Splintered Reflections: Images Of The Body In Trauma

In overwhelming trauma, when words fail, it is the body that begins to speak. How can clinicians listen to the body and understand its messages? This book is both a detailed review of the body symptoms and body image distortions found after trauma and a textbook of psychotherapy techniques to repair broken metaphors about the body so that the body-self and its functioning can be restored. Multiple theoretical perspectives—Freudian psychoanalytic theory, attachment theory, trauma theory—are synthesized to shape an interlocking framework within which the therapist can listen and stay with the messages from the patient's body. The reader is guided by detailed clinical examples drawn from an international group of trauma therapists that includes Barry Cohen, Richard Kluft, Bruce Perry, Valerie Sinason and Onno van der Hart.

Jean Goodwin, M.D., M.P.H., is a professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston. Her books include Sexual Abuse: Incest Victims and Their Families and Rediscovering Childhood Trauma.

Reina Attias, Ph.D., is a therapist in private practice, specializing in childhood trauma. The has co-authored numerous scholarly articles.