Through My Own Eyes or The Therapists Emotional Survival

Through My Own Eyes: Single Mothers and the Cultures of Poverty

Author: Susan Holloway

Shirl is a single mother who urges her son's baby-sitter to swat him when he misbehaves. Helena went back to work to get off welfare, then quit to be with her small daughter. Kathy was making good money but got into cocaine and had to give up her two-year-old son during her rehabilitation. Pundits, politicians, and social critics have plenty to say about such women and their behavior. But in this book, for the first time, we hear what these women have to say for themselves. An eye-opening--and heart-rending--account from the front lines of poverty, Through My Own Eyes offers a firsthand look at how single mothers with the slimmest of resources manage from day to day. We witness their struggles to balance work and motherhood and watch as they negotiate a bewildering maze of child-care and social agencies.

For three years the authors followed the lives of fourteen women from poor Boston neighborhoods, all of whom had young children and had been receiving welfare intermittently. We learn how these women keep their families on firm footing and try--frequently in vain--to gain ground. We hear how they find child-care and what they expect from it, as well as what the childcare providers have to say about serving low-income families. Holloway and Fuller view these lives in the context of family policy issues touching on the disintegration of inner cities, welfare reform, early childhood and "pro-choice" poverty programs.

Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare - Jill Duerr Berrik

Through My Own Eyes is a thoughtful book that adds to our knowledge about poverty in America.

Library Journal

Over a three-year period, Berkeley professors Holloway and Bruce Fuller and independent scholars Marielee F. Rambaud and Constanza Eggers-Pirola interviewed 14 poor, single-parent women of Anglo, Latina, African American background in the Boston area to learn about their attitudes and beliefs toward parenting, employment, and welfare. This in-depth study reveals similarities and variations in these womens' approaches to (mostly) common goals of attaining self-reliance, education, and respect for themselves and their children. The authors strongly suggest that policymakers, educators, professionals, and community members (to all of whom this book is addressed) understand the underlying ambitions and key influences of these families' differing cultural milieus, resource availability, and attitudes when planning what should be a mix of programs to help them escape the poverty that precludes their independence and hurts our society as a whole. Recommended.Suzanne W. Wood, SUNY Coll. of Technology, Alfred, Lib.

Books about: Complete Baking Cookbook or Hungering for America

The Therapist's Emotional Survival

Author: Stuart D Perlman

This book explores the private thoughts of the therapist in response to the patient's inner expressions and how each affects the other over the course of treatment. Stuart Perlman documents his own journey of having treated trauma and sexually abused patients over many years. He details the issues the therapist needs to deal with, the emotional strain, how the therapist's own traumas and history shape his behavior and intrude into the therapeutic process, and how he and others he has supervised have come to manage this difficult process and maintain emotional health. Dr. Perlman illustrates this with powerful revealing of his thoughts, dreams, memories, history, personal psychotherapy, and emotional reactions.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgments
	Introduction
Pt. I	The Patient-Therapist Relationship
1	Pioneers	5
2	The Survivor's Shattered Existence	15
3	Bearing the Pain of Treatment	23
4	My Introduction to Treating Sexually Abused and Traumatized Patients	41
5	Therapist Rescue Fantasies	57
6	Therapy Openings	65
Pt. II	Openings to Trauma and Pain
	First Stage of Treatment: Establishing Safety and Connection	77
7	Will You Hurt, Ignore, or Help Me? Fear and Self-Protection	81
8	Can I Take Control Over My Own Physical and Emotional Needs?	97
9	Can You Hear Me?	107
	Second Stage of Treatment: Deep Experience	117
10	Can You Listen to the Trauma and Validate Me?	121
11	Am I Lovable? Feeling Deep Love and Bonding	135
12	Can You See Me? Discontinuous and Shattered Existence	145
13	Who Is Bad and Who Is the Abuser?	169
14	Is This My Body? Touch	177
15	Can You Believe in Ritual Abuse?	189
Pt. III	Emotional Survival
16	Reality, Countertransference, and the False Memory Controversy: Guidelines	209
17	Therapist Survival: Concluding Perspectives and Strategies	231
	References	241
	Index	249