Customer Reviews

The Unsayable: The Hidden Language of Trauma

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With an emphasis on words and the associations we make with them, Rogers unveils how some children continue to re-experience and re-live past trauma. First, she describes her own childhood crises in a narrative that is both revealing and intimate. She describes her state in ways that allow one to experience it as she had, instead of something simply as foreign and "over with." Then, through example, we follow her as she tries to understand what the children's gestures and words are trying to "say" without their being able to verbalize it. However, she uses the children's own meanings of things (instead of simply standard symbolic meanings) to re-explain to them what has happened and how it continues to persist in their lives, unwittingly. This is what keeps it fresh and real. Moreover, throughout the book, there is an unstated underlying stream of empathy and relatedness. A great book.

It's probably not a coincidence that it is difficult to put into words what Annie has communicated in her book about the hidden language of trauma. Through her entrancing and lyrical use of language, she somehow magically illustrates how the invisible marks of trauma on the body repeatedly surface through the spoken--and more importantly non-spoken--language. In her work with traumatized children, Annie mirrors back traces of their unconscious she remarkably detects in both their words and silences, and ultimately helps the child to give voice to the haunting "unsayable."

Admittedly, I am still trying to process all that was said in this book. And as I do so, I take comfort in Annie's final words of the book when she said: "..if your body in pieces has begun to speak, and if you are now brimming with words and their sounds--and you're no longer sure of what you're hearing or saying...you are the one person I've written this for, the one to whom I entrust these words."

I really enjoyed this book and learned from it, but found it less compelling than "A Shining Affliction". Possibly I felt that Rogers was trying very hard to convince me of the validity of Lacanian theory. It felt a tad defensive - as though somehow she was warding off a critical audience in her use of Lacan to understand what some of her patients were going through. And yes, at times the word-play felt a bit excessive and the meaning forced.

However the reason I loved this book and Rogers' work is her ability to tolerate ambiguity and nuance, and find a way into relationship with patients who are desperately alone in their experience and their minds. I always learn from her, and so appreciate her willingness to share the struggle for understanding in the name of healing and connectedness.

I am not an expert in this field.

This book was an introduction to a deep way of thinking about humanity.

About Freud and psychoanalysis.

The book takes the reader through a process. The authors experience, clues, cases, clues, structure, clues. Trusting the reader, Ann Rogers takes the care to let our consciousness unfold. The material and stories of the girls and of her reactions is frightening. Horrifying. Her technique of not blaming the perpetrator nor leaving the victim in the sole role of victim was difficult but at the same time open doors to understanding the past, the behaviors and the future.

I can't recommend it more highly.

A psychologist friend recently passed on Dr. Rogers' first book, "A Shining Affliction", which was so amazing and riveting that I immediately bought her second book, "The Unsayable". What a remarkable person, possessed of such insight, intelligence, courage, and intuitiveness! She writes so compellingly about her own abuse and her road to healing, as well as that of girls (in this book) whom she has treated and interviewed. Dr. Rogers' own story is striking, and the compassion and insight that she brings to treating and listening to others who have experienced trauma left me awed and humbled. Her therapeutic technique of listening closely to repetitive language coming from the unconscious while working with children, and the powerfulness of this approach in healing, was totally new and original to me. I wish that this book had been available to me when I practiced my career as a clinical child psychologist! This book was one that will stick in my mind for years to come.

As a survivor of sexual abuse myself, I was drawn to read this book. Some of the mental barriers the author displays due to her own abuse as a child, I could relate to. HOWEVER, most of the beginning of this book details mental illness not so much the natural occurrence of trauma that often affects non-mentally ill persons. In fact, after reading some of the earlier mental experiences of this author, I would personally hesitate to see a doctor like this myself for treatment. The lingering effects of her past (and mental health history) can certainly cloud her present judgments.

I also noticed at the end of her book, she dedicates it to her lesbian partner. This book, itself, could give further study into "why people turn to same-sex relationships" given the background of the author. Was it the abuse she endured as a child that re-wired her neural pathways into same-sex attraction? Was it the almost spiritual/demonic experience she had in youth which made her fearful of holy things and shun church, thus leading to a life of disordered attraction?

I think readers need to be aware of some of the profoundly disturbed elements of the book and author herself. While, this book can give insight into the darkness of abuse victims and what they endure (and how they cope), it does offer other questions about mental illness that I feel are not properly answered in this book.