Peter Ellis Org : Seeking Justice for Peter Ellis
The Christchurch Civic Creche Case

www.peterellis.co.nz



Books         Ç return to index
H
- Authors

Haaken, Janice                                               Pillar of Salt, 1998

Hacking, Ian                                                     Rewriting the Soul, 1995

Hood, Lynley                                                    A City Possessed, 2001

 


 



Haaken, Janice
Pillar of Salt, 1998
Gender, memory, and the perils of looking back.


Reviews

Pillar of Salt introduces the controversy over recollections of childhood sexual abuse as the window onto a much broader field of ideas concerning memory, storytelling, and the psychology of women. The book moves beyond the poles of "true" and "false" memories to show how women's stories reveal layers of gendered and ambiguous meanings, spanning a wide historical, cultural, literary, and clinical landscape. Pillar of Salt cuts a wide swath through modern Western history, extending the concept of transformative remembering into stories about the female self that have emerged historically in discourses on sexual abuse, hypnosis, and hysteria. As a constellation of topics, these writings portray a female subject in flux and a cultural situation where gender identity is unstable and thereby open to varying, sometimes conflicting, interpretations. Haaken shows how ideas within psychology about "concealed knowledge" are influenced by larger social and historical dynamics that shape the storytelling conventions available for creating an internally coherent narrative.

A reader from Portland, Oregon , October 30, 1998
A rich and rewarding book
Dense and brilliant, Pillar of Salt will be important not only for therapists, but for anyone interested in feminism, cultural history, or storytelling. It's full of stories--from fairy tales, scientific discourse, personal anecdotes, fiction, and film--that illustrate its many insights. Haaken stresses the ways that women have had to dramatize their suffering, because the ordinary misery of life under patriarchy (poverty, neglect, and so on) is not taken seriously enough.



 






Hacking, Ian
Rewriting the Soul, 1995 reprint 1998
Multiple personality and the sciences of memory


Reviews

Synopsis
Little more than two decades ago, only a tiny number of multiple personality disorder (MPD) cases were recorded in the history of Western medicine. Today hundreds seek treatment for MPD. Here distinguished philosopher Ian Hacking uses MPD and its links with child abuse and repressed memory to scrutinize today's moral and political climate.




 





Lynley Hood,
A City Possessed: The Christchurch Civic Creche Case, 2001
Longacre, Dunedin


Essential Reading for anybody with an interest in the Peter Ellis/Christchurch Creche case
webmaster; www.peterellis.co.nz


A City Possessed is a strong, compelling and shocking story about one of New Zealand's most high-profile criminal cases - a story of child abuse allegations, gender politics and the law. In detailing the events and debates leading up to and surrounding the Christchurch Civic Creche case, Lynley Hood shows how such a case could happen, and why. Her penetrating analysis of the social and legal processes by which the conviction of Peter Ellis was obtained, and has been repeatedly upheld, has far-reaching implications - not only for our justice system, but for the way in which we see ourselves. A City Possessed won the prestigious 2002 Montana Medal for non-fiction, and the Readers' Choice Award in the 2002 Montana New Zealand Book Awards. Lynley Hood was awarded a New Zealand Skeptics 2002 Bravo award for A City Possessed

'Ms Hood is clearly interested in the truth, and in careful research, rather than holding a view and sticking with it through thick and thin.'
Dr Alison Jones, Director of the Institute for Research on Gender, University of Auckland.

'A book that will elicit strong responses; outrage and bewilderment among them.'
Brian Turner, poet and publishing consultant.

'This is a work of scholarship of the highest academic standard.'
Professor Mark Henaghan, Dean of Law, University of Otago.



Links to further Reviews of A City Possessed:

New Zealand Lawyer; October 4, 2001
Sunday Star Times, October 7, 2001
Otago Daily Times, October 8, 2001
New Zealand Law Journal, October 2001
Manawatu Evening Standard, October 19, 2001
NZ Herald, October 20, 2001
Otago Daily Times, October 20, 2001
The Capital Letter October 23, 2001
The Evening Post, October 29, 2001
The NZ GP, October 31, 2001
The Press, November 3, 2001
North and South, November 12, 2001

Refer more reviews and comment in
Peter Ellis News Reports  2001,  2002,  2003