How can one overcome deeply-held resentment so as to resume or establish a bond with a traumatizing person, mindful that the experience of the self is rooted in the very intimate relationships from which such trauma arose? This book centers on the challenge of forgiveness and recovery from trauma in intimate relationships as viewed psychodynamically in the clinical context.

Traumas inflicted by intimates, especially by parents, differ from transgressions and betrayals--however legitimately traumatizing--committed in less psychically-rooted relationships. While some betrayals are in...