Collecting History and Evaluating Symptoms

The process of Phase I: History Taking, when complex trauma and dissociative symptoms are present, includes ensuring that stabilization and closure strategies are in place before traumatic events are actively identified. Collecting history is often a recursive process as practitioner and client navigate memory gaps, internal conflict, psychodynamics, and other unique challenges resulting from complex trauma and disruptions in functional connectivity. At the beginning of Part III of this book, this chapter offers a brief discussion of the screening and diagnostic assessment methods for dissociation. Timing, selection of tools, and the processes of identifying and evaluating dissociative symptoms will be considered to inform practitioners in discerning the scope and trajectory of treatment within the EMDR therapy frame, in particular. Case examples illustrate how screening and assessment tools may be selected and utilized at the outset of treatment and in reevaluation of the diagnosis and treatment plan.