Books & Publications

...with the sub-title of "A Handbook for the Journey from Trauma to Healthy Autonomy" this is my pet book... affectionately known as the 'rainbow book'.

It started as a leaflet for me to give to new clients to help them understand themselves and trauma... but it grew into an 85 page book.

Beautifully illustrated by my friend, Karen McMillan, with cartoon sketches that make it a friendly and manageable book in face of the topic - emotional trauma.

I think it is a hopeful book, because it strongly holds that there is a way out, and gives the reader some ideas on what they can do for themselves. While I also make it clear that I do not think that anyone can resolve their trauma without outside therapeutic help - because of the efficiency of our 'survival strategies' - I think that just knowing what is going on, and recognising the different experiences of being in one's healthy 'I', or being in one's survival 'I', is useful.

The 'rainbow book' is a travelling book. To date it has been translated into German (thank you Franz, for your vote of confidence), Dutch and Russian... and there are whispers of translations into Romanian, Norwegian, Swedish, French and Turkish... when people have time! I like to think of this little book being read in Russia, and I know because people tell me that many buy extra copies to give to friends... That makes me very happy to have written it.

You can purchase the Russian version here.

Written in 2010 when I was still involved in Family Constellations, this book is primarily about Family Constellations with an emphasis on the private one-to-one session. I do introduce Ruppert's early trauma material into this book, and attempt to make a synthesis of Family Constellations and Ruppert's trauma theory. Ultimately I could not do that, and so I moved on to work exclusively with Ruppert's IoPT theories and practice.

A particular focus of this book is on facilitation style as an important topic that was then seriously under addressed. Perhaps this has changed now!

I no longer follow the Family Constellations content but I am told that FC practitioners find the book useful. 

This is my second book, and I am quite pleased with it. I tried to write a text book on Franz Ruppert's work at the time (2013), and to put his work within the context of other trauma theory and thinking.

I included a brief history of the study (and avoidance) of trauma from the earliest days in the mid 19th Century up until the present time, and to understand why it took the psychotherapy world so long to see psychological and emotional trauma as completely central to the therapeutic endeavour... in fact many in the therapy world still do not see this.

I explained in some depth Ruppert's work as it was developed to that time, and tried to write in as much detail as I could about the practice of the  'trauma constellation' as it was then called, in the group and private individual session.

While I am happy with this book a lot has changed since 2013 in the IoPT world and a follow up book is sorely needed... watch this space!