More Quotes from The Unsayable

- "At first, words are babbling stream of sound. And though very young children play with words and sounds in turn-taking rhythms with others, they don't use language with the purpose of communicating.

"But as a child begins to see that words can make things happen, can call forth specific response from others, she is able to make what Lacan calls 'a demand.' This is a request for recognition of what she means and for a response that affirms she is loved."

- "Provided with food and warmth, yet without recognition or any evidence of love, a child will become lethargic, stop growing and even die. The capacity to ask for something, and make herself understood, is crucial to a child's sense of being loved. But making a demand requires a risk; the other person may not understand, or may understand and say no."

Source: The Unsayable by Annie G. Rogers, PhD

Quotes from The Unsayable

"Although some see me as an 'expert' on trauma, I'm not. Trauma is bigger than expertise of any sort - it's in our midst, in our language, our wars, even the ways we try to love, repeating, repeating. No one is an expert on trauma."

"Even then I had a reputation for reaching 'unreachable' children... If a child is suffering, in that quiet invisible way that children really do suffer, I am drawn to find that child and make contact. Maybe I am going back to myself as a child... I simply won't be turned away."

"In my practice I want to hear children in a way that invites them to say more, to find words for the unsayable - and this necessarily means listening to the unconscious."

"I gradually learned that trauma follows a different logic, a condensed psychological logic that is associative, layered, nonlinear, and highly metaphoric."

"Trauma is a letter written on the body in vanishing ink.... a message emerges that demands to be read, to be known."

Source: The Unsayable by Annie G. Rogers, PhD