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A Shining Affliction: A Story of Harm and Healing in Psychotherapy. Annie G. Rogers, Ph.D. (New York: Penguin Books, 1995.)
Annie Rogers, Assistant Professor of Human Development and Psychology at Harvard University, has written a remarkable account of her life as a graduate student intern. Originally, she conceived her work as a case presentation of a foster child, Ben, a five-year-old boy traumatized as the result being abandoned in a house fire. Believing, however, that the presentation of her treatment with Ben would be dishonest without revealing details of her own simultaneous personal history, she proceeded to weave into a multi-dimensional account the threads of this treatment relationship with Ben, her supervisory experiences as an intern, and her own failed psychotherapy, subsequent breakdown, and recovery. Through the extensive use of clinical process notes Rogers takes us poetically into the complex interplay of intersubjective space.
Early in my reading I paused and returned to the book jacket, confused as to whether the work was indeed biographical. My doing so not only was a reflection of the author's giftedness as a writer but also a confirmation of her motivation for writing-that as psychotherapists we are acculturated not to disclose the details of our lives. Avoiding abstract psychological language and obtuse theoretical constructions, Rogers artfully demonstrates the application of both practice and theory, and presents us with a moving and honest account of the multiple interpersonal and intrapsychic forces at work in her training and personal therapy. Throughout, she takes care not to impinge, but rather like a good-enough mother, leaves the reader free to read and to move about within the many layers of her words and story.
The book is comprised of three sections, each containing brief chapters that arch across inner and outer time and space and draw upon subtle and not-so-subtle allusions, enactments, and relational fields. The first section, "The Other Side of Silence," draws on both clinical process and subsequent case supervision sessions that detail her observations and experiences with Ben, whom Rogers sees in a child day-treatment facility. From their initial play therapy sessions, where she must respond to a child who turns off the treatment room lights-a dilemma not covered in her child treatment text-to her first anxious supervisory session...