The book describes a research in the field of child sex abuse. The intent is to point out specific aspects which will lead to a complete psychological recovery from trauma using the "Experiential Model" and moving back to the roots of the traumatic experience. The fact fostering a "total healing" is the individuation of the uncompleted "existential act," interrupted at the moment of the "molesting act." The specific aspect has to do with a "specific need" in the victim's story. The Rogerian approach is appropriate for the client to get in touch with the world of emotions and go deep down to parts of the Self that lead to the "black hole" the root bearing the experience of illusions - betrayal - defeat. At the same time it leads up to the peak of compassion and cosmic love. Thence, there, there it's gonna be another "long walk home."
About the Author: Born in Australia. Graduated in Psychology at University of Padova - Italy. Four years at the Facilitator Development Institute in Rome where I specialized in Rogerian Therapy. My teachers and tutors were Carl Rogers, Chuck Devonshire, George De Rita, Nat Ruskin, John Wood. During the four years in Rome, my tutor was Chuck Devonshire to whom I owe a great deal for his sensitivity and great capacity to convey the "non-directive" approach and the fundamental concepts of Person-Centred Therapy. These professors come from the Centre for The Study of The Person University at La Jolla in San Diego, California. For four more years, I attended a supervision group conducted by Chuck Devonshire, treasuring a great deal of experience firstly with him and later with George De Rita. In my profession I was able to get hold of those "threads" that lay deep within the person's history and that "desperately" surface from the depths and become protagonists of our way of being ("the distorted actualizing tendency"). From this experience comes my book of poems: "A psychotherapy?...No... A lifetime...." It is a collection of poems written by a client and is the witness that there is a pathway in the therapeutic process. How long and painful is the road to travel. For many years, I have been professor for Clinical Sexology at the Centro Italiano di Sessuologia in collaboration with the Clinical Sexology Service at the department of Psychology University of Bologna. For ten years, I taught sex education in secondary schools and later wrote a book: "The voyage of our sexual growth." I have written works on sexual topics for scientific reviews. With this book on psychotherapy, I am here with all the limits that I realize may emerge, but with the hope that someone will take them and use them in order to move forward with a scientific "hand" in the phenomenal "Being in the World." The last chapter is an attempt to give some theoretical evidence as regards child abuse. For this piece of work my thanks goes to Mariagnese Cheli, responsible for the "Centre against child abuse" of the Azienda Sanitaria of Bologna.