Traumatic events that occur early in childhood are encoded in the psyche in a modality that is primarily nonverbal. Neurologic studies of the effects of child abuse on brain function suggest that trauma results in overactivation of right brain (nonverbal) activity as compared with left brain (verbal) activity (Schiffer, Teicher, & Papanicolaou, 1995). Thus, when traumatic events are relived in current reality, they retain a strikingly nonverbal quality. In the clinical arena it is quite striking to encounter patients who are otherwise highly intelligent, verbal, and articulate, but who literally seem to have no words to describe their childhood experiences. For these patients, their experiences of early childhood abuse remain both literally and figuratively unspeakable.