Therapist's Emotional Survival: Dealing with the Pain of Exploring Trauma

This book explores the private thoughts of the therapist in response to the patient's inner expressions and how each affects the other over the course of treatment. Stuart Perlman documents his own journey of having treated trauma and sexually abused patients over many years. He details the issues the therapist needs to deal with, the emotional strain, how the therapist's own traumas and history shape his behavior and intrude into the therapeutic process, and how he and others he has supervised have come to manage this difficult process and maintain emotional health. Dr. Perlman illustrates this with powerful revealing of his thoughts, dreams, memories, history, personal psychotherapy, and emotional reactions.