Paracosm

Many parents delight in their child's imaginary companion as evidence of a lively imagination and creative mind. At the same time, parents sometimes wonder if the imaginary companion might be a sign that something is wrong. Does having a pretend friend mean that the child is in emotional distress? That he or she has difficulty communicating with other children? In this fascinating book, Marjorie Taylor provides an informed look at current thinking about pretend friends, dispelling many myths about them. In the past a child with an imaginary companion might have been considered peculiar, shy, or even troubled, but according to Taylor the reality is much more positive--and interesting. Not only are imaginary companions surprisingly common, the children who have them tend to be less shy than other children. They also are better able to focus their attention and to see things from another person's perspective. In addition to describing imaginary companions and the reasons children create them, Taylor discusses other aspects of children's fantasy lives, such as their belief in Santa, their dreams, and their uncertainty about the reality of TV characters. Adults who remember their own childhood pretend friends will be interested in the chapter on the relationship between imaginary companions in childhood and adult forms of fantasy. Taylor also addresses practical concerns, providing many useful suggestions for parents. For example, she describes how children often express their own feelings by attributing them to their imaginary companion. If you have a child who creates imaginary creatures, or if you work with pre-schoolers, you will find this book very helpful in understanding the roles that imaginary companions play in children's emotional lives.

In trauma, when words fail, the body begins to speak. How can clinicians accurately and attentively "hear" the body and understand its messages? Useful both as a text and a professional handbook, Splintered Reflections is a detailed review of the physical symptoms and body-image distortions found after trauma, as well as a textbook of methods aimed at repairing the broken metaphors of the body so that a healthy mind-body relationship can be restored.

Among the various psychotherapeutic techniques explored are Freudian psychoanalytic theory, attachment theory, and trauma theory, all synthesized to form an interlocking framework within which the therapist can effectively listen, and stay with the messages from the patient's body. The reader is guided by detailed clinical examples drawn from an international group of trauma therapists that includes Barry Cohen, Richard Kluft, Bruce Perry, Valerie Sinason, and Onno van der Hart.

Harvey Schwartz's territory is the severe end of the child sexual abuse continuum, where victims' experiences are so unthinkable and their adaptations so bizarre that the rest of us are tempted to pronounce them fictions -- whereupon we become complicity by subverting the survivors' struggles to heal. Schwartz synthesizes trauma theory and relational psychoanalysis to make sense of perpetrator, collaborator, and victim pathologies, and exposes the tortuous double-binds of therapy for and with dissociative patients. His office is the last stop on a kind of underground treatment railroad; his say-it-isn't-so case material reverberates throughout.