Working with Trauma

Book excerpt: Working with Trauma: Lessons from Bion and Lacan by Marilyn Charles takes concepts from the psychoanalytic literature and translates them into user-friendly language. In this book, Charles focuses on clinical work with more severely disturbed patients, for whom trauma has impeded their psychosocial development. Introducing ideas from Bion and Lacan, such as "empty speech" and "attacks on linking," she shows the reader their clinical utility. Her use of clinical moments, rather than more lengthy vignettes, invites readers to recognize that type of dilemma and imagine how they might use the concept in their own work.