by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 28, 2025 | Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
Two weeks before her wedding in 1988, Diane Poole Heller suffered a terrible car accident that left her with a traumatic brain injury and overwhelming trauma symptoms. What could have been simply a devastating personal tragedy instead became the catalyst for a...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 28, 2025 | Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
For over forty years in private practice, Laurence Heller, PhD, observed a pattern that traditional trauma therapy failed to address. Clients who had experienced early childhood trauma—neglect, abuse, emotional unavailability, or chaotic caregiving—didn’t just...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 28, 2025 | Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
When federal agents stormed the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas in April 1993, twenty-one children emerged from the burning building traumatized by months of isolation, religious indoctrination, physical abuse, and the terror of a fifty-one day siege that...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 28, 2025 | Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology, Therapeutic Approaches and Techniques for Therapists, Therapy and Crisis Intervention for College Students in Alabama
In 1981, Judith Lewis Herman published a book that would be called “a landmark study” and “one of the most important works of the decade”: Father-Daughter Incest. Based on extensive research including interviews with forty incest survivors and...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 28, 2025 | Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
Gabor Maté: From Budapest Ghetto Baby to Voice of Compassion in Addiction’s Darkest Corners In the urine-soaked back alleys of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where sirens scream endlessly and the “Hastings shuffle,” a crack-driven...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 28, 2025 | Phenomenology and Existential Psychology, Psychology, Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
The Great Remembering: Why the Future of Psychotherapy is Just History Repeating Itself In the rush to modernize mental health treatment, the field of psychotherapy often suffers from a peculiar form of historical amnesia. We celebrate “new” modalities as...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 28, 2025 | Psychology Book Reviews and Non Fiction, Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
In 2003, David Grand sat across from a championship-level figure skater who had exhausted nearly every therapeutic approach without resolution. They had worked together for months using EMDR, Somatic Experiencing, psychoanalytic techniques, and what Grand called...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 27, 2025 | Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
In 1982, Richard Schwartz, a young, zealous family therapist fresh from his PhD at Purdue University, designed an outcome study he believed would prove family therapy had found the holy grail of psychological treatment. He recruited thirty bulimic teenagers and their...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 27, 2025 | Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
On a spring day in 1987, Francine Shapiro walked through a park near her home in Northern California, carrying troubling thoughts that had been persistent and distressing. She noticed something unexpected: as her eyes moved rapidly from side to side, following the...
by Joel Blackstock LICSW-S MSW PIP no. 4135C-S | Dec 27, 2025 | Psychotherapy Biographies: Historical Figures in the History of Psychology
Janina Fisher: Revolutionizing Trauma Treatment Through Structural Dissociation and Parts Work On a September day in 1989, a young predoctoral intern sat in a grand rounds presentation at what would later become the Trauma Center, listening to Judith Herman challenge...
