Naming the Shadows

by Susan L. Roth, Ronald Batson

Although numerous books have been written about childhood incest and trauma, until now none of them has combined the best of what scientific psychology has to offer with detailed representation and narrative about the ways that childhood sexual trauma within the family context affects the lives of adult survivors. Naming the Shadows is the first book to offer practitioners and students-in-training an in-depth exploration of a trauma-focused approach to individual and group psychotherapy that respects scientific rules of evidence and at the same time attempts to honor the complexity and subjectivity of an individual survivor's experience. Roth and Batson, psychologist and psychiatrist, respectively, with many years of expertise in treating survivors of sexual trauma, explain how targets of treatment are conceptualized as identity and relational issues that derive from an enduring adaptation to childhood trauma. The authors believe that, at its best, psychotherapy provides a therapeutic social context in which survivors can achieve a true understanding of their adaptation and gain self-knowledge of the meaning and enduring influence of traumatic childhood experience. Drawing on the authors' own innovative research, on the widespread experience of colleagues, and on vivid dialogue from survivors themselves, Naming the Shadows has important implications for our understanding of the process of coping with childhood sexual abuse.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1997

About the author

Susan L. Roth creates unique mixed-media collage illustrations that have appeared in numerous award-winning children’s books, many of which she also wrote. Her book, Listen to the Wind, spent a year on the New York Times best seller list. The Mangrove Tree, which was released in 2011 and addressed Dr. Gordon Sato's mangrove tree-planting project, was the winner of Jane Addams Children's Book Award. Roth lives in New York.