The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma
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Product Description
In her twenty years as a clinical psychologist, Annie Rogers has learned to understand the silent language of girls who will not–who cannot–speak about devastating sexual trauma. Abuse too painful to put into words does have a language, though, a language of coded signs and symptoms that conventional therapy fails to understand. In this luminous, deeply moving book, Rogers reveals how she has helped many girls find expression and healing for the sexual trauma that has shattered their childhoods.
Rogers opens with a harrowing account of her own emotional collapse in childhood and goes on to illustrate its significance to how she hears and understands trauma in her clinical work. Years after her breakdown, when she discovered the brilliant work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Rogers at last had the key she needed to unlock the secrets of the unsayable. With Lacan’s theory of language and its layered associations as her guide, Rogers was able to make startling connections with seemingly unreachable girls who had lost years of childhood, who had endured the unspeakable in silence.
At the heart of the book is the searing portrait of the girl Rogers calls Ellen, brutally abused for three years by her teenage male babysitter. Over the course of seven years of therapy, Rogers helped Ellen find words for the terrible things that had happened to her, face up to the unconscious patterns through which she replayed the trauma, and learn to live beyond the shadows of the past. Through Ellen’s story, Rogers illuminates the complex, intimate unraveling of trauma between therapist and child, as painful truths and their consequences come to light in unexpected ways.
Like Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery and Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind, The Unsayable is a book with the power to change the way we think about suffering and self-expression. For those who have experienced psychological trauma, and for those who yearn to help, this brave, compelling book will be a touchstone of lucid understanding and true healing.
From the Hardcover edition.
Rogers opens with a harrowing account of her own emotional collapse in childhood and goes on to illustrate its significance to how she hears and understands trauma in her clinical work. Years after her breakdown, when she discovered the brilliant work of French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan, Rogers at last had the key she needed to unlock the secrets of the unsayable. With Lacan’s theory of language and its layered associations as her guide, Rogers was able to make startling connections with seemingly unreachable girls who had lost years of childhood, who had endured the unspeakable in silence.
At the heart of the book is the searing portrait of the girl Rogers calls Ellen, brutally abused for three years by her teenage male babysitter. Over the course of seven years of therapy, Rogers helped Ellen find words for the terrible things that had happened to her, face up to the unconscious patterns through which she replayed the trauma, and learn to live beyond the shadows of the past. Through Ellen’s story, Rogers illuminates the complex, intimate unraveling of trauma between therapist and child, as painful truths and their consequences come to light in unexpected ways.
Like Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery and Kay Redfield Jamison’s An Unquiet Mind, The Unsayable is a book with the power to change the way we think about suffering and self-expression. For those who have experienced psychological trauma, and for those who yearn to help, this brave, compelling book will be a touchstone of lucid understanding and true healing.
From the Hardcover edition.
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6 reviews
31 of 33 people found the following review helpful
Illuminating
21 Aug 2006
Format:Hardcover
With an emphasis on words and the associations we make with them, Rogers unveils how some children continue to re-experience and re-live past trauma. First, she describes her own childhood crises in a narrative that is both revealing and intimate. She describes her state in ways that allow one to experience it as she had, instead of something simply as foreign and "over with." Then, through example, we follow her as she tries to understand what the children's gestures and words are trying to "say" without their being able to verbalize it. However, she uses the children's own meanings of things (instead of simply standard symbolic meanings) to re-explain to them what has happened and how it continues to persist in their lives, unwittingly. This is what keeps it fresh and real. Moreover, throughout the book, there is an unstated underlying stream of empathy and relatedness. A great book.
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
At a loss for words
23 Feb 2007
Format:Hardcover
It's probably not a coincidence that it is difficult to put into words what Annie has communicated in her book about the hidden language of trauma. Through her entrancing and lyrical use of language, she somehow magically illustrates how the invisible marks of trauma on the body repeatedly surface through the spoken--and more importantly non-spoken--language. In her work with traumatized children, Annie mirrors back traces of their unconscious she remarkably detects in both their words and silences, and ultimately helps the child to give voice to the haunting "unsayable."
Admittedly, I am still trying to process all that was said in this book. And as I do so, I take comfort in Annie's final words of the book when she said: "..if your body in pieces has begun to speak, and if you are now brimming with words and their sounds--and you're no longer sure of what you're hearing or saying...you are the one person I've written this for, the one to whom I entrust these words."
Admittedly, I am still trying to process all that was said in this book. And as I do so, I take comfort in Annie's final words of the book when she said: "..if your body in pieces has begun to speak, and if you are now brimming with words and their sounds--and you're no longer sure of what you're hearing or saying...you are the one person I've written this for, the one to whom I entrust these words."
2 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Something missing for me...
2 Nov 2007
Format:Paperback
I really enjoyed this book and learned from it, but found it less compelling than "A Shining Affliction". Possibly I felt that Rogers was trying very hard to convince me of the validity of Lacanian theory. It felt a tad defensive - as though somehow she was warding off a critical audience in her use of Lacan to understand what some of her patients were going through. And yes, at times the word-play felt a bit excessive and the meaning forced.
However the reason I loved this book and Rogers' work is her ability to tolerate ambiguity and nuance, and find a way into relationship with patients who are desperately alone in their experience and their minds. I always learn from her, and so appreciate her willingness to share the struggle for understanding in the name of healing and connectedness.
However the reason I loved this book and Rogers' work is her ability to tolerate ambiguity and nuance, and find a way into relationship with patients who are desperately alone in their experience and their minds. I always learn from her, and so appreciate her willingness to share the struggle for understanding in the name of healing and connectedness.
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