"In instructive and moving ways, Siegel describes how her work with these patients led to an acceptance of her own multifaceted bodily reactions and accompanying images as an essential aspect of her work ego. Transformations meets an urgent need for detailed clinical material on treatment, including not only cases of father-daughter incest, but those rarer instances of incest committed by mothers both with daughters and with sons. Readers will resonate with Siegel's reactions of horror to these patients'stories. Still, she is to be commended for not advocating a separate diagnostic category for these patients, sensitive as she is to individual differences among them on the basis of gender, life history, and particular ego strength."
- Jean Sanville, Ph.D., Los Angeles Institute for Psychoanalytic Studies
"Elaine Siegel's outstanding, eminently readable book provides what is probably the most comprehensive clinical account of both the intrapsychic and interactional processes occurring in the analyses of patients who are incest victims. Further, Transformations develops an original approach for using the clinician's countertransferences, including somatic reactions, to attain a deeper understanding of what is taking place unconsciously in the patient. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to all practitioners who want to learn more about contemporary treatment methods."
- Theo L. Dorpat, M.D., Training Analyst, Seattle Institute for Psychoanalysis
“Siegel relied on sensitive attunement to her bodily posture, sounds, and psychophysiological reactions in treatment hours as a guide to intuiting and interpreting the patient’s bodily memories of physical violation. She concludes that countertransference responses, especially somatically derived ones, are important guides to helping patients establish the transitional space pivotal in the reconstruction and working through of traumatic memories.”
- Kathryn J. Zerbe, JAPA
