ABSTRACT
The overriding theme of the introduction, A Picture Is More Than a Picture, is that clients provide material in the form of stories, art or play that contribute greatly to case understanding, when a therapist recognizes it as such. In this case, a child’s waiting room picture depicted, sequentially, the impact of trauma on her functioning from birth to age 6. This book is a collection of trauma-focused case studies, across the lifespan, in which metaphor, stories and drawing or play contributed to conceptual understanding and progress in treatment. Early in the book, I touch on concepts from Milton Erickson’s work. Stories and metaphors, key to Erickson’s school of thought, may be used within most evidence-based practices, and once concerns or problems are unwrapped, evidence-based psychotherapy may be carried out that is consistent with that school of thought. Later in the book, I briefly describe what I mean by trauma-informed treatment and highlight some of the “transtheoretical” and universal therapeutic tools that I frequently use in my case work. It is important that seasoned practitioners share our work so that graduate students and early career professionals learn to recognize meaning in what clients present, and how they may utilize this material in individualized trauma-informed therapy across the lifespan.
