Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror Author: See details badgers1mom Fulfilled by Amazon Sign in to turn on 1-Click ordering | Language: English | ISBN:
0465087302 | Format: PDF
Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror Description
When Trauma and Recovery was first published in 1992, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work. In the intervening years, Herman’s volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large.Trauma and Recovery brings a new level of understanding to a set of problems usually considered individually. Herman draws on her own cutting-edge research in domestic violence as well as on the vast literature of combat veterans and victims of political terror, to show the parallels between private terrors such as rape and public traumas such as terrorism. The book puts individual experience in a broader political frame, arguing that psychological trauma can be understood only in a social context. Meticulously documented and frequently using the victims’ own words as well as those from classic literary works and prison diaries, Trauma and Recovery is a powerful work that will continue to profoundly impact our thinking.
- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Basic Books; Reprint edition (May 30, 1997)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0465087302
- ISBN-13: 978-0465087303
- Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.3 x 1.3 inches
- Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
This is not your usual trauma recovery book. Most books on healing explain symptoms, offer exercises, and provide illuminating case histories. Judith Herman does all this, but she goes beyond just focusing on healing oneself in isolation. We are social animals, and must live within our culture. Thus, how our culture regards trauma and traumatized people is very important to those trying to become reintegrated into society after massive psychic shock. Dr. Herman explains our modern Western culture's attitudes toward trauma and the traumatized, gives a fascinating and pertinent history of how those attitudes have changed throughout the past century, and shows how those attitudes affect how survivors recover.
Dr. Herman sets forth most of this broader cultural history in Part 1, Chapter 1, "A Forgotten History." She begins with the female hysteria patients of 19th Century Europe, and ends up with the Vietnam veterans' movement to demand treatment for battle induced post-traumatic stress. The veterans' work bore fruit. In 1980 the American Psychiatric Association included "post-traumatic stress disorder" in its official manual of mental disorders. This paved the way in the 1980s for victims of rape, childhood abuse, and domestic violence to be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.
Part of the history Herman sets forth explores why people tend to shun and try to silence trauma survivors. She writes, "It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering.
I wrote a glowing review on this book four years ago, but now that I have more formal education in trauma psychology I wanted to provide a more nuanced perspective.
Dr. Judith Herman is one of the most important voices in the field, and she was in fact a member of the committee that defined PTSD as it is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual - IV. Her contribution to the understanding of trauma psychology has been essential to understanding how trauma becomes PTSD and how that is manifested in the sufferer. She brings an incredible depth of compassion to her writing, making this book seem less like a compilation of research material and more like a courageous willingness to be a witness to unspeakable horror.
Dr. Herman specializes in sexual abuse and incest, but the book is meant to draw all sufferers of repeated trauma, from prisoners of war to victims of domestic violence, together under a single umbrella. She identifies what she believes to be a form of Complex-PTSD that is more pervasive and personality-oriented as a result of repeat trauma and captivity. Symptoms of this condition include an unstable sense of self, profound changes in system of meaning (such as loss of faith in God or basic goodness of humanity), sudden and unexpected changes in mood, fears of abandonment, fears of catostrophic world devastation, feelings of inherent badness, etc. In the book, Herman suggests that symptomatic overlap with Borderline Personality Disorder may indicate BPD is, in many cases, actually a form of complex trauma. While I believe there is some evidence to support this argument (such as the fact that the vast majority of those diagnosed with BPD suffer from childhood sexual trauma), her case is hardly universally accepted by the psychiatric community.
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