Victims of Abuse: The Emotional Impact of Child and Adult Trauma edited by Alan Sugarman Madison, CT:  International Universities Press, 1994,  xi + 233 pp., $30.00

This monograph consists of papers presented at a conference on trauma organized by the San Diego Psychoanalytic Institute and

Society in 1992. The book is edited by Alan Sugarman, who, in the first chapter, examines the complex topics of abuse and trauma and places them in a theoretical and historical context. The remainder of the book is divided into two parts.

Part I provides an overview of the psychodynamics found in childhood and adult victims of physical and sexual abuse. The common traumas of adulthood that confront clinicians include the battered spouse syndrome and the posttraumatic stress disorders arising out of traumas in the work place.

Part II presents some discussions of the treatment complications posed by patients who are victims of childhood or adult trauma. These chapters provide helpful suggestions and heuristics to clinicians for understanding and treating the tendencies of traumatized patients to enact or to entice their therapists into boundary violations, as well as some frequently occurring disturbing countertransference problems. The contributors argue for the therapeutic efficacy of psychoanalytic psychotherapy or psychoanalysis in the treatment of victims of abuse and trauma.

In his chapter, “A Psychoanalytic View of Child Abuse,” Albert Solnit demonstrates that the current rash of educational programs in schools and home settings regarding sexual abuse are based on the following mistaken assumptions: “1) that children can be taught to distinguish good from bad touching; and that they could report bad touching to a trusted adult; 2) that children always tell the truth if they are asked about adults involving them in sexual activities” (p. 38). He points out the cognitive and developmental limitations preventing children from making accurate distinctions between good and bad touching and from cognitively understanding direct questions about sexual or erotic arousal by an adult.

Using well-written case studies, Selma Kramer describes and discu