'Rare and compelling in its compassion and its unassuming eloquence...her examples are so vivid and so ordinary they touch the hurt child in us all' New York Magazine

The first publication of Drama of Being a Child and of this 1997 edition are separated by fifteen years of experience - the author's experience with her own self-therapy and with other recent therapy methods, and finally her knowledge of the life histories of the several thousand readers who have written to her. The research into childhood she has undertaken in this period has led to further fine-tuning of her earlier findings, as is ocumented and illustrated here with an abundance of examples. The author examines the consequences of repression at personal and social levels, the causes of the physical and
psychological harm done to children and how this can be prevented, and finally the new methods at our disposal for dealing with the consequences of infant traumas.