This manual is a step-by-step guide for therapists working with survivors of complex mind control and ritual abuse, explaining how survivors were trained and how to help them recover and take control of their own lives. It is an invaluable resource for all mental health and social care professionals.

This book was written to meet the need of therapists: a succinct, thorough, practical, clear, down-to-earth handbook to which a therapist can refer as needed. Many, if not most, therapists have encountered a victim of complex mind control and ritual abuse, and most therapists feel deskilled in this work. Working with such clients is a challenge for therapists, given the extreme and prolonged nature of the clients’ trauma, the severity of their dissociative disorders, the complexity of the mind control they have experienced, and the reality of organised perpetrator groups who follow up on their victims. Every therapist needs to know the basics of this work.

Chapter 1 defines and explains dissociation, ritual abuse, and mind control. It lists indicators which suggest a client may be a victim, and recommends developing ‘reflective belief (or possibly) disbelief’ rather than maintaining ‘therapeutic neutrality’. Chapter 2, The therapeutic relationship, describes victims’ training to not form bonds, the parental nature of the therapeutic bond with such clients, and practical ways to relate to someone dealing with internal multiplicity. Chapter 3, The life of a mind control survivor, describes victims’ planned experiences from infancy all the way through adulthood. Chapter 4, Engineered personality systems, describes the most common forms of training or programming, and the ‘jobs’ of inner parts of the victim. Chapter 5, Stabilisation and internal safety, explains the way in which some parts punish the victim for disloyalty by creating destabilising symptoms. Chapter 6, Working with the personality system, describes internal hierarchies and how to work with them. Chapter 7, Present-day physical safety, looks at the ongoing torture and harassment of many victims by perpetrator groups, and describes the training of various parts to return to the perpetrators, report to them, and be available for further abuse. Chapter 8, Working through the traumatic memories, gives guidelines regarding how to help a client work through the numerous traumatic training memories. Chapter 9, Confronting the spiritual issues in ritual abuse, describes the perpetrators’ spiritual/moral abuse and simulation of spiritual entities. It discusses the question of demonic possession, and looks at the real spiritual issues which victims and therapists must deal with. Chapter 10, Healing for our clients and ourselves, discusses victims’ emotional healing, grieving, developing self-esteem and integration, and therapists’ intimidation and vicarious traumatisation.