Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - Hardcover

Herman, Judith Lewis

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0465087655 ISBN 13: 9780465087655

Publisher: Basic Books, 1992

Synopsis

In a major new work of synthesis, the author of "Father-Daughter Incest" extends her ground-breaking work to explore the psychological consequences of the full range of traumatic life events. Integrating clinical and social perspective without sacrificing either the complexity of individual experience or the breadth of political context, "Trauma and Recovery" brings a new level of understanding to a set of problems usually considered individually. Judith Herman draws on her own research on domestic violence, as well as on a vast literature on combat veterans and victims of political terror, to show the parallels between private terrors like rape and public traumas such as terrorism. At the heart of the book is an approach to recovery that demands that the therapist depart from a stance of moral neutrality, working slowly toward integration rather than catharsis. Herman's analysis and conclusions challenge most conventional wisdom: for example, she shows how private experiences like incest and public trauma such as terrorism share fundamental similarities of disempowerment and denial; and she describes how childhood abuse has far more profound effects on personality than has been believed.

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: 1992
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0465087655
• ISBN 13: 9780465087655
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288