ABSTRACT

The ambiguities and hesitation that show themselves when children attempt to put abuse into language result not simply from linguistic immaturity or confusion, but from the particular meaning language has in the process of experiencing, internalizing, and knowing abuse. The narrative structure evident in clinical work with children who come to treatment from a background absent of abuse frequently stands in striking contrast to the fragmentation and confusion that can and often does permeate the therapeutic sessions of abused children. A child's verbal report of physical or sexual abuse relies on the ordering function of language in describing experience. As a way of conceptualizing the intertwining of behavior and commentary that characterizes psychodynamic work with children, Raphael-Leff discusses a continuum of therapeutic communication that ranges from the largely narrative at one pole to almost pure action at the other. In retrospect, a number of factors influenced Barbara's willingness to undertake the process of therapy largely from the position of narrator.