Its almost unfailingly optimistic look at (well practiced) trauma therapy aside, Unspeakable Truths departs admirably from what has become formula for authors of books for the survivor and pro-survivor markets. It clear-headedly examines the recovered memory debate, acknowledging that even the most distinct memories can be false and that bumbling therapists can, indeed, help people remember incidences that never occurred. The book's stated goal in doing so: To guide survivors towards careful, ethical, and eminently sensible trauma therapy and to steer survivors clear of the significant ethical failures of some incautious trauma therapists.
To its great credit, the book's look at the frailties of survivors' memories and of inexpert trauma therapy is entirely removed from the he said/she said tone that books by Katie Roiphe, Wendy Kaminer, Lawrence Wright, Elizabeth Loftus, Nicholas Spanos, and Michael D. Yapko have taken. Unspeakable Truths's look is wonderfully informed by the author's (Rebecca Coffey, health journalist) reports of her own experience struggling to remain both humanly compassionate and journalistically prudent as she listened to viscerally vivid tales of trauma. Thus, what could have been a hackneyed discussion of already-covered terrain becomes a rather remarkable narrative as Coffey examines the implications, for herself and for survivors and their friends, family, and therapists, of the fact that trauma stories are inherently unbelievable. Listeners bring to the listening a desperate hope that what they are about to hear didn't really happen. The tellers often remain too awash in the emotional aftershocks of trauma to tell a convincing tale.
Coffey takes her examination of the implications to the limit, and because of that Unspeakable Truths shines a warm spotlight on the potential healing role of listeners, listening, therapists, and therapy. Unspeakable Truths convincingly argues that, as thinking and caring inhabitants of a menacing world, we must all learn to hear unspeakable truths. At the same time that we risk accepting the truths about violence and degradation that survivors' memories hold, we must reasonably engage critical thinking when memories of violence and degradation stretch the limits of our credulity. We owe it to survivors to listen compassionately; we owe it to ourselves to listen prudently. Unlike the pugnaciously phrased criticisms voiced by most books examining the recovered memory debate, Unspeakable Truths's theme of prudent and fully examined compassion is one that offers survivors, their friends, family, and therapists something to embrace.
