Shining Affliction: A Story of Harm and Healing in Psychotherapy

Description

Rogers pulls us with disarming directness into her treatment, during her psychiatric internship, of a severely traumatized five-year-old boy. The touching appeal of the interactions between them then propel us into the frightening core of Rogers' book--her own rapid decline into psychosis and institutionalization. This was triggered by the child's expression of his horrifying fears and her own initial therapist's rejection of her. Only the ministrations of a second unusually gifted psychoanalyst helped Rogers reassemble her shattered psyche. The multifaceted, two-way healing that occurred between the young intern struggling for emotional truth and the "untreatable" child finally enabled Rogers to recall the searing pain and frustration she experienced and challenge some of modern psychotherapy's basic tenets. Although mostly straightforward enough, Rogers leaves curiously unexamined the aborted relationship with her first, rejecting therapist, which makes her account jarringly incomplete despite its overall mesmerizing force.

Annie G. Rogersis the professor of psychoanalysis and clinical psychology at Hampshire College as well as being on the faculty of the Lacanian School of Psychoanalysis in San Francisco. She is the winner of a Fulbright Fellowship in Ireland, a Radcliffe Fellowship at Harvard University, and a Whiting Fellowship at Hampshire College. She is the author of A Shining Affliction,The Unsayable- The Hidden Language of Trauma, as well as many other works, both fiction and nonfiction.

"Soars into sublime meditation...what makes this book so extraordinary is her willingness to reveal exactly what goes on in the sometimes mysterious encounter between therapist and patient." -Los Angeles Times "Ms. Rogers tells an important truth...Healers are inevitably wounded themselves, just because they are human, and Ms. Rogers...challenges her fellow clinicians to acknowledge how their own personal histories shape their work as therapists. What finally shines forth from Ms. Rogers' narrative of affliction is her stern and compassionate understanding of the 'terrible responsibility' she and her fellow therapists have 'of holding another's heart in our hands,' while 'not forsaking ourselves.'" -Sharon O'Brien, New York Times "A book at once somber and powerfully affecting-a story of how those of us who work psychologically with others can fail them (and ourselves) or be of great assistance. She writes a clearm honest, compelling narrative which at times sings lyrically, and constantly instructs." -Dr. Robert Coles, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Children of Crisis "A beautifully written first-person account of a novice therapist's trial by fire... [Rogers] humanizes therapists and provides an illuminating inside view of their training and the two-sided nature of their work." -Kirkus Reviews