The authors' extensive clinical experience with traumatized clients, as well as their profound awareness of the limitations of existing paradigms, have directed them to construct a new, comprehensive heuristic theory that can be applied effectively

This work explores the role and experience of the therapist in the therapeutic relationship with adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse by examining countertransference (the therapist's response to the client) and vicarious traumatization (the therapist's response to stories of abuse told by client after client). The authors use psychoanalytic theory and rely on an empirically based understanding of trauma and its developmental impact.