Transforming Trauma: A Guide to Understanding and Treating Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse

Practitioners helping adult survivors of child sexual abuse need to be aware of the thought processes of offenders. The premise of Anna Salter's major book is that those who do not recognize an internalized perpetrator when they hear one will often be frustrated by the tenacity of the survivor's self blame.Primarily oriented towards treating adult survivors, this invaluable book will also be useful for treating sex offenders. It includes discussion of crucial issues such as: what clinicians who treat survivors need to know about sex offenders; the different ways sadistic and nonsadistic offenders think and the resulting different `footprints' they leave in the heads of survivors; how trauma affects survivors' world-views; whether apology sessions re-abuse survivors; and what is effective, and why telling a client that `it's not your fault' is ineffective, in combating an internalized perpetrator. Finally, Salter describes the steps of therapy for survivors and proposes that trauma can be transformed rather than just endured.`This book gets into the mind of sexual offenders; it's a kind of Know Your Enemy strategy which can arm victims and protectors with sufficient ammunition for future protection and techniques for healing based on a thorough literature//research review where the aetiology of sexual assault is critically appraised in order to provide a detailed road map for treatment. This is a unique and fascinating book, beautifully written, with illustrative metaphors, where Anna Salter crosses the bridge between the survivor's experience and the perpetrator's psychology... [it] illuminates the therapeutic journey and will hopefully contribute to liberation and transforming of trauma. It's all here: the duet of predator and prey, the False Memory Syndrome debate, a revisiting of the applicability of PTSD as a sequelae of sexual abuse, and exploration of perpetrator apology and whether it can be an excuse to reabu