Customer Reviews

A Shining Affliction: A Story of Harm and Healing in Psychotherapy

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Dr. Annie Rogers is a psychtherapist in a treament center identified as "Glenwood" in the Chicago area.

This work focusses on Ben, a 5-year-old boy in treatment because of his violent and self abusive behaviors and history of abuse and extreme neglect in infancy.

Ben uses metaphoric language to describe his torment and only alludes to the abuse he suffered in infancy. He revisits this period in his life by playacting "baby" and "baby bear" with Dr. Rogers playing "mama bear" who saves "baby from the forest fire." This no doubt is a reference to when Ben was abandoned in a burning building at age one. He is finally adopted by a loving couple who have sought all types of treatment for this boy who was only recently toilet trained prior to his admission at Glenwood.

During Ben's sessions, the themes of "baby" and "fires" are re-enacted. In one memorable session, Ben arrives in an angel suit to show the doctor his innate goodness.

As they progress further in treatment, Dr. Rogers unearths her own traumatic past. She retreats into silence and is ultimately hospitalized. She is also devastated by the refusal of another professional to maintain contact with her. This professional, identified as "Melanie Sherman" appears to be singularly callous in cutting all ties with Dr. Rogers. Like Ben, Dr. Rogers uses nature themed metaphors to describe her displacement. She identifies with the lone bird, circling above the city, sad-eyed and searching.

It is to her great fortune that she is treated by the gentle, gifted Dr. Blumenthal. Dr. Blumenthal treats her with respect and at no time does he challenge her when she expresses a delusional concept. He takes her seriously and also tries to soften the blow she feels about Melanie's loss. (One wonders if Melanie was really worth it). Dr. Blumenthal helps Dr. Rogers piece her pysche much like a mental quilt; in reassembling her shattered image, she is able to see her abusive mother with clarity instead of in fragmented short steps.

Dr. Blumenthal is truly an angel and a shining, sterling example of humane treatment in therapy. Dr. Rogers, once discharged and back at Glenwood, can use his techniques with Ben.

This is a very powerful book of how parallel the lives of doctor and patient are and how similar their boundaries really were.

I believe this is one of my favorite books of all time. Rogers is an excellent writer -- my words cannot possibly evoke the vibrancy with which she brings her surroundings, her internal process, and her experience of Ben, her five-year-old patient, to life. The book gives a detailed, living-and-breathing picture of working therapeutically with children; at the same time, it shows the necessity of facing, feeling and integrating that which we most fear from our past in order to be fully alive, which is helped beyond measure by having a sensitive therapist to do the healing work with. Rogers' descriptions of Blumenthal, her second therapist, gives us all a standard to hope for, both in terms of the kind of therapist we should all be able to find, and the kind of therapist we should try to be, for those of us in the field.

Annie not only shows a gift for helping to understand children who have been abused and abandoned, but she also gives us an unflinchingly-honest insider's look at her own therapeutic process of coming to terms with recently resurfaced and repressed memories and pain.

By reading her story, the reader witnesses first hand the fact that psychological healing does not come about by one person (i.e. the Therapist) having superior knowledge over the other (the client). Instead, Annie and her wonderful analyst chart previously unmapped territories together in an effort to reconnect those "shattered pieces" that made up her own life's experiences.

All the DSM categories and pschylabels in the world cannot teach anyone, either therapist or client, about how the act of psychological healing is manifested. Annie shows us instead of telling us, and by witnessing her and her client's process, we get to glimpse something truly profound and not taught in any pscyhology class.

A beautifully written book. Annie Rogers writes about her client's and her own story with depth and wisdom. This book is a testimony that relationships are the most healing vehicle we have, no matter what kind of harm has been done.

I began this book because I am a student of Annie's. I could not put it down, feeling like I myself was becoming somehow involved with her relationship with Ben (the 5 year old boy with brown hair and bangs). I felt like I was getting inside both Annie and Ben while watching the beautiful way in which they interacted. I could not be in the room with this book without wanting to read on into the relationship that evolves. The personal aspect of the patient-therapist relationship becomes the center focus as does Annie's life outside of these interactions with Ben. The reflection, time, energy, and exposure that is demonstrated by the author in this book was by far the best I have ever seen. This has become my favorite book, one that I will never live without, and also one that will remind me of what I want to do with my life and how to do it.

Harvard child psychologist and severe child abuse survivor Annie Rogers suffered psychiatric hospitalizations once or twice a year from puberty until her late twenties -- when, after a six year insidiously inept and crazymaking "therapy," an attempt to stab and shoot that therapist and one last hospitalization for another word salad psychosis (and no more insurance), her exceptional and no doubt desperate sister and friends found the gifted and pro bono analyst Dr. Blumenfeld. If this exceptional memoir hasn't become a classic must read in psychology with many reviews by both patients and therapists by now, there are unfortunate reasons. One is that Annie's politically correct adolescence shows in her disdain for the "medical models and diagnoses" Dr. Blumenfeld himself could afford to abandon only because he knew them and the blind therapists who live by them so well -- and thus could authentically reach and stabilize the talented and brilliant, borderline and psychotic personality and doctoral intern Annie. "You have a kind of giftedness, Annie, that probably has always been inseparable from your suffering, and we don't know very much about that yet." What we need now is a wonderful book from the exceptional and sainted Dr. Blumenfeld and more from the healed and gifted writer Dr. Rogers on the two sided magic of play therapy with children. You must meet Annie's beloved "oppositional" 5 year old patient Ben and ponder the 7 foot angel "Theosporus" who protected and accompanied Annie from age 6 to Dr. Blumenfeld's office at 27. A Shining Affliction raises more questions than it answers -- it might have been twice as long, and it's hard to tell if important details were deliberately or unconsciously left out. As it is, it's a daring memoir by a once psychotic Harvard child psychologist that should be a controversial must read classic in both child and adult psychotherapy.

Annie's realization that "healing is always two-sided" seems to capture the heart and soul of the therapeutic relationship. Her artfully written narrative shows how "what has been wounded in a relationship must be, after all, healed in a relationship."

Her healing therapeutic relationships--both as a therapist and as a client--help Annie begin to move beyond the damage of her past traumatic relationships. Annie convincingly demonstrates the therapist's own sense of vulnerability has the potential to bring either tragic harm or human healing to the client. She beautifully summarizes this realization with her advice to therapists: "If it is possible to remain open to our fears and make reparations for our mistakes, our vulnerability can be used in the service of healing."

This book takes you into the heart and mind of a fascinating woman. It portrays, in sometimes painful detail, the importance of the therapist-patient relationship. We observe two radically different styles of therapy, and the power of each to help or heal. A wonderful read for anyone in therapy - my own therapist and I are using it as a tool to explore our relationship.

As you read A Shining Affliction, you get the sense of an immensely talented therapist, who knows instinctively,perhaps because of her own trauma, how to understand her severely disturbed child patient. Her intuition is astounding. When the therapist herself breaks down, an equally talented therapist helps her come to grips with her own demons. An inside view at how therapy at its best is more like magic than medicine

A Shining Affliction is heart-breakingly beautiful. Rogers is Poetic in her writing, making this story easily read and quotable. I have bookmaked page 190- It is truely an outstanding example of how life and love always triumphs.