Treating The Adult Survivor Of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Psychoanalytic Perspective

Whilst this book is anchored in psychoanalysis and child sexual abuse, it is a much broader offering than this, potentially bridging a wide range of therapeutic stances and supporting roles with trauma treatment in general. The book's thesis is relevant whether you are trying to understand and work with trauma from sexual abuse or another type of exploitative relationship, or with non-relational trauma. Whichever one of these you are dealing with, it will very likely have had some or all of the same effects on the survivor, and so similar approaches and understandings can be helpful in what, taken as individual experiences, may seem to be quite widely differing.I find it hard to tell how easy it would be to make sense of the book if you do not have a background in psychology, particularly in psychoanalytic concepts, but if you know the basics, you will probably find everything brilliantly explained and extremely illuminating. The authors are clear, engaging writers who only use jargon when nothing else will do and do not waste any words or make unhelpful assumptions.Someone's job or therapeutic modality may not include any formal training or acknowledgment of 'transference', or may reject the idea of it altogether, but this is just a way of understanding why we react to people in the way that we do, and this is a lot of what this book is about. If we can understand this, we get a long way to knowing how to help people and not to get sucked into unhelpful dynamics, and these authors do a magnificent job of explaining all this.As another reviewer indicates, Chapter 9 is a veritable goldmine - it outlines all the completely natural reactions and counter-reactions we have to victims and survivors (and perpetrators I expect, if this is part of your work) which can so easily derail therapies or any kind of support work in the field, if not handled appropriately. This is either because we don't like what we're feeling and try to ignore it, or play into what we find a bit too appealing - perhaps especially when we think we are the one to finally understand, heal, and save this person, maybe where all others have failed (see: 'the idealised, omnipotent rescuer and the entitled child').I too wish this book was not so expensive and available on kindle or at least in paperback, it is a mystery to me why they do not sort this out - I personally think the publishers have got a responsibility to make work like this, which could have such a positive impact on both health and justice, more available to the helping professions. Not to mention the ease with which we can buy things on kindle/other ebooks, as well as being able to test the waters with a sample.It is true the book was published in 1994 and that trauma research has made a lot of progress, bizarrely enough though it seems barely the worse for it. Wish I'd read it years ago.

Treating the adult survivor of childhood sexual abuse is a classic work. it's been quoted and re-quoted, and 20 years after being written is still a cornerstone in current trauma lit.I found reading it very absorbing and interesting. It is well written, well thought out, but not easy to read because of the hard to comprehend cruelty to children.I come from the trauma field, so this isn't a first for me. What was interesting was the psychoanalytic perspective it added. Trauma literature talks about the damage done to nervous system in people with CPTSD and how to solve that and help overcome the damage to the person's current life. How to circumvent the avoidance and over-stimulated phases of PTSD. But trauma lit (Babbete Rothshiled, Bessel Van Der Kolk, Judith Herman) talk less about the damage to the development of the child's interpersonal abilities, and how psychotherapy can heal that.So this was a new and very interesting perspective for me. Another interesting point, and much quoted, are the transference and counter-transference typical for survivors in psychotherapy, which arranged things I recognize very well and in simple words.All in all, I recommned this book, even though it's very expensive, and can only be had in hard cover (no Kindle edition unfortunately)

.An excellent readable, humbling, informative book . Chapter 9 will be of interest to all practitioners who strive to have the courage, exhibited by their patients/ clients , to sustain bearing witness to the to the realities and suffering associated with the experiences of sexual abuse , and to create a space for thinking and growth.

A brilliant book

Excellent resource essential reading for all therapists also very holding for clients with a history of sexual abuse who are wanting to develop their psychotherapeutic understanding and thinking. Still very relevant and contemporary.