ABSTRACT
This book takes a painstaking look at developmental trauma as it manifests in group, individual, and combined psychotherapies, tracking the growth of non-abused individuals who have courageously addressed overwhelming childhood experiences to make sense of the chaos in their lives.
The cumulative impact of repetitive stress, fear, and shame in childhood wreaks havoc on the developing brain, resulting in a life-long vulnerability to anxiety, despair, and dissociative moments that are often described as developmental trauma. Adverse childhood experiences are often overlooked by therapists. This book focuses specifically on the profound suffering of high-functioning private-practice patients who manifest developmental trauma from chronic shock, shame, and neglect. Adams offers a synthesis of diverse theoretical worlds in her study of adaptations to cumulative trauma, namely, relational psychoanalysis, the British school of object relations, trauma theory, neuroscience and interpersonal neurobiology, developmental psychopathology, and attachment theory.
Using richly detailed clinical material, this book provides invaluably clear examples to illustrate the effects of disorganized states in infancy, making it essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and clinical psychologists working with traumatized patients.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
chapter |8 pages
Introduction
part I|226 pages
Emerging from the Fog
chapter Chapter 1|29 pages
Our Pain Knows No Time
chapter Chapter 2|46 pages
Our Pain is the Crack in the Shell that Encloses Our Understanding (following Gibran)
chapter Chapter 5|34 pages
Sometimes It Takes a Village
part II|75 pages
Group Therapy with Developmental Stress and Trauma