Main description:

The author, working from the Family Institute in Cardiff, has been treating adult survivors of child sexual and physical abuse for several years, and she has clearly and frankly described her work in this book. She begins be describing the context for working with her clients; then describes the way she has welded systemic thinking and a feminist perspective into a theoretical model she uses to understand the problem and to guide her own work with the survivors. The descriptions of the therapeutic process are, at the same time, profound and simply conveyed. Her work is further clarified by the inclusion of twenty case examples. She shares her own dilemmas about working with adult survivors, and in this way the book offers the reader support for the emotional impact of this work as well as a theoretical framework and suggestions about therapeutic technique.

Contents:

Editors' Foreword , Foreword , Introduction , Setting the Context , Background , Feminism and family therapy , Guidelines , Hearing the relevant account , The question of blame and responsibility , The relationship with the abuser , The relationship with the "protector" , The wider system , Some Questions and Dilemmas , Dilemmas , Questions