The Therapist’s Voice: Discussion of “Expressivity and Transformation through Language in Work with Serious Disorder”

ABSTRACT

Director points out that language has been somewhat sidelined by the modern emphasis on the importance of procedural non-verbal encounters. She recounts some clearly life-saving words she uttered to a very despairing patient. The review cites several literary critics commenting on the arousing, even exciting, effect of the inner rhythms contained in great poetry: the reviewer suggests that a related effect on the therapist’s voice may have added power and much-needed strength to the words themselves in this clinical situation.

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Expressivity and Transformation through Language in Work with Serious Disorder

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Further Thoughts about Expressivity and Language: Reply to Peter Goldberg and Anne Alvarez

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Anne Alvarez

Anne Alvarez, Ph.D., M.A.C.P., is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist (and retired Co-Convener of the Autism Service, Child and Family Dept. Tavistock Clinic, London, where she still teaches). She is author of Live Company: Psychotherapy with Autistic, Borderline, Deprived and Abused Children, of The Thinking Heart: Three Levels of Psychoanalytic Therapy with Disturbed Children and editor with Susan Reid of Autism and Personality: Findings from the Tavistock Autism Workshop. A book in her honor was edited by Judith Edwards, entitled Being Alive: Building on the Work of Anne Alvarez.