Nominated the "best book of the year" award by The National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis

Short description:
How can therapists treat patients' primitive anxieties and overwhelming terrors that are not accessible to verbal interpretation or insight? In psychotherapy the traumas suffered in infancy are often reawakened, and re-experienced in the safety of the therapeutic relationship. However, to feel connected and safe is an oxymoron for these patients.  While they desperately seek attachment, their experience of connection is one of violation and humiliation. Their ways of attaching are at the center of what terrifies patients with early trauma and, in a successful therapy, they structure the development of the transference and come also to terrify the analyst. This book shows therapists how to understand the process of trauma re-creation, and move with the client through the experiencing of the early physical pain and psychological terror and the blaming of the therapist. 

Reviews and comments from reviewers:
"Dr. Hedges' work with problems rooted in early trauma demonstrates how to stay calm and connected during the inevitable storms that characterize therapy with these difficult patients."
—Sanford Shapiro

Gripping and Thoughtful: A Wonderful Contribution to Working with
Primitive Transferences
"Working closely with patients with early developmental trauma has intense emotional effects on any therapist. The unbearable narratives that result from such therapeutic encounters are candidly portrayed throughout this book. Dr. Hedges offers an invaluable aid to therapists working with primitive psychotic anxieties and their transferences into the therapeutic relationship. This book offers therapeutic and ethical approaches to both novice and seasoned therapists faced with nearly impossible challenges. It is gripping; it is thoughtful; it is a wonderful contribution to working with more primitive and psychotic transferences!"
—Karen K. Redding