About this item
For three decades, Laurie Kahn has treated clients who were abused as children -- people who were injured by someone whom they believed to be trustworthy, someone who professed to love them. Their abusers -- a father, stepfather, priest, coach, babysitter, aunt, neighbor -- often were people who inhabited their daily lives.Love is why they come to therapy. Love is what they want, and love is what they say is not going well for them. Kahn, too, had to learn to navigate a wilderness in order to find the "good" kind of love after a rocky childhood. In Baffled by Love, she includes strands from her own story, along with those of her clients, creating a narrative full of resonance, meaning, and shared humanity.
About the Author
Laurie Kahn MA, LCPC, MFA is a pioneer in the field of trauma treatment. For more than 30 years, Laurie has specialized in the treatment of survivors of childhood abuse. In 1980, she founded Womencare Counseling and Training Center. Since then, her ideas and expertise have served both people who have experienced childhood abuse, as well as hundreds of clinicians who have graduated from her Trauma Consultation Training Program (Chicago's largest postgraduate training program for mental health practitioners who work with traumatic stress disorders.)
Laurie's most salient contribution to the field is the concept of child abuse as specifically a traumatic experience of love. She introduced this concept in 2006 in an article in the Journal of Trauma Practice. She is a frequent presenter at workshops, panels, pre-institutes and conferences, including the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies (ISTSS) , International Society for the Study of Trauma and Dissociation (ISSTD) , and the Institute on Violence, Abuse and Trauma (IVAT) .
She has organized and chaired several conferences, including "Disorders of Love" in collaboration with Carol Gilligan and "Trauma and Recovery" with Judith Hermann, (an author and luminary in the field.) In 1996, Laurie was honored to speak at the First African Conference on Post Traumatic Stress in South Africa, just after the formation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Laurie's personal essays have been published in anthologies, and her articles and book reviews in professional journals.
In 2010, Laurie completed an MFA in Creative Nonfiction at Goucher College. In Baffled by Love, she uses her passion for storytelling to share her understanding of child abuse as a traumatic experience of love, and how its damage can be repaired.
Visit Laurie Kahn at www.lauriekahnauthor.com
