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. “I feel in my bones that this is a work of oceanic empathy and insight and importance—a highly personal yet deeply professional major book that has the potential to shape many lives.” —Thomas French, Pulitzer Prize winner author of Juniper, Zoo Story “This is a love story and a beautiful one. Laurie has done a marvelous job of tracking the processes of pain, healing, and love in her clients and herself. I would recommend it to everyone.” —Don Catherall PhD, author of Emotional Safety: Viewing Couples Through the Lens of Affect Laurie Kahn MA, LCPC, MFA is a pioneer in the field of trauma treatment. For more than thirty years, she 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 and hundreds of clinicians who have graduated from her Trauma Consultation Training Program. Kahn’s personal essays have been published in anthologies, and her articles and book reviews in professional journals. She lives in Evanston, Illinois with her husband, Michael, and her labradoodle, Kali. |