Core members

Assistant Professor Helle Spindler joined the clinical faculty of the Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences in 2008, having completed doctoral and post-doctoral work there previously. Her Master thesis was on the meaning of the concept ‘dissociation’.  Since that time, Dr Spindler has been involved in important research looking at the traumatic effects of physical illnesses and medical interventions, particularly heart failure, a line of work that brought about her PhD thesis “Cardiac Psychology”.  She has strong interests in the assessment of dissociation and the dissociative disorders, as well as how dissociation and attachment theory can help in the understanding and treatment of borderline personality disorder.

PhD student Dorte Mølgaard Christiansen is working on her PhD thesis, under the supervision of Andrew Moskowitz and Ask Elklit from the Danish Research Unit of Psychological Trauma, University of Southern Denmark. Her topic – gender differences in risk factors related to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, includes an analysis of the neurobiological and psychological variables related to the development and maintenance of PTSD, which may differ in males and females.  Her prior work includes a number of studies of victims of sexual assault and their significant others. Other special interests include the influence of oxytocin in relation to posttraumatic stress, the interaction between somatization, dissociation and trauma, and different pathways to the development of PTSD which may be more or less gender specific.