Shattered Images: The Phenomenological Language of Sexual Trauma

A must for art therapists; essential to therapists dealing with incest, molestation, & abuse issues. In SHATTERED IMAGES, Dee Spring integrates her experience as clinician, artist & art therapist to provide the therapist entry into the private world of sexual abuse & trauma. The book is a rich compendium of therapeutic exercises utilizing visual imagery & metaphor that allows the revisiting of the trauma, first through silent art production, then verbal translation of the art. Spring's therapeutic approach & art therapy techniques transform the silence that isolates & protects the abuse & abuser into the skill of storytelling about the dreams, themes & schemes carried in the suitcase of the past. Symptoms are transformed into skills, conflict into change & mastery. One entire chapter considers the crisis-violence cycle & another the stages of restoration. Contains 57 drawings by adult sexual trauma victims, plus 2 extensive appendices of forms, worksheets & task checklists to help therapist & client focus on the task at hand. Spring, whose unique treatment style includes art therapy, imagery & hypnosis, has specialized in the treatment of Post-Traumatic Stress & Dissociative Disorders for over twenty years.