Book Review: Child Abuse, Treating Survivors of Childhood Abuse: Psychotherapy for the Interrupted Life
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Child Abuse Treating Survivors of Childhood Abuse: Psychotherapy for the Interrupted Life Marylene Cloitre, Lisa R Cohen, Karestan C Koenen. New York (NY): The Guilford Press; 2006. 338 p. US$38.00. Reviewer rating: Excellent The purpose of this book is to provide therapists with an empirically supported intervention to effectively treat adult survivors of childhood abuse. It includes a clear description of the theoretical framework, session guidelines, and techniques that have been found in a randomized controlled trial to produce substantial improvement in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, affect regulation, and interpersonal problems in women survivors of childhood abuse. The treatment has also been used with men and women who were exposed to trauma related to the collapse of the World Trade Center in 2001, where it was found to be equally effective for both sexes. The treatment is a 2-phase intervention involving a total of 16 sessions. Phase 1, skills training in affective and interpersonal regulation (STAIR), aims to help the client build and strengthen resources for effective living in the present. Phase 2, narrative storytelling (NST), focuses on reducing PTSD symptoms and revising maladaptive interpersonal schemas by having the client repeatedly recount specific traumatic memories, organize them into a coherent and meaningful narrative, and consider the place of the traumatic experiences in her or his life history. One of the many strengths of the book is the encouragement to use the intervention flexibly so that it responds to the individual needs of the client. This includes flexibility in the number of sessions and in the emphasis on particular skills and interpersonal schemas. The theoretical framework is a well-articulated blend of principles from cognitive-behavioral and the attachment-interpersonal-object relational traditions.p xi This book, which could be called a manual of the STAIR-NST approach, will be a useful resource to both students and experienced clinicians. It begins with 3 chapters describing the effects of childhood abuse from an attachment-developmental perspective. These chapters are useful in helping the reader appreciate the impact of abuse on the developing child, especially abuse by a parent or caregiver. The authors emphasize that, in addition to symptoms of posttraumatic stress related to the actual abuse, experiencing childhood abuse leads to losses of important resources, including the loss of healthy attachment, the loss of useful guidance in the development of emotional and social competencies, and the loss of support and connection to the larger social community. They argue that effective treatment must help the survivor build or rebuild these lost resources. The next 6 chapters describe the rationale for specific aspects of the treatment, provide overviews of the treatment components, outline useful guidelines for implementing the treatment, offer suggestions about how to talk to clients about their trauma histories, and discuss the type of clients likely to benefit from this approach. …
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.004 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.031 | 0.022 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".