Object Relations Therapy of Physical and Sexual Trauma
Rising above the polemics surrounding sexual and physical abuse, David and Jill Savege Scharff bring a relational perspective to the integration of psychoanalytic and trauma theories in order to understand the effects of overwhelming physical and psychological trauma, including sexual abuse, injury, and birth defect. The Scharffs draw from their object relations therapy with individuals, families, and couples recovering from trauma and abundance of relevant clinical examples described in their characteristically personal and vivid style. Their treatment approach, influenced by Fairbairn, Klein, and Winnicott, is respectful of the patient's experience. They advise avoiding premature interpretations that impose their own reality on patients because this traumatizes them just as their abuser did. In order to work well with these traumatized people, the clinician must be able to tolerate ambiguity and sustain long term therapy, for it takes the patience of waiting and wondering to recover deeply repressed memories, explore them thoroughly, and evaluate their meaning and importance for the patient. The Scharffs' demonstration of clinical processes helps therapists contain their own countertransference to trauma so as to be fully present with their clients and consistently able to confront abuse patterns in society. The object relations approach not only deals with trauma's impact on the individual but views it in its cultural and interpersonal context as well. Society alternately emphasizes and ignores trauma so that an encapsulated traumatic experience festers until the next eruption, just as dissociative defenses segmentally protect and exaggerate traumatic experience in the individual case.

The Scharffs review Kramer's Mahlerian approach, McDougall's insights into the silence of the psyche and the words of the soma, and Anzieu's elaboration of the body ego. They resuscitate Freud's seduction hypothesis and the traumatic basis of the repetition compulsion. They compare and contrast the concepts of re
"1020994110"
Object Relations Therapy of Physical and Sexual Trauma
Rising above the polemics surrounding sexual and physical abuse, David and Jill Savege Scharff bring a relational perspective to the integration of psychoanalytic and trauma theories in order to understand the effects of overwhelming physical and psychological trauma, including sexual abuse, injury, and birth defect. The Scharffs draw from their object relations therapy with individuals, families, and couples recovering from trauma and abundance of relevant clinical examples described in their characteristically personal and vivid style. Their treatment approach, influenced by Fairbairn, Klein, and Winnicott, is respectful of the patient's experience. They advise avoiding premature interpretations that impose their own reality on patients because this traumatizes them just as their abuser did. In order to work well with these traumatized people, the clinician must be able to tolerate ambiguity and sustain long term therapy, for it takes the patience of waiting and wondering to recover deeply repressed memories, explore them thoroughly, and evaluate their meaning and importance for the patient. The Scharffs' demonstration of clinical processes helps therapists contain their own countertransference to trauma so as to be fully present with their clients and consistently able to confront abuse patterns in society. The object relations approach not only deals with trauma's impact on the individual but views it in its cultural and interpersonal context as well. Society alternately emphasizes and ignores trauma so that an encapsulated traumatic experience festers until the next eruption, just as dissociative defenses segmentally protect and exaggerate traumatic experience in the individual case.

The Scharffs review Kramer's Mahlerian approach, McDougall's insights into the silence of the psyche and the words of the soma, and Anzieu's elaboration of the body ego. They resuscitate Freud's seduction hypothesis and the traumatic basis of the repetition compulsion. They compare and contrast the concepts of re
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Overview

Rising above the polemics surrounding sexual and physical abuse, David and Jill Savege Scharff bring a relational perspective to the integration of psychoanalytic and trauma theories in order to understand the effects of overwhelming physical and psychological trauma, including sexual abuse, injury, and birth defect. The Scharffs draw from their object relations therapy with individuals, families, and couples recovering from trauma and abundance of relevant clinical examples described in their characteristically personal and vivid style. Their treatment approach, influenced by Fairbairn, Klein, and Winnicott, is respectful of the patient's experience. They advise avoiding premature interpretations that impose their own reality on patients because this traumatizes them just as their abuser did. In order to work well with these traumatized people, the clinician must be able to tolerate ambiguity and sustain long term therapy, for it takes the patience of waiting and wondering to recover deeply repressed memories, explore them thoroughly, and evaluate their meaning and importance for the patient. The Scharffs' demonstration of clinical processes helps therapists contain their own countertransference to trauma so as to be fully present with their clients and consistently able to confront abuse patterns in society. The object relations approach not only deals with trauma's impact on the individual but views it in its cultural and interpersonal context as well. Society alternately emphasizes and ignores trauma so that an encapsulated traumatic experience festers until the next eruption, just as dissociative defenses segmentally protect and exaggerate traumatic experience in the individual case.

The Scharffs review Kramer's Mahlerian approach, McDougall's insights into the silence of the psyche and the words of the soma, and Anzieu's elaboration of the body ego. They resuscitate Freud's seduction hypothesis and the traumatic basis of the repetition compulsion. They compare and contrast the concepts of re

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780765704061
Publisher: Aronson, Jason Inc.
Publication date: 12/16/2008
Series: The Library of Object Relations
Pages: 390
Product dimensions: 6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 1.10(d)

About the Author

Jill Savege Scharff, M.D., co-director of the International Institute of Object Relations Therapy, is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University, and teaches child analysis at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute.
David E. Scharff, M. D., co-director of the International Institute of Object Relations Therapy, is a clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University, and a teaching analyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 1.The Traumatic Continuum
Chapter 2 2.Post-Trauma, Multiplicity, and Childhood Memory Studies
Chapter 3 3.Freudian and Object Relations Perspectives
Chapter 4 4.From Traumatic Splits in the Self to Multiple Personality
Chapter 5 5.The False Memory/Recovered Memory Debate
Chapter 6 6.Repression and Dissociation Revisited
Chapter 7 7.The Fate of Freud's Seduction Hypothesis
Chapter 8 8.An Object Relations Re-Analysis of Dora
Chapter 9 9.Focal Trauma in an Adult Couple
Chapter 10 10.Repetition of Trauma in the Transference
Chapter 11 11.Mother-Daughter Incest
Chapter 12 12.Primal Scene Inclusion and Father-Daughter Incest
Chapter 13 13.Recall of Childhood Sexual Trauma and Object Relations Technique
Chapter 14 14.Trauma in Termination
Chapter 15 15.Putting It Together: Theory and Technique in Trauma
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