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While paying the obligatory homage to the new brain science that has revolutionized our understandings the section on "Trauma and the Brain" is particularly discouraging in its simplistic explanations.Finally, perhaps most disconcerting is that the book makes NO mention of the new methods for treating trauma ranging from EMDR (Eye Movement and Desensitization and Reprocessing) procedures, cognitive behavioral approaches (CBT), DBT (Dialectical Behavioral Therapy), especially for those suffering from character disorders such as borderline personality disorder, helpful couples approaches to healing and so on that have been developed and proven to be invaluable to the recovery process. The new research and clinical practices address this sense of overwhelm and confusion and have proven to be invaluable. Each of these new therapeutic methods has been extensively researched and shown to lead to extraordinarily more effective methods for treating the after effects of trauma/abuse, shortening the recovery period and producing enduring positive effects. Essentially this version of Courage to Heal throws us, survivors and therapists alike, back more than 30 years into the extremely limited and marginally useful approaches to healing which we now know can potentially lead to even further revictimization survivors related to their internal states. Earlier complaints by readers that the book was very much overly simplistic and often ultimately left clients feeling discouraged because their situations were invariably more complex will undoubtedly be revisited by contemporary readers. I have just read the 20th anniversary edition of Courage to Heal.
While posing as new, updated knowledge about the healing process about healing from trauma, I was absolutely stunned to discover that there was not one word about the extraordinary new understandings about the effects of abuse/trauma seen later in adult life and methodologies for treating abuse related symptoms. Instead of just saying that their symptoms are not their "fault" this new information makes their sense of helplessness and powerlessness understandable and at the same time offers new hope.Also, the book does not address the massive amount of research that links abuse/trauma to a whole host of other disorders (besides PTSD) with which survivors must contend including, depression, pervasive anxiety, somatic correlates, and a other psychiatric, emotional and physiological symptoms to name a few, that truly address the utter complexity of the aftermath of abuse in adult life. As a therapist working the field of mental health for 40 years with a specialty in working with abuse survivors and their PARTNERS, I was stunned to see that the book, while purporting to be an update of the 1988 edition is essentially the same as what was written in 1988 despite the fact that over the past 25 years we have made enormous gains in understanding and treating abuse/trauma from a research and clinical treatment perspective. When I have presented this new research and clinical material to participants of my workshops, ongoing groups for PARTNERS and couples in conjoint therapy, to a person, there was a collective sigh of relieve and recognition of the complexity and power of often unconscious processes that make the problems survivors face to seemingly intractable and grueling. Earlier complaints by therapists and others that the authors are not clinicians and are dealing with issues they don't truly understand is yet again validated. The general message of the book is that the healing process will be most likely a long process, and focuses on "healing" processes such as writing in a journal, meditation, accepting the abuse as a reality and a brief mention of the value of medication to assist in managing painful and often, at least temporarily, seemingly uncontrollable painful thoughts and emotions.
Everything from PTSD symptoms, negative cognitive processes (negative self-thoughts), the effects of distorted memory, the dissociative states as well as many other issues that profoundly impact upon the survivors themselves and their PARTNERS and are the real targets of the healing process received only the barest of recognition and explanation.
To our shame as a society, it is common. But I found the sexual abuse chapter in Susan Forward's "Toxic Parents" excellent. Read this book years ago, and hated it. Um.no. Horrible book. If you were abused, then you were - and in my experience most people who were abused remember it. I'm not saying that sexual abuse is not common.
And as someone wanted to know an earlier reviewer's qualifications - yes, I'm qualified to comment, being a sensible person, a doctor, and an incest survivor. I'm appalled at the effect this belief can have on these vulnerable people, and on the people they then wrongly assume to be their abusers.
There has to be bit of reality in there somewhere. Consider a person with these feelings who was not, in fact, sexually abused.
Like 'Signifier', I remember taking particular exception to the same comments - that if you felt as if you might have been abused, then you had been. But suppressed memories of abuse as a cause of psychological problems is extremely rare - and I'm appalled at a book that says to unhappy people that the presence of a vague feeling that something bad may have happened means that it definitely did.
Read that instead. Not necessarily.
There are plenty of reasons why a person may feel bad, and suppressed memories of sexual abuse is only one of them, and not a very common one either.
no torns, writing or anything of the like. The book was like new. Very Satisfied. My therapist recommended this book. Once i started reading it i learned alot about myself and gave me answers and explanations to alot of my wonders.
I highly recommend this book. Its a well written book for those who think they are ready to start the healing journey. I am using this book with several clients who have been sexually and emotionally abused as children/teenagers, including a male. This book gently introduces the process of healing and allows difficult assignments to be skipped over.
Good times. Send anonymous copies to the impressionable daughters of your boss, your landlord, or the neighbors you can't stand. Include a nice card with a poem by Maya Angelou and an anonymous note reading "I hope this helps you the way it did me." Then sit back and savor the carnage.
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