From Library Journal
Based on the premise that "everyone wants to become whole," this book offers help and encouragement to women who were sexually abused in childhood. Through moving firstperson narratives, it illustrates how to come to terms with the past and work constructively towards the future. Along the way it describes the effects of sexual abuse, maps the stages survivors pass through, and offers practical guidance on dealing with self-defeating behaviors and building self-esteem. Supportive strategies are recommended to families, friends, and health-care professionals. The final "Resources for Healing" lists services and self-help programs and a bibliography. Compassionate and supportive. Jodith Janes, Univ. Hospitals of ClevelandCopyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.


Book Description
The Courage to Heal is an inspiring, comprehensive guide that offers hope and encouragement to every woman who, was sexually abused as a child -- and those who care about her. Although the effects of child sexual abuse are long-term and severe, healing is possible. The authors weave personal experience with professional knowledge to show the reader how she can come to terms with her past while moving powerfully into the future. They provide clear explanations, practical suggestions, a map of the healing journey, and many moving first-person examples of the recovery process drawn from their interviews with hundreds of survivors.Definitive in scope, The Courage to Heal speaks directly to the survivor in a warm and personal way:TAKING STOCK -- outlines the effects of child sexual abuse and the ways women cope over time.THE HEALING PROCESS -- explores each stage from the decision to heal and remembering through breaking silence, knowing it wasn't your fault, nurturing the inner child, and grief and anger, to resolution and moving on.CHANGING PATTERNS -- offers in-depth guidance for shifting self-defeating patterns in specific areas of one's present life, including self-esteem, feelings, intimacy, sexuality, and dealing with families.SUPPORTERS OF SURVIVORS -- provides insight and strategies for partners of survivors, family members, and counselors.COURAGEOUS WOMEN -- profiles survivors who share the challenges and triumphs of their own healing journeys.HONORING THE TRUTH -- a substantial new Afterword that refutes the "false memory" argument and presents a thorough and enlightening response to the backlash.RESOURCE GUIDE -- fully updated for this edition -- informs readers about therapy, healing activities, recommended reading, support groups, self-help programs, and services and organizations.


From The WomanSource Catalog & Review: Tools for Connecting the Community for Women; review by Patricia Pettijohn
The classic and definitive self-help guide for women survivors of sexual abuse, The Courage To Heal is a tool for recovery that works. This is also the book often cited by those who challenge the credibility of incest survivors. Some survivors of childhood abuse recover memories of these traumatic early experiences years after the original events, and it is these recovered memories that are said to be false memories, implanted in the allegedly impressionable minds of survivors. I was curious to see how this revised and expanded third edition would differ from the much maligned first. In addition to an Afterword that carefully analyzes and refutes the false memory syndrome argument, the authors have made revisions throughout the book which offer guidelines for assessing confusing memories. The authors' commitment to survivors is clear throughout the book, beginning with the book's endorsements, which come not from therapists, but from anonymous survivors. This is a comprehensive, supportive, carefully worded and often passionate book, as helpful for those who are the partners, friends or family of survivors, as for survivors themselves.


About the Author
A workshop facilitator for survivors, their partners, and counselors, Ellen Bass is co-editor of I Never Told Anyone and the author of several volumes of poetry. She lives in Santa Cruz, California.


Excerpted from The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis (as appears in The WomanSource Catalog & Review). Copyright(c) 1994. Reprinted by permission, all rights reserved
If you don't feel respected, valued, or understood, or if your experience is being minimized or distorted, that's a sign that you're in bad therapy, or at least that there's a bad fit between you and the counselor. If you feel there is something wrong in the therapy relationship, or if you get upset or angry with your counselor, talk about it in your session. Afterward, you should feel you've been heard and understood. However, if your counselor discounts your feelings or responds defensively, then you're not getting the respect you need. Look elsewhere. If you feel your therapist is pressuring you to say you were abused, you're seeing the wrong therapist. No one else can tell you whether or not you were abused.

ANNOTATION

Outlines effects of abuse & the ways women cope/ explores the healing process/profiles survivors/etc.

FROM THE PUBLISHER