Child Abuse Trauma

​Child Abuse Trauma: Theory and Treatment of the Lasting Effects.
John N. Briere. 
Sage Publications. 1992.
ISBN: 9780803937130.
 
Child Abuse Trauma is John Briere’s classic 1992 book on the long-term effects of child maltreatment, and it remains a foundational text for understanding trauma-related symptoms and treatment. It focuses on how different forms of abuse and neglect shape later functioning, including PTSD, interpersonal difficulties, self-destructive behaviour, and borderline features. The book brings together seven forms of child maltreatment and explains their overlapping psychological effects. It also presents Briere’s view that abuse-related distress is often better understood through a trauma lens than through older, narrower psychopathology labels. Briere’s self-trauma model is central to his work on child abuse trauma. In that model, treatment draws on trauma theory, cognitive-behavioural ideas, attachment and self-psychology, with special attention to implicit memory and deeply learned relational patterns.
 
John Briere, Ph.D., is a U.S. psychologist and trauma specialist known for his work on child abuse, complex trauma, and post-traumatic stress. He is Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine and has also directed the USC Adolescent Trauma Training Center. He has served as president of the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies and has received major awards for contributions to trauma psychology and child psychology.