Trauma and Recovery - Softcover

Herman, Judith Lewis

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0465087302 ISBN 13: 9780465087303

Publisher: Basic Books, 1997

Synopsis

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.

About this title

From the Back Cover

‘One of the most important psychiatric works to be published since Freud.’
PHYLLIS CHESLER, 'The New York Times Book Review'

This classic text reveals the systematic ‘degrading’ of the trauma suffered by women who are victims of rape, incest and domestic violence, as compared to the ‘heroic’ trauma of male war veterans. According to the author. ‘The implications of this insight are horrifying; the subordinate condition of women is maintained and enforced by the hidden violence of men. There is war between the sexes. Rape victims, battered women, and sexually abused children are its causalities. Hysteria is the combat neurosis of the sex war.’

Herman, psychiatrist and award-winning author, calls on 20 years of research and clinical work in this landmark study. She repeatedly challenges orthodoxies as she calls for a new diagnostic category for those suffering from ‘hidden’ traumas, and proposes revolutionary treatment which focuses on re-establishing the capacity for intimate relationships rather than the rehearsing of past trauma. Required reading for anyone who cares about the relationship between the sexes.

About the Author

Judith Herman, M.D., one of this country's leading experts on trauma and abuse, is associate clinical professor of psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, and director of training at the Victims of Violence Program at Cambridge Hospital. She is also a founding member of the Women's Mental Health Collective in Massachusetts.

Edition details

• Publisher: Basic Books
• Publication date: 1997
• ISBN 10: 0465087302
• ISBN 13: 9780465087303
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 290