam has a wealth of observational and clinical experience to share, and his own personal experience with people he is helping.
I take each individual statement of Putnam's as a possibility within the wide and deep realm of multiple personality, but I do not apply his individual statements to individual multiples. Individuals and their expressions of multiple personality vary widely. I have my own perceptions and insights and share them here, in my books, and at kinhost.org. Dr. Putnam gives me a book I enjoy arguing with -- and I enjoy quoting. I would venture to say there's no better book for a clinician to familiarize themself with the phenomenon and possible ways to explore it from a clinical standpoint, but I would also tell you that your experience of any one individual with multiple personalities is not easily reflected by ANY one book. Read away, but then be prepared for any individual multiple to go entirely "out of bounds".
Because of this, curious multiples are cautioned to read the book with a pile of salt. You are not every multiple. Putnam knows many multiples, but you are your own entity and write your own rules. Consider Putnam's work to be comforting whenever possible, argue in the margins, ask yourself "Is this true for us?" -- but do not feel left out, excluded, misunderstood or alone when he presents something unfitting or unfamiliar to you.