The Therapist's Emotional Survival:
Dealing with the Pain of Exploring Trauma

From the book jacket:

Sexually abused and traumatized patients need therapists to understand their pain. Therapists must be able to handle their own baggage (rescue fantasies, for instance) and to process their own feelings on a daily basis in order to contain and use them.

This book explores the private thoughts of the therapist in response to the patient's inner expressions and how each affects the other over the course of treatment. Stuart Perlman documents his own journey of having treated trauma and sexually abused patients over many years. He details the issues the therapist needs to deal with, the emotional strain, how the therapist's own traumas and history shape his behavior and intrude into the therapeutic process, and how he and others he has supervised have come to manage this difficult process and maintain emotional health. Dr. Perlman illustrates this with powerful revealing of his thoughts, dreams, memories, history, personal psychotherapy, and emotional reactions.

From this the author has developed a model of treatment that maximizes the patient's growth, and helps therapists understand treatment and develop more fully as people as well. This human and caring approach allows patients and therapists to open up to deeper experience within themselves and promotes healing in both.

Stuart D. Perlman, Ph.D., is a training and supervising analyst and chairperson of the curriculum committee at the Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis in Los Angeles. He is Past President of the Southern California Chapter of Division 39 (psychoanalysis) of the American Psychological Association, and is a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst in private practice in West Los Angeles. Dr. Perlman received his Ph.D. from UCLA in Clinical Psychology and was a member of the UCLA psychology faculty for a number of years. He graduated from the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute with a second Ph.D. and is a faculty member. Dr. Perlman is widely published on the topics of trauma and sexual abuse, domestic violence, countertransference, and managing stress.

Buy it at this link to Amazon.com and
help support the Self Psychology Page

"In The Therapist's Emotional Survival: Dealing with the Pain of Exploring Trauma, Stuart D. Perlman, a therapist and psychoanalyst with wide experience in treating the victims of sexual abuse and other forms of trauma, takes the reader on a journey into the emotional heart of this most difficult work. Drawing on extensive case material, Dr. Perlman reveals the special hardships, personal and emotional, that confront the therapist; he is honest and courageous in using his own reactions to illustrate these difficulties in ways that will be most helpful to all -- mental health professionals and others -- who deal with this population. While there are many recent books dealing with this topic, I know of none that do so with the depth and honesty of this one."

Louis Breger, Ph.D.
Founding President, Institute of Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Los Angeles

"This book represents a 'one of a kind' contribution to the growing literature on treating adult survivors of childhood abuse and trauma. More than any book to date, it opens up the inner world of the therapist working with this group of patients, and explores the intersubjective arena in which patient/therapist vulnerabilities commingle and actively shape the therapeutic experience. Whether one agrees or disagrees with its specific therapeutic approach, this book is bound to stimulate heated discussion of issues having to do with countertransference and the role of each therapist's unique subjectivity."

Jody Messler Davies, Ph.D.

"The Therapist's Emotional Survival is a unique study of the challenging and complex interplay between the personalities of the therapist and patient in working through trauma and sexual abuse. It accurately and authentically depicts the lived experience of both participants of this difficult, often harrowing journey, backed up by dramatic clinical illustrations. The self-analytic sections include powerful self-revelations of a kind one almost never sees in clinical writing. Perlman's book will be of value and interest to a wide audience, from new therapists to seasoned analysts. No other book of which I am aware gives as detailed a picture of what the treatment of these patients is actually like."

George Atwood, Ph.D.

"This book asserts itself as a unique, amazingly honest, and authoritative treatise on the psychotherapy of trauma victims. Dr. Perlman knows that no one can treat such patients effectively without involving oneself to the core of one's being. He reveals his own painful childhood so that his work with patients can be seen in illuminating depth. All therapists should partake of this author's wisdom and skill."

Morton Shane, M.D., Estelle Shane, Ph.D., Mary Gales, M.D.

Buy it at this link to Amazon.com and
help support the Self Psychology Page

Introduction (Complete text available here)

Part I: The Patient-Therapist Relationship

1. Pioneers
2. The Survivor's Shattered Existence
3. Bearing the Pain of Treatment
4. My Introduction to Treating Sexually Abused and Traumatized Patients
5. Therapist Rescue Fantasies
6. Therapy Openings

Part II: Openings to Trauma and Pain

First Stage of Treatment: Establishing Safety and Connection

7. Will You Hurt, Ignore, or Help Me? Fear and Self-Protection
8. Can I Take Control Over My Own Physical and Emotional Needs?
9. Can You Hear Me?

Second State of Treatment: Deep Experience

10. Can You Listen to the Trauma and Validate Me?
11. Am I Lovable? Feeling Deep Love and Bonding
12. Can You See Me? Discontinuous and Shattered Existence
13. Who Is Bad and Who Is The Abuser?
14. Is This My Body? Touch
15. Can You Believe in Ritual Abuse?

Part III: Emotional Survival

16. Reality, Countertransference, and the False Memory Controversy: Guidelines
17. Therapist Survival: Concluding Perspectives and Strategies

Buy it at this link to Amazon.com and
help support the Self Psychology Page

[ Self Psychology Bulletin Board ]

© 1996-2006 3b
All Rights Reserved
Published by 3b