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A Guilty Victim: Recovering Creativity after Trauma and Abuse

Author(s) : Toby Ingham

Reviews and Endorsements

Moving and absolutely gripping. Toby Ingham is an Oliver Sacks, an expert in the workings of the human mind with the writerly skill to turn painstaking clinical practice into compulsively readable narrative. This book is the story of the rescue, against all the odds, of a desperately damaged person; of a triumph of good over evil: it will be a resource and a balm for all who suffered neglect, abuse, and other traumas as children in Britain's residential care systems.
Alex Renton, journalist and author of Stiff Upper Lip: Secrets, Crimes and the Schooling of a Ruling Class

Toby Ingham has written an extraordinary book, part case study and part novel. The author is a psychotherapist and has written, with his patient’s active help and participation, an account of the therapy, charting the ups and downs, the dramas, misunderstandings and bursts of connection and understanding in the therapeutic relationship. Interspersed with the history of the therapy, the author becomes a novelist and recreates scenes from his patient’s life, telling stories of suffering and abuse but also of his patient finding some peace and understanding. The book shows how creativity is linked to courage, showing how if pain and trauma can be faced, then our lives can be transformed.
Laurence Spurling, psychoanalytic psychotherapist, senior member of the British Psychotherapy Foundation

This marvellous book grew from a form of “Bayeux tapestry” created by a client, “William”, to illustrate and demystify the experiences he was recounting in his therapy with Toby Ingham. They inspired William to invite Ingham to write an account of the therapy to help others. After decades of researching paradigmatic case histories of psychotherapy from Freud onward, I had reached the conclusion that they should be written by clients, not by therapists. However, this book shows an even better way: one that mirrors the therapy as a collaboration, client-led. Toby Ingham and William have created a masterpiece, deserving an honoured place in the history of psychotherapeutic case studies.
Anthony Stadlen, Daseinsanalyst, convenor of Inner Circle Seminars, senior member of the British Psychotherapy Foundation