Analysing Patients With Traumas Separation, Illness, Violence

The focus of this book is on detailed case histories of patients with severe traumas. The author takes us through the successive stages of analysis and gives us a graphic impression of the progress of her diagnostic and therapeutic insights into traumatic processes and their treatment. Her main interest is in the development of the transference/countertransference relationship. Traumatic experience has to be actualised within that relationship if it is to be treated successfully, only in this way can therapeutic change become a feasible proposition. Traumatic micro-processes and trauma-sequel phenomena in transference and countertransference are described and conceptualized. The author demonstrates her point with examples taken from clinical practice: illnesses experienced as traumatic; separation traumas; childhood experiences of violence; adult experiences of violence: war, torture, and displacement that can engender PTSD. This book is a genuinely original contribution to psychoanalytic treatment of traumas.