How do we talk about feelings to children who are cut off from feeling? How do we raise hope and a sense of safety in despairing and terrified children without offering false hope? How do we reach the unreachable child and interest the hardened child?
The Thinking Heart is a natural sequel to Live Company, Anne Alvarez'' highly influential and now classic book about working with severely disturbed and damaged children. Building on 50 years experience as a child and adolescent psychotherapist, Alvarez uses detailed and vivid clinical examples of different interactions between therapist and client, and explores the reasons why one type of therapeutic understanding can work rather than another. She also addresses what happens when the therapist gets it wrong.
In The Thinking Heart, Alvarez identifies three different levels of analytic work and communication:
- the explanatory level - the "why - because"
- the descriptive leve
