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Something special in the writings of Dr. Paul Renn has captured my attention.  I posted a section of his writings in an earlier post this week:  +WHAT IN THE WORLD IS ADULT ATTACHMENT?

I contacted the webpage that hosted Renn’s  article I discovered as presented at the above link and received a nearly immediate response.  Dr. Renn has since emailed me personally and I have emailed him in return with a hopeful request that he might assist me by reading my manuscript for Story Without Words.  I need a clinical opinion about my mentally ill mother.  I hope he will consider providing that for me.  (I am relying on crossed fingers and prayers at the moment that this might be so.)  My second email to him on this subject read as follows as I tried to narrow done my request:

Hello Paul,

I welcome your suggestion.  My parents filed their claim in 1958 on some of the last land available within commuting distance from Anchorage.  We were NOT in remote Alaska, but rather up the mountain on the far end of Eagle River Valley above where the park is now.

My first book, Story Without Words is not about the Alaska experience (the other 7 books are).  Story is about the invisible silence of psychotic child abuse by a woman who I believe suffered from severe Borderline Personality Disorder (never diagnosed or treated).

My purpose in writing Story is to introduce the invisible silence of the story without words that I believe led to Mildred’s ‘contracting’ this severe illness due very possibly to trauma triggers in her earliest development.  I want readers to have the opportunity to understand the invisible side of Mildred’s story as it most definitely does not appear in her ‘upper good world’ story.

The 7 volumes present her story in her own words – which I see as being like an opportunity to view a movie before watching it with the director’s commentary.  My next writing ventures now that I have (as of today) completed the manuscripts (missing now their rich photo illustration) will be to shred apart Mildred’s writings to expose what I see as the patterns of her madness hidden even in the words she did use to tell her version of her story.

I believe BPD mother’s are very possibly the most dangerous kind of mentally ill parent — especially when there is psychosis present.  The fact that nearly all naive readers will read the entire 7 volumes of Mildred’s writings without EVER being able to detect either her severe mental illness and its psychosis or her abuse of me motivates me to find an interested, invested, and extremely credible reader to explain how BPD can be so undetectable to others — including family members.

It is on this level of concern that I make the request to you for this kind of assistance.  The 7 volumes of Mildred’s story will read without anything more than proofing.

When I do have my forensic biographical work done with M’s writings an entirely different editorial and review process will need to be implemented — but this is a ways down the road.

Well, I tried to be succinct!!  Thank you for reading.  I understand that you must be extremely busy in your professional life but I thought I’d ask you for this clinical assistance for Story Without Words.  I will never be able to assess Mildred’s patterns clinically.  I have created what I call ‘an intellectual foray’ in Story Without Words to present my own observations about BPD/psychosis based on my 18 years of terrible abuse that was orchestrated by a disease that I believe needs all the help anyone can give it toward an understanding of it.

Mildred’s writings, I believe, will probably be the most comprehensive self-report ‘case study/history’ ever published.  That her story includes homesteading in Alaska matters only as it contrasts the extreme patterns of the operation of her ‘upper good world’ split of her psychosis (search for the perfect home/kingdom on earth/and what it took to ‘get there’) with her ‘lower evil world’ half of her psychosis that she trapped me within as the replacement for herself in hell. 

So, more than anything else I need help from an interested professional who has extensive experience with BPD clients.  I believe, even from what little of your writing I have read, from the title of your book, and from what was covered in the book review, that your unique and well-honed approach to the human mind could best assist me.

Thank you again – so much!  Linda

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In the meantime I have hunted up a brilliant online piece about his clinical work.  Given that this doctor resides in London, there’s not much of a chance I could ever go to him for therapy – but in a MOST rare lean toward the impossible, I find myself wishing I could move to London to receive therapy with this man.  I DESERVE this kind of quality therapy.  It would help me.  It’s not possible.  Nor is it any more likely that any of the millions of suffering Americans who need this kind of therapy could ever ever ever access it or afford it.

This fact does not prevent me from posting here the link to Dr. Paul Renn’s page.  Scrolling down through the information he presents here led me to the discovery of these articles he has written.  I thought some of them might be interesting to this blog’s readers.

Published Articles

• The Link Between Childhood Trauma and Later Violent Offending
• Attachment, Security, Separation and Psychological Differentiation: Developmental Implications
• Psychoanalysis, Attachment Theory and the Inner World: How Different Theories Understand the Concept of Mind and the Implications for Clinical Work
• Security, Separation, Recognition and Power
• Stop Thief! But What Has Been Stolen and By Whom?
• Effective, Ineffective and Iatrogenic Treatment
• The Development of Attachment Theory
• Commentary and Critique of Mann, D. (1997). “The Psychotherapist’s Erotic Subjectivity”.
• Brief verbatim extracts from: Solomon, J., George, C. and De Jong, A. Children classified as controlling at age six: Evidence of disorganized representational strategies and aggression at home and at school. IN Development and Psychopathology, 7 (1995),
• Summary of The War Neuroses – Their Nature and Significance (1943), in Fairbairn, W.R.D. (1996). Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality, 256-288. London: Routledge, with Comments from an Attachment and Trauma Perspective.
• Infant Observation and Adult Psychotherapy: How Developmental Studies are Informing Clinical Work with Adults
• Summary and Critique of Klein, M. (1945). The Oedipus complex in the light of early anxieties. In The Oedipus Complex Today, (1989). J. Steiner, (Ed). London: Karnac Books.
• Notes on Dissociation and Dissociative Identity Disorder
• Notes on Sexuality, Perversion and Neosexuality
• May Ethical Codes Be Unethical?
• Introduction to Attachment Theory
• The Intergenerational Transmission of Affect
• Four Patterns of Adult Discourse Observed in the Adult Attachment Interview
• The Therapeutic Process Using an Attachment-based Approach
• Summary of Home Office and NSPCC Statistics Relating to Violence and Abuse
• Violence as Attachment Gone Wrong – Three Case Vignettes
• Serious Violence, Trauma and Disorganised Attachment
• Violence and Gender – Similarities and Differences
• Understanding the links between adult attachment styles and violence in intimate relationships: when should couple therapy be the choice of intervention?
• Summary and Comment from a Contemporary Relational Perspective on ‘Fragment of an Analysis of a Case of Hysteria (‘Dora’)’ by Sigmund Freud
• ‘The Mirror Transference in the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy of Alcoholism: A Case Report’
• Contemporary Views of Psychological Trauma
• Relational Psychoanalytic Perspectives On Psychosis

VERY impressive.  The above article on dissociation caught my attention immediately.

So often – no, more accurately nearly 100%  of the time in America those of us who have suffered from the effects of severe traumas are left along the wayside of the mainstream to wither up and die.  We can pretend all we want to that we are a compassionate nation.  I don’t believe it.  If we cared as a nation about the suffering of survivors of severe trauma – especially the suffering of those of us who paid the price to stay alive while being under threat our entire infant-childhoods — we would make available to everyone wherever possible the quality of therapeutic care Dr. Paul Renn provides.

My friend and fellow lay scholar, Sandy, immediately located a copy of Renn’s new book, purchased it for me and made sure it was in the mail to me ASAP. 

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The Silent Past and the Invisible Present: Memory, Trauma, and Representation in Psychotherapy (Relational Perspectives Book Series) [Hardcover]  

Paul Renn (Author)

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I will have some thick and fascinating reading ahead of me once this book arrives.  I have completed my work on one branch of my book writing as those books move on to others to complete the photograph process for them, and then their edit and proof.  Meanwhile, I have full confidence that what Renn has to say in this book will direct me correctly toward my next writing goals.

(For those readers who remember this, my first choice for my book’s title was, Story Without Words:  The invisible silence of Mother’s abuse of me.

My editor daughter forbid me to use that subtitle — partly, it seems, because she did not like the feel of it as she read those words.  It intrigued me to see the title of Dr. Renn’s book.  On some level I believe he will understand what I say in my book perhaps more clearly than can anyone else on earth.)

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