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Jessica: The autobiography of an infant
Jessica had always been haunted by the fear that the unthinkable had happened when she had been “made-up”. She had no sense of Self. Just thinking of saying “I need” or “I want” left her feeling like an empty shell and that her mind was about to spin out of control. Terrified of who—or what—she was, she lived in constant dread over being found guilty of impersonating a human being. Jeffrey Von Glahn, Ph.D., an experienced therapist with an unshakable belief in the intrinsic healing powers of the human psyche, and Jessica, his courageous client, blaze a trail into this unexplored territory. As if she has, in fact, become an infant again, Jessica remembers in extraordinary detail events from the earliest days of her life—events that had threatened to twist her embryonic humanness from its natural course of development. Her recollections as an adult are the equivalent of listening to an infant who could talk describe every psychologically dramatic moment of its life as it is happening. Jessica’s electrifying journey into her mystifying past brings her ever closer to a final confrontation with the traumatic events that had threatened to strip her of her basic humanness.
260 pages, Paperback
First published February 9, 2006
1 person is currently reading
137 people want to read
About the author
Jeffrey Von Glahn
1 book13 followersJeffrey Von Glahn, Ph.D., has been a therapist for 45 years, and counting. That experience has been, and continues to be, more exciting and fulfilling than he had ever imagined.
Whether it’s the first session with a new client or the hundredth one with the same client, this intimate way of engaging with another person continues to have the same mesmeric appeal it has always had.
On occasion, he has been known to suddenly exclaim, "If I believed in reincarnation - which I don't - but if I did my fondest wish would be to come back as a therapist."
What has been especially rewarding for Jeffrey - as he prefers to be called - is when he's been able to help someone reconnect with a "lost" part of their basic humanness.
That's when he feels he's helped to give birth to a new human being. He doesn't mean that literally, of course, but there's no other way of explaining how he feels when he's sitting face-to-face with someone and he sees such a dramatic change.
And even after all these years, each client presents another opportunity for him to learn more about psychotherapy, and to learn more about how to help someone regain contact with a part of his or her basic humanness that fortuitous events from earlier in life had secreted away for safe-keeping.
What makes it all an especially significant experience for Jeffrey is that he gets to use all of his intellectual skills and all of his basic caring instincts at the same time.
Whether it’s the first session with a new client or the hundredth one with the same client, this intimate way of engaging with another person continues to have the same mesmeric appeal it has always had.
On occasion, he has been known to suddenly exclaim, "If I believed in reincarnation - which I don't - but if I did my fondest wish would be to come back as a therapist."
What has been especially rewarding for Jeffrey - as he prefers to be called - is when he's been able to help someone reconnect with a "lost" part of their basic humanness.
That's when he feels he's helped to give birth to a new human being. He doesn't mean that literally, of course, but there's no other way of explaining how he feels when he's sitting face-to-face with someone and he sees such a dramatic change.
And even after all these years, each client presents another opportunity for him to learn more about psychotherapy, and to learn more about how to help someone regain contact with a part of his or her basic humanness that fortuitous events from earlier in life had secreted away for safe-keeping.
What makes it all an especially significant experience for Jeffrey is that he gets to use all of his intellectual skills and all of his basic caring instincts at the same time.
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
November 25, 2017
It is widely believed that no person has memories stretching back before the age of three; certainly my first vivid recollection is from about then. But that view has been challenged by some psychologists and psychotherapists. Even so, practitioner Jeffrey Von Glahn was taken aback when one of his clients, "Jessica", claimed to remember her actual birth and even experiences in her mother's womb. The recovery of such memories became an essential part of the very intensive therapy sessions they did together over an extended period as they tried to unravel the mystery of why Jessica was frightened of being home alone and did everything she could to please other people. This involved a good deal of "holding therapy" and resulted in a book (written with the subject's consent) that is as gripping as a detective novel, as one joins the author on his quest to find out the causes of Jessica's distress in order to reach some form of resolution.
November 19, 2014
This remarkable book shares the amazing journey of healing shared with us by her therapist. Together they plunged into the depths of the human psyche even unto the earliest memories and deepest wounds. This case study reveals a radical view of catharsis and the human spirit.
My copy came through Goodreads First Reads.
My copy came through Goodreads First Reads.
February 5, 2017
This is a powerful, and at times uncomfortable, account of the relationship between a psychologist and his client over a long period of unusually intensive psychotherapy. The book is entirely about Jessica, and the psychologist’s sympathies are unequivocally with his client, to the extent that he “never doubted for an instant that she was giving me an exact account of how she had felt from start to finish of her experience.”
I did find myself doubting the accuracy of the ‘memories’ of her earliest experiences, though I didn’t doubt for an instance that Jessica thought she was giving an exact account of the clear memories she had of the highly sophisticated thoughts she processed while still in the womb, and the uncaring attitudes of the doctors and the nurses who delivered her (down to what they actually said to each other that demonstrated so vividly to her in her first seconds in the world that her uniqueness and essential ‘humanness’ was being denied and spurned). An internationally renowned linguist once told me that ‘thought is most accurately defined as language arrested at the muscular level’. I’m certain that a developing fetus and a newly-born baby are conscious of, and profoundly influenced by, the behaviour of those around it (particularly in this case the ‘stinking mother’); but intellectualising those influences to the extent that Jessica claims to have done requires language. That’s why we rarely remember much before we began to acquire the language we needed to codify the thoughts and deposit them in our memories.
Post hoc rationalisation and reformulation of feelings of being rejected and unloved from the outset into back-engineered ‘memories’ aside, this remains a gripping, blow-by-blow account of a deeply troubled young woman finding the courage to get back in touch with the unique ‘me’ that she felt was rejected by her mother from the moment of conception: the ‘me’ whom she had felt compelled to ‘kill’ in order to go on existing around people who would really rather have lived their lives without her. Given that she was around, however, they demanded of her that she be as good as gold at all times, suppressing all of her own natural feelings and needs in the interests of satisfying theirs in order to be tolerated by them.
Philip Larkin said “Man hands on misery to man. It deepens as a coastal shelf. Get out as quickly as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself.” Jessica’s mother, daughter and husband are all mentioned in passing in this book, but we know little or nothing about them. It is a great pity that Jessica’s mother did not have access when she was younger to the highly-trained help that Jeffrey was able to provide for her daughter. I hope most sincerely that Jessica’s young daughter will have a happier childhood and adolescence as a result of Jeffrey Von Glahn’s selfless work with her mother, though she may have inherited a genetic predisposition to her mother’s and grandmother’s mental and emotional proclivities. I had a good deal of fellow-feeling for the husband whom Jessica subsequently divorced. He must have tried to care for her and failed. A friend of mine from childhood once said to me of the situation he found himself in with the deeply troubled wife he had at the time: “It’s bottomless.” I spent almost thirty years caring for my ex-wife who had had a deeply unhappy childhood, up to the moment when she sat me down and said: “You’re the best friend I ever had, and I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you; but now they’ve invented Prozac I don’t need you anymore.”
The relevance of these apparently spurious anecdotes is that there are untold stories around Jessica's that I suspect are equally profound. They were not, and could not be, the concern of the author; but my awareness of them affected my responses to this book in which he seeks to re-calibrate current thinking about the life-altering importance of experiences in the womb and during the first minutes of life out in the world. Jessica’s pain was raw and real, her analysis of the reasons for it quite possibly unique; but whether we should place as much store on that analysis as her psychotherapist and the author of this book (the subject of his doctorate thesis) clearly does is something that every reader will have to decide for her/himself.
Perhaps it’s inevitable that we all bring our own baggage to a book like this one, and to some extent that baggage will affect how we react to it. I found it an absorbing and informative read, and therefore I recommend it highly in the hope that it will help at least some of its readers understand better the disturbed and disturbing emotional behaviour of someone they care deeply about.
There were some formatting and editing issues in the e-version I read. They intruded from time to time, but weren’t too distracting.
I did find myself doubting the accuracy of the ‘memories’ of her earliest experiences, though I didn’t doubt for an instance that Jessica thought she was giving an exact account of the clear memories she had of the highly sophisticated thoughts she processed while still in the womb, and the uncaring attitudes of the doctors and the nurses who delivered her (down to what they actually said to each other that demonstrated so vividly to her in her first seconds in the world that her uniqueness and essential ‘humanness’ was being denied and spurned). An internationally renowned linguist once told me that ‘thought is most accurately defined as language arrested at the muscular level’. I’m certain that a developing fetus and a newly-born baby are conscious of, and profoundly influenced by, the behaviour of those around it (particularly in this case the ‘stinking mother’); but intellectualising those influences to the extent that Jessica claims to have done requires language. That’s why we rarely remember much before we began to acquire the language we needed to codify the thoughts and deposit them in our memories.
Post hoc rationalisation and reformulation of feelings of being rejected and unloved from the outset into back-engineered ‘memories’ aside, this remains a gripping, blow-by-blow account of a deeply troubled young woman finding the courage to get back in touch with the unique ‘me’ that she felt was rejected by her mother from the moment of conception: the ‘me’ whom she had felt compelled to ‘kill’ in order to go on existing around people who would really rather have lived their lives without her. Given that she was around, however, they demanded of her that she be as good as gold at all times, suppressing all of her own natural feelings and needs in the interests of satisfying theirs in order to be tolerated by them.
Philip Larkin said “Man hands on misery to man. It deepens as a coastal shelf. Get out as quickly as you can, and don’t have any kids yourself.” Jessica’s mother, daughter and husband are all mentioned in passing in this book, but we know little or nothing about them. It is a great pity that Jessica’s mother did not have access when she was younger to the highly-trained help that Jeffrey was able to provide for her daughter. I hope most sincerely that Jessica’s young daughter will have a happier childhood and adolescence as a result of Jeffrey Von Glahn’s selfless work with her mother, though she may have inherited a genetic predisposition to her mother’s and grandmother’s mental and emotional proclivities. I had a good deal of fellow-feeling for the husband whom Jessica subsequently divorced. He must have tried to care for her and failed. A friend of mine from childhood once said to me of the situation he found himself in with the deeply troubled wife he had at the time: “It’s bottomless.” I spent almost thirty years caring for my ex-wife who had had a deeply unhappy childhood, up to the moment when she sat me down and said: “You’re the best friend I ever had, and I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you; but now they’ve invented Prozac I don’t need you anymore.”
The relevance of these apparently spurious anecdotes is that there are untold stories around Jessica's that I suspect are equally profound. They were not, and could not be, the concern of the author; but my awareness of them affected my responses to this book in which he seeks to re-calibrate current thinking about the life-altering importance of experiences in the womb and during the first minutes of life out in the world. Jessica’s pain was raw and real, her analysis of the reasons for it quite possibly unique; but whether we should place as much store on that analysis as her psychotherapist and the author of this book (the subject of his doctorate thesis) clearly does is something that every reader will have to decide for her/himself.
Perhaps it’s inevitable that we all bring our own baggage to a book like this one, and to some extent that baggage will affect how we react to it. I found it an absorbing and informative read, and therefore I recommend it highly in the hope that it will help at least some of its readers understand better the disturbed and disturbing emotional behaviour of someone they care deeply about.
There were some formatting and editing issues in the e-version I read. They intruded from time to time, but weren’t too distracting.
February 13, 2021
Jessica becomes aware of the therapist Arnold though a friend. When she first saw him, she said her problem was that at night she and her daughter slept at her mom’s home as she didn’t want to be alone. Her husband worked nights.. As she continued many fears were announce to Arnold. She lived with a fear that someone would discover who she really was. She didn’t know what would happen. As time went by she asked for therapy at her home as she wanted to know what happened to her. Arnold agreed. Will the therapy work for Jessica? Will Arnold know how to help her heal successfully?
The author has shared an amazing, interest case and the experiences he had with Jessica. It’s amazing that he was able to do what he did. I thought Jessica was a truly brave person to go through her therapy. I think it’s important to read this for the valuable information given. There is a bibliography at the end of the book .
Disclaimer: I received an arc of this book from the author/publisher from Netgalley. I wasn’t obligated to write a favorable review or any review at all. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.
The author has shared an amazing, interest case and the experiences he had with Jessica. It’s amazing that he was able to do what he did. I thought Jessica was a truly brave person to go through her therapy. I think it’s important to read this for the valuable information given. There is a bibliography at the end of the book .
Disclaimer: I received an arc of this book from the author/publisher from Netgalley. I wasn’t obligated to write a favorable review or any review at all. The opinions expressed are strictly my own.
December 2, 2025
"In my line of work, I’ve seen people broken by circumstances they never chose. Jessica’s story reminded me of the invisible battles that start long before anyone notices. The intensity of her early life the fear, the emptiness hit me in a way I didn’t expect. It made me think of the kids I encountered on the streets, the ones society forgets, and how essential it is to give them attention, care, and understanding. Her courage in reclaiming herself was nothing short of inspiring."
December 2, 2025
As a teacher, I spend my days shaping young minds, yet Jessica made me realize how much those minds carry long before they enter my classroom. Her story opened my eyes to the invisible imprints of infancy, the silent fears, the hunger for love, the struggle to exist fully. It made me more compassionate, more patient. I found myself thinking of my students differently, knowing that some of their battles began long before they walked into my room."
December 3, 2025
I’ve traveled the world, seen countless cultures, and raised two children of my own, yet Jessica’s story brought me back to the fragility of beginnings. Her pain, her fear, her sense of being invisible, I recognized the importance of holding your child, of showing them they matter. Traveling made me appreciate life, but reading this book made me appreciate human connection in its purest form. It’s not just a story; it’s a lesson in empathy and presence.
December 3, 2025
Jessica’s story reminded me of the resilience we don’t always see in people, even in ourselves. In business, I’ve faced rejection, setbacks, and competition, but nothing compares to the struggle of reclaiming your sense of self after a lifetime of feeling unseen. Reading about her therapy, her breakthroughs, and her painful moments of realization was humbling. It made me reflect on my own childhood, the quiet doubts I carried, and the power of persistence, care, and finally being heard."
December 22, 2025
Working with people at the end of life has taught me that many unresolved pains come from the very beginning. Jessica felt like a mirror of that truth. Her journey back to her earliest wounds was difficult to read, but also deeply meaningful. It reminded me that healing isn’t about erasing the past it’s about acknowledging it. This book made me reflect on how our first experiences echo throughout a lifetime, and how being truly seen can bring peace, even late in life.
December 22, 2025
Coming from another country, I know what it feels like to feel invisible. But Jessica showed me a deeper kind of invisibility one that begins before words, before memory. Her pain touched me deeply, especially as a grandmother now. I kept thinking about my grandchildren, about how important love, touch, and presence are. This book made me grateful for the chance to give them what Jessica didn’t receive early on: reassurance that they belong
December 22, 2025
I’m not someone who usually reads psychological books, but Jessica stayed with me. I grew up in a home where emotions weren’t talked about, and while my life turned out fine on the surface, this book made me wonder how much of who I am started before I even knew myself. Jessica’s struggle to feel real, to feel like she had a right to exist, was painful to read. Her healing journey reminded me that it’s never too late to understand yourself better
December 22, 2025
I’ve spent decades working with children and families who carry wounds they can’t explain. Reading Jessica felt uncomfortably familiar. Her emptiness, her sense of not belonging, mirrored what I’ve seen in so many people who never received safety at the very beginning. What struck me most was how early neglect doesn’t disappear, it settles quietly into the body and mind. This book reaffirmed why early care matters so deeply and why compassion, even later in life, can still make a difference
April 12, 2016
In novelized form, this book details a psychotherapist's intriguing real life sessions with a patient plagued by psychological problems due to her experiences as an infant.
The novel provided a fascinating insight into how the human psyche copes with trauma at a young age and how soon in life a person develops the way they deal with adversity, which goes a long way toward shaping personality. As other reviewers have stated, this is a must-read for parents and parents-to-be because mistreating a child when he or she is born, after, and even before while still in the womb can traumatize them.
I'm no stranger to psychology and expressing my feelings due to my background, so the birth recollections and infant personality shaping didn't surprise me. Rather, the information presented further vindicated what I've learned through various sources over the years. I would not be at all surprised to someday learn that people who are perceived as generally happy people (and others who are not) ended up that way due to very early childhood experiences.
All in all, this wasn't something I normally read, but I'm glad I did, and I recommend it.
I found a handful of minor things with which to take issue. (1) The prologue is not a prologue. It's a preface or introduction. Actually, I would've put it at the end of the book rather than at the beginning. The info wasn't necessary to know at the start and delayed my getting into the actual story. (2) The author reveals some information at the beginning of the book that, in my opinion, might have been better withheld until later as a reveal. (3) Given that this is a narrative account of non-fictional events, I can't really fault the author for wanting to provide a thorough account of everything that happened. Nevertheless, seeing as how this is presented in novel form, I would've shortened or eliminated certain superfluous details. There were specifics about Jessica's life that showed neither how her psyche was shaped nor how she coped with things (or just went on too long). These could've been covered more briefly, especially earlier in the book. Later in the book, the recurring sessions start to drag on a bit. (4) There were the typical handful of misspellings, typos, and grammar issues--nothing too excessive. I also encountered recurring newlines accompanied by nonstandard characters in the middle of paragraphs, perhaps due to the KDP upload and reformatting for Kindle. Not a big deal, but there are enough of them that I would eventually address them. (5) Last and definitely least, I'm a certified skeptic, so I still must question the near-birth accounts. Jessica could have discussed her birth with her mother. She could have heard her mother talking about these experiences at some point or multiple points in the past. She could've overheard certain details and her mind might have filled in the rest. The author could be making everything up. All that seems unlikely given the detailed accounts, but I like to have hard evidence before I buy into something completely.
The novel provided a fascinating insight into how the human psyche copes with trauma at a young age and how soon in life a person develops the way they deal with adversity, which goes a long way toward shaping personality. As other reviewers have stated, this is a must-read for parents and parents-to-be because mistreating a child when he or she is born, after, and even before while still in the womb can traumatize them.
I'm no stranger to psychology and expressing my feelings due to my background, so the birth recollections and infant personality shaping didn't surprise me. Rather, the information presented further vindicated what I've learned through various sources over the years. I would not be at all surprised to someday learn that people who are perceived as generally happy people (and others who are not) ended up that way due to very early childhood experiences.
All in all, this wasn't something I normally read, but I'm glad I did, and I recommend it.
I found a handful of minor things with which to take issue. (1) The prologue is not a prologue. It's a preface or introduction. Actually, I would've put it at the end of the book rather than at the beginning. The info wasn't necessary to know at the start and delayed my getting into the actual story. (2) The author reveals some information at the beginning of the book that, in my opinion, might have been better withheld until later as a reveal. (3) Given that this is a narrative account of non-fictional events, I can't really fault the author for wanting to provide a thorough account of everything that happened. Nevertheless, seeing as how this is presented in novel form, I would've shortened or eliminated certain superfluous details. There were specifics about Jessica's life that showed neither how her psyche was shaped nor how she coped with things (or just went on too long). These could've been covered more briefly, especially earlier in the book. Later in the book, the recurring sessions start to drag on a bit. (4) There were the typical handful of misspellings, typos, and grammar issues--nothing too excessive. I also encountered recurring newlines accompanied by nonstandard characters in the middle of paragraphs, perhaps due to the KDP upload and reformatting for Kindle. Not a big deal, but there are enough of them that I would eventually address them. (5) Last and definitely least, I'm a certified skeptic, so I still must question the near-birth accounts. Jessica could have discussed her birth with her mother. She could have heard her mother talking about these experiences at some point or multiple points in the past. She could've overheard certain details and her mind might have filled in the rest. The author could be making everything up. All that seems unlikely given the detailed accounts, but I like to have hard evidence before I buy into something completely.
February 21, 2016
It was hard to rate this book because it is SO not what I usually read. It isn't paranormal and it isn't action-packed, and those are usually what pulls me in and makes me give it a 5* rating, but this book still had me totally enthralled in its pages and its story. So, let's just say it's a 4.5 stars. :-)
This is the true story of Dr. Jeffrey Von Glahn and his patient, Jessica, as he tries to help her figure out what is wrong with her. There are so many things I loved about this book. I loved the author's raw sincerity in his telling of their journey. He did not glorify scenes or abstain from sharing his fears and insecurities about Jessica's progress (or lack thereof at times).
I was captivated with Jessica's journey and how difficult it must have been for her to live for so long with such emptiness within her. I admire her strength and persistence to not give up in finding out why she wasn't whole. I am in awe with the memories that she is able to pull from the recesses of her mind and what we can all learn from her experiences. I am saddened for not only what Jessica went through but for all of those babies who went through (and still go through) that kind of treatment from mothers who do not understand how to be loving and nurturing to their children.
As I was reading this, I found myself thinking back to my childhood and how I was raised and how those events influenced who I am today. I thought back to when my son was born and questioned if I've ever given him a reason to feel unloved (thankfully, the answer I found was no - I am always telling him and showing him how special he is). I now look at my students and wonder if some of them behave the way they do because they are desperately seeking approval and acceptance, and I am sure that, for some of them, that is the case.
This is a book that I feel should be read by SO many different groups of people: current mothers, mothers-to-be, OBGYNs, nurses, teachers, fathers, fathers-to-be, caretakers of any kind, etc. I almost feel like it should be required reading for many of those groups. It is true that most of us cannot remember the memories of our birth or of our first few years, but that does not mean that our psyche does not hold on to those experiences. It does not mean that our psyche did not share our strengths and weaknesses from those moments. We owe it to our children and to future generations to make sure that when babies are brought into this world, they feel wanted and needed and loved and special.
I am so happy that this author and that "Jessica" were willing to share their journey with the rest of us. I only hope that their journey can positively impact babies from here on forward. :-)
This is the true story of Dr. Jeffrey Von Glahn and his patient, Jessica, as he tries to help her figure out what is wrong with her. There are so many things I loved about this book. I loved the author's raw sincerity in his telling of their journey. He did not glorify scenes or abstain from sharing his fears and insecurities about Jessica's progress (or lack thereof at times).
I was captivated with Jessica's journey and how difficult it must have been for her to live for so long with such emptiness within her. I admire her strength and persistence to not give up in finding out why she wasn't whole. I am in awe with the memories that she is able to pull from the recesses of her mind and what we can all learn from her experiences. I am saddened for not only what Jessica went through but for all of those babies who went through (and still go through) that kind of treatment from mothers who do not understand how to be loving and nurturing to their children.
As I was reading this, I found myself thinking back to my childhood and how I was raised and how those events influenced who I am today. I thought back to when my son was born and questioned if I've ever given him a reason to feel unloved (thankfully, the answer I found was no - I am always telling him and showing him how special he is). I now look at my students and wonder if some of them behave the way they do because they are desperately seeking approval and acceptance, and I am sure that, for some of them, that is the case.
This is a book that I feel should be read by SO many different groups of people: current mothers, mothers-to-be, OBGYNs, nurses, teachers, fathers, fathers-to-be, caretakers of any kind, etc. I almost feel like it should be required reading for many of those groups. It is true that most of us cannot remember the memories of our birth or of our first few years, but that does not mean that our psyche does not hold on to those experiences. It does not mean that our psyche did not share our strengths and weaknesses from those moments. We owe it to our children and to future generations to make sure that when babies are brought into this world, they feel wanted and needed and loved and special.
I am so happy that this author and that "Jessica" were willing to share their journey with the rest of us. I only hope that their journey can positively impact babies from here on forward. :-)
March 31, 2015
This non-fiction book gave me a well deserved break from reading novels and fictions. It’s been a long time since I read a good nonfiction book, and this was a good one.
I also believe that childhood memories can be re-called, especially for healing purposes, just like in the case of Jessica, otherwise, why wake a sleeping lion. I marveled, as I read this book at the patience of the author. I cannot see many therapists exhibiting such patience, or sacrificing so much time to a single individual’s healing. But then, it was this patience that yielded results. Great job!
Towards the end, after Jessica discovered that she was two different persons, and refused to take back her me, and the author wanted her to re-think and take her me back, I tended to agree with Jessica, especially at her explanation on why she will not take her me back. That was the point in her treatment in which, I believe, she became well again. At that point, she recognized her real problem. And at that point, she could control her problem, even if she called it her me.
I read this book on my Kindle, and the formatting was off in many different places. At a point, I started to think that the author might have formatted the ebook himself, but when I read, at the end that the book was the product of iUniverse, I was surprised to see that they could do such a shoddy job. The book is so well written, that it did not deserve such bad formatting. My advice is that they take another look at the formatting.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 19, 2015
In this true story Dr. Jeffrey Von Glahn follows his course of treatment with a patient he calls “Jessica”. When he first meets with Jessica Dr. Von Glahn struggles to get her to open up about her problems. Unable to remain home alone with her young child while her husband is at work she spends every night at her mother’s house. Along with this Jessica has lost the ability to drive. She has no explanation for these dramatic changes in her life and the doctor can’t seem to break through the barrier she has set up. She is completely unable to speak about herself.
After many months it is Jessica who comes up with the bold idea of increasing her sessions to four hours daily and eventually to four days a week. It is this courageous step that eventually leads Jessica and Dr. Von Glahn to make successful advances in her therapy. Dr. Von Glahn feels that Jessica has lost her “humanness” and it is by reaching back to her very beginning that first opens the door to restoring her to a “human” able to express her needs without fear.
This is an inspiring exploration of the basic humanness in all of us and the vital need to realize its importance. Navigating new paths in therapy with Jessica’s help and bravery Dr. Von Glahn allows the reader to follow their journey. I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in human nature, psychology, and mental health issues.
After many months it is Jessica who comes up with the bold idea of increasing her sessions to four hours daily and eventually to four days a week. It is this courageous step that eventually leads Jessica and Dr. Von Glahn to make successful advances in her therapy. Dr. Von Glahn feels that Jessica has lost her “humanness” and it is by reaching back to her very beginning that first opens the door to restoring her to a “human” able to express her needs without fear.
This is an inspiring exploration of the basic humanness in all of us and the vital need to realize its importance. Navigating new paths in therapy with Jessica’s help and bravery Dr. Von Glahn allows the reader to follow their journey. I highly recommend this book for anyone with an interest in human nature, psychology, and mental health issues.
June 15, 2015
MindBlowing!
#RRBC Who remembers accounts of their infancy? Of being born? Practically no one. But Jessica is an exception. She remembers before and after her birth. And it points out the fact that it’s so important to get a good start because it can profoundly affect the rest of your life either positively or negatively. Dr. Jeffrey takes you through the stages of Jessica’s life and paints a riveting portrayal of a damaged woman who somehow regains her sense of self. Good plot, good pace, excellent story! Good Job!
#RRBC Who remembers accounts of their infancy? Of being born? Practically no one. But Jessica is an exception. She remembers before and after her birth. And it points out the fact that it’s so important to get a good start because it can profoundly affect the rest of your life either positively or negatively. Dr. Jeffrey takes you through the stages of Jessica’s life and paints a riveting portrayal of a damaged woman who somehow regains her sense of self. Good plot, good pace, excellent story! Good Job!
September 9, 2015
This was such a good book. The skill of the writer, as well as the pacing pulled me along in the story. The work follows the writer as he coaches Jessica through her psychotherapy sessions. We discover why she is the way she is, and we experience her earliest memories. It highlights the importance of being connected to one's family. The language is appropriate for the subject matter. I enjoyed the clinical, "true account" manner of the telling. Definitely a fascinating change from my normal fictional reading. A recommended read.
March 5, 2016
This book made me think. I thought about it at work. I talked it over with friends. It's fascinating, actually! It's hard to believe, but it is so well written and the account is so detailed that it makes me wonder if I was trying to be closed minded. This was a very different read from what I'm used to, but it was a well written, well-documented account of this author's patient. So it's her (the patient's) story, but the author certainly brought it to life. I'm no psychologist, but I loved my psychology classes in college and thoroughly enjoyed this book.
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