List Price: $17.50 Our Price: $8.73 You Save: $8.77 (50%)

Product Description

When Judith Herman's Trauma and Recovery was first published five years ago, it was hailed as a groundbreaking work. In the intervening years, Herman's now classic volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. In a new introduction, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic of trauma and recovery 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 on domestic violence, as well as on a 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.

Customer Reviews:

• Fabulous book!
  This book is a must read if you are interested in psychology. The way it is written is understandable even by the lay man. The mix between history and modern psychology is exelent. I really enjoyed reading this book and highly recomend it. If you enjoyed this book, you may also be interested in Unchained Memories. Both of these books were required for the psychology class I took at DU. Both books are superb....more info
• For all trauma victims
  Judith Herman links many different forms of trauma by explaining how they all are similar in their effects on those who endured them. A must read for anyone who wants to heal from the effects of PTSD related to child abuse, military combat, political violence, and adult rape. She explains what is needed for healing to occur. I took a lot from this book and will refer back to it time and time again....more info
• Enlightening
  This book was a suggested read from a counselor/pastor, and I'm glad I did. The author offers the reader an enlightening description and understanding of Complex PTSD. It is a great educational tool. It was exactly what was needed at the time. It can also be a good "first step" item. It helped pinpoint the issue and explain the authour's theories on addressing the issue. It set a great course to also find appropriate assistance. Armed with a name, understanding, and appropriate language the enlightened reader can pursue even more education and professional assistance if needed. This book turned out to be a light in a very dark place and I have already recommended it to others. ...more info
• helpful for correct diagnosis
  I was grateful for the gift of this book. Yet, I wish that I had read it sooner. The community within which I minister is probably not unlike a lot of other communities providing care-frustrated with certain individuals that present complex and confusing symptoms. We have a tendency to diagnose some of these most frustrating cases as borderline personality disorder or even multiple personality disorder. Yet, this book has helped me to realize that many of the persons behind these diagnoses may very well be suffering from complex post traumatic syndrome. Recently, several persons I encounter in pastoral settings have in fact received these diagnoses. However, I now wonder how many of those other persons I know that are "borderline" or "multiple personality" or "bi-polar" or many other similar anxiety disorders may in reality be suffering from post traumatic stress.
  
  This book has not only helped me to reevaluate the underlying diagnoses of many I minister to in my congregation but has also provided well-documented and well-presented pragmatic recommendations for how to assist these persons in their recoveries. As I learn the stories of persons I minister to I am increasingly aware of how common chronic traumas have been the norm for many. I will refer to this book often as I seek to better care for those traumatized by life.
  
  I highly recommend this book to anyone that regularly deals with troubled persons. In fact, upon reading this book, I suspect that many will arrive at the same conclusion as have I-many are suffering from post traumatic events. This understanding may very well assist us to better care for those complex and difficult persons we often laugh off as "borderlines."
  ...more info
• A great book to start with
  This is like a primer on PTSD. The other reviewers have explained the ways in which it comprehensively describes PTSD in soldiers, rape victims, children, and political prisoners. It is stunning in its indictment of the violence of our human world.
  
  But it is not a self-help book, or only so in a limited sense. If you are a survivor of trauma and are experiencing PTSD, this book is a good place to start, in order to understand that your symptoms make sense and are shared by other survivors of abuse. In other words, you are not alone. It may help you to demand the safety and control of your environment that are necessary for healing. Sometimes other well-meaning people are naive about the safety requirements of traumatized people, and this book can help them understand what you need.
  
  In order to start healing your body-mind, though, the book to go to is Trauma Releasing Exercises by David Berceli. He also has an excellent website. He has devised a series of exercises to help the many millions in our violent world who are suffering from trauma. So many of these people have no access to therapists, because the circumstances that made them vulnerable to abuse also make them poor and without access to health care. These exercises are easy to understand and to perform, and they do help the body release the chronic tension that drives so many of the debilitating psychological symptoms of trauma....more info
• Less helpful than most books on topic
  While I understand that this book was written when discourse on the subject was still sort of new, I think that it, in general, is not one of the more helpful books on the subject -- especially for victims of childhood physical, sexual, emotional abuse. Herman seems to cling to a somewhat childish good-vs-evil way of viewing reality. While this fits well with her campus/activist/feminist worldview, it doesn't provide a realistic or helpful way of reframing past traumas for victims.
  For people who had significant experiences of abuse in childhood, seeing people in terms or good-or-bad is often hard to avoid. So, in the EARLIEST stages of getting sorted out, it can be TEMPORARILY helpful to stress how the abuser was "bad" and the victim "good" in order to undo the old distortions of the abuser (victim-blaming). But as a person's recovery progresses -- as she/he learns to think like an adult in a complex world -- this childish simplification becomes a roadblock to greater, saner insight into life and people. The point of therapy (or recovery, or just getting your **** together) is, after all, to learn to live in a world that is -- despite the periodic appearance of some disturbing, difficult experiences -- not crammed full with supernaturally "evil" bogeymen and goblins. Life is not an ongoing battle between the "good" people and the "bad" people.
  Also, as a male who was victimized by a woman during childhood, I found the implicit identification of females as victims, males as perpetrators (unfortunately not uncommon in books of this vintage) annoying and unhelpful. Reinforcing that stereotype -- whatever ego-boost it provides for Herman and her worldview -- only creates greater roadblocks to recovery for male victims. And by denying the reality of male child victimization by adult females, our culture discourages recovery for victims, thereby helping to perpetuate an ongoing cycle of victimization....more info
• Toss out the rest and stick with the best
  I've read lots of books about trauma but this, by far, is the best I've found. It is written with great compassion and without bias. This is a well written clinical analysis of trauma in all it's forms and the recovery process which follows. I highly recommend....more info
• Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
  Judith Herman has done an incredible service to all mankind with this book.
  This book is a must for women who have been victims of abuse and trauma.
  Her amazing ability to understand and articulate trauma is nothing short of empowering!...more info
• This book saved my life.
  I am trying not to cry while writing this review because of the incredible impact this great work of Judith Herman has had on my life. I first read the book 4 years ago (I was 19 at the time), at the suggestion of my therapist. Today it remains one of only two books on the topic that I have kept. I will never let go of this book.
  
  This is probably the most comprehensive book on PTSD ever written. It is lauded by just about every psychologist I have ever met. I have an extensive field of knowledge in the area of psychology just based on experience and self-education, and this book is a clinician's book to the fullest. It is exceedingly intelligent, informed, and compassionate all at once.
  
  People who read this book that do not have PTSD find it heartbreaking and difficult-- people who DO have PTSD that read this book find it life-shattering. That's where it starts. It starts with an extremely in-depth look at the biological underpinnings of PTSD, the concept of narrative memory vs. traumatic memory, and discussion of studies that have indicated that survivors process traumatic memory in the brain differently than they process normal, or narrative memory. The underlying message at the outset is that people who have survived trauma are dealing with fractured schemas and fragmented concepts of self -- whereas people who have survived prolonged, repeated trauma early in life never were able to form a cohesive self or schema in the first place.
  
  In other words, we're building from scratch.
  
  I don't believe for me more terrifying words have ever been spoken. Herman's language is deeply compassionate but almost surgical in its painful precision. She is so thoroughly educated and validating that it is hard not to be nauseated because it's so true and it's so real and... she makes it real in a concrete, scientific sense, more than just the emotional, "I'm okay, you're okay" sense. You realize for the first time that PTSD isn't just a bunch of jumbled feelings, but a systematic medical disorder with very predictable symptoms and psychological implications.
  
  That's where the hope begins -- once you understand that PTSD symptoms are the same for everyone -- whether a war veteran, a survivor of domestic abuse, terrorism, or a natural disaster -- you realize how not alone you really are. Nearly everyone has experienced something traumatic, but only 15% develop PTSD as a result. Complex-PTSD (prolonged, repeated trauma) is even rarer. It's easy to feel alone because it's not something people often talk about. But this book makes you confident, not only that you aren't alone, but that what you are suffering is a real and professionally recognized medical condition.
  
  Once you learn your disorder back and forward, you can learn how to recognize its stages and how to treat it. You don't see it as who you are anymore, but rather an external force you are learning to cope with. You recognize your strength as a survivor. More importantly, you learn to take those fragmented pieces of "traumatic memory" and form them into cohesive "narrative" memory. You learn to speak the unspeakable. It's not easy to speak the unspeakable, to voice the forbidden and black and horrible thoughts... but once you do, you learn that they aren't so horrible when exposed to the daylight. Everything makes sense again. The black hole of traumatic memory loses its power, while the sense of a whole and complete sense of self, that includes, but does not revolve around the trauma, gains the upper hand.
  
  Imagine a life where you don't think about trauma every day, where sounds and smells and feelings don't haunt you at every turn. Imagine a life where you describe your trauma story as "boring." It sounded impossible to me at the time, but it is a reality that can be obtained, and in her book, J.H. lays out precisely how this is done for millions of survivors worldwide.
  
  Whenever anybody I know makes light of PTSD or tries to play it off like not a real illness or something I can control, I throw this book and all the knowledge I have gained in their face. People can't argue with Judith. She knows what she's talking about.
  
  If you are a survivor of trauma or a sufferer of PTSD, this is the best possible book to read. This is the source from which all knowledge springs. The 100,000 other books on PTSD use this one as their knowledge base. Judith Herman OWNS.
  
  This is not a book that talks gently to you. It doesn't try to protect you. It is a clinician's book. It uses technical terminology. If you are in an unsafe space or feeling mentally unstable, don't read it, or read it very slowly. My husband is headed for a Ph.D in Clinical Psychology and has read countless books on abnormal psychology. He read this book to better understand me. To this day he maintains it is the single most emotionally difficult book he has ever read in his life.
  
  The best part of this book is, it is equisitely re-readable. I came back to it after three years. I found it didn't tear me apart the way it did the first time. Instead I was looking at myself with awe : "Look what I was up against. Look at what was. And look what I did with that information and with my life!"
  
  Seriously, I cannot reccomend this book enough. It is validation and education in one. It is a beautifully written, classic work of psychological research that will forever change the way you look at yourself or your loved one....more info
• Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
  As the book points out, PTSD can be a more appropriate diagnosis and basis for treatment (than other personality disorders).
  
  Traditionally PTSD is a diagnosis relating to a specific trauma resulting in a specific phobia; such as a dog-bite and a subsequent fear of dogs.
  
  However, complex PTSD is much more nebulous. There are often multiple and repeated traumas occurring over long periods of time--often across several developmental stages.
  
  Treatment of C-PTSD may involve prolonged therapy and medication. Perhaps most importantly the therapist or social worker must be willing to play a role in practical interventions, i.e, assuring the patient is safe and not experiencing continued trauma or abuse and that s/he develops a social support network.
  
  For most C-PTSD patients recovery is a life long process. Without proper preparation and support regression is a constant threat, especially as patients enter new life stages and situations. ...more info
• A Strong Book With A Limited Perspective
  This book is brilliant - but short-sighted. From the introduction Judith Herman provides a clear paradigm for understanding trauma and recovery: "The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma." What she fails to understand is how this applies to her - and those like her...that is, everyone.
  
  The trauma Judith Herman defines is only the extreme echelon of trauma - the tip of the iceberg that rises into her conscious view. Although she rightly and masterfully connects the traumas - and posttraumatic reactions - experienced by Holocaust survivors, rape victims, children in severely abusive homes, combat veterans, and domestically abused women, because of her own denial she fails to link the traumas in these categories to the traumas experienced by the other 99% of humanity: the inflicted traumas that fly under the radar in every family around the world. Thus, if you are one of the 99% whose unresolved traumas don't fit into her extreme categories (i.e. if you are alive, don't fit into her categories, and are not yet fully enlightened), this book's main value for you will be through metaphor - if, that is, you can translate the extreme cases and thereby be able to relate them to your own situation.
  
  Traumas are inflicted on children almost ubiquitously on subtle, chronic levels by those with the greatest emotional power to mold them - their parents. Traumas occur whenever a child's true self is not witnessed in full. If a child were witnessed in full, he would have no need to develop an unconscious mind to protect himself from the knowledge of the horror he has experienced. But Judith Herman - who idealizingly dedicates this work to her mother, and is a mother herself - fails to grip this. She mistakenly views herself as outside the cycle of victim and perpetrator. This lack of insight into herself is at the root of why she has so little understanding of the mindset and motivation of the perpetrator.
  
  Parents who are not fully conscious - that is, parents in denial of any degree of their own buried, unresolved traumas - inevitably traumatize their children without even realizing they are doing it, and thus can take no responsibility for it. Even in the mildest cases this is emotionally devastating for children, but because so few witness what is really going on and thus call it by its rightful name - including the writer of this standard book on trauma - it goes unacknowledged, and thus is considered normal.
  
  We understand why the Vietnam combat vet drinks himself into oblivion, but do we understand why the child in the normal family compulsively overeats or wets the bed or sucks his thumb or hates his younger brother? We understand why the rape victim later becomes phobic of sex with her consensual partners, but can we fathom the normal mother's twisted motives for having children? We understand why the Holocaust survivor has persistent, horrible nightmares about Auschwitz, but do we put the correct face on the bogeyman in the dreams of the normal, middle-class child?
  
  The norm is still very, very sick. Yet Judith Herman, who lives in the thick of it and writes for those who think within the box, has not figured that out. Her book is beautiful, but it misses the deeper point....more info
• A Reader's Review
  Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence-from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror by Judith Herman, M.D. is a book that puts together not only how victims of trauma have historically received care but also constructs a practical paradigm for providing care for the traumatized in today's world.
  The historical development of thought for victims of trauma centers on studies with people dealing with "Hysteria." Dr. Herman's historical evaluation brings invaluable history to the forefront of modern day thinking about Trauma. Herman's concept of reconnection with the past to the experiences of victims of Posttraumatic Stress Syndrome helps the reader understand the very real issues of the traumatized.
  As Dr. Herman points out, the present reality of terror experienced by someone who has been traumatized is tied to the feeling of powerlessness. Sometimes trauma can capture the victim in a total state of surrender and complete dominance of the perpetrator. When this occurs, a person can remain marked by hyper arousal, issues of intrusion, and constriction.
  While victims of overwhelming trauma live from day to day, the world appears to be absolutely unsafe. Dr. Herman introduces the role of the church as being a caring community of safe reconnection and healing. The author helpfully offers a new way of evaluating trauma entitled, "Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder." Instead of looking at a single cause, the author suggests using a "spectrum of conditions approach."
  Through the use of this new tool, recovery can begin to unfold. It is the issue of safety that creates the environment in which sufferers can eventually move through remembrance and mourning of the trauma on to reconnection with ordinary life. The writer offers, as part of the empowerment of the victim, the encouragement of finding a life mission and a group in which to experience solidarity.
  Trauma and Recovery is a journey worth taking for it can help the reader become a better care provider to those who have experienced trauma to any degree!
  ...more info
• Saved My Life
  First let me say that this is NOT a "self-help" book and should not be purchased as such. As most of the other reviews here will attest, it is a wonderful book for therapists, clergy, or other professionals who work with survivors of trauma. It is also wonderful for anyone who is having difficulty understanding why a battered woman doesn't "just leave" her abuser (read about "Stockholm Syndrome" and traumatic bonding). It is a clear and easy read, but it is an educational book, not a self-help book. It was required reading in my college Crisis Intervention class, but it also helped me understand that I was not "crazy" for feeling the way I felt after living through an abusive relationship myself. I found that learning about the abuser/victim or captor/captive relationship was very empowering and normalizing for me and was an important step in my own recovery from captivity. I was amazed by the commonalities between domestic abuse, hostage situations, and living as a POW. If you are someone who helps people overcome this type of trauma, please read this book and teach them about the research that has been done. Help them realize that what they are going though is normal, that it was not due to their own personality flaws or weaknesses that they did not "just leave", and that, above all, they are not crazy.
  ...more info
• Trauma - The Assault to the Psyche
  This book is an excellent guide for the therapist. It lends greater understanding of the assualt to the psyche of the trauma victim as well as the process of healing. I am saddened by how many times I have treated the symptoms and not the psyche. Herman says, "Instead of conceptualizing the psychopathology of the victim as a response to an abusive situation, mental health professionals have frequently attributed the abusive situation to the victim's presumed underlying psychopathology" (116). In other words, we blame the victim.
  
  This work is indeed a compassionate and much needed analysis of psychological trauma and the conflicted state it produces within those who have been victimized. Traumatized people suffer damage to the basic structures of the self. They lose trust in themselves, in other people, and in God. Victims need unconditional understanding, even if we don't understand. This book will not only explain the conflicted state of the victim, it will also provide a therapeutic course of action for their healing.
  ...more info
• Cause and Effect
  Dr. herman looks at the molestations of people and describes the affects, both long term and short term, with a look at the recovery process. The atrocities are detailed. This book is very conclusive, scientific in its approach....more info
• It gets more profound with time - a clinician's view
  This a legitimate classic that first laid out the mental, emotional, and societal territory and topography of Complex Chronic PTSD -- it is not a textbook, a training manual, a how-to or self-help book, and it doesn't try to be, so look elsewhere if that's what you need.
  
  This is a book of exploration, discovery, and mapping, and it still offers new insights. Contrary to some reviews, it is not a 'feminist perspective' on PTSD, although it was informed by feminist ideas -- it is a profoundly human perspective on the lasting effects of inhumanity by men and women, committed against men, women, and children.
  
  For diagnosticians, clinicians, and people who study or work with the survivors of extreme, prolonged captivity and torment, this was the first book to describe the common patterns across several populations -- tortured political prisoners, concentration camp survivors, battered women, survivors of child abuse -- and lay out a clinical template that still holds true in almost every particular.
  
  I've read this remarkable book twice cover-to-cover, and many chapters three or four times. With every reading, Trauma and Recovery offers deeper insights. It is brilliant, perceptive, and well-written. It's quite amazing to me that Dr. Herman wrote this in 1993; so many of her then-hypotheses are only now being 'rediscovered' and supported by solid research. If you work with PTSD, and think you know what you're doing, this book is essential reading.
  
  ...more info
• Outstanding, comprehensive text for survivors & their healers
  This is an extremely knowledgeable, intelligent and comprehensive study of the enormous psychological impact of the trauma experienced by severely abused children and adults, and people who have close-up combat experience and other traumatic war-related experiences. It addresses chronic abuse as well as single horrific events. Dr. Herman's commitment to bringing relief of suffering through increasing the understanding of therapists, care-givers, loved ones and healers allows survivors to have greater hope for their recovery. This book also validates, in a critical way, the many and pervasive aspects of personal suffering endured by the survivors. Someone else has "spoken" the unspeakable, and in so doing, helps survivors reclaim their souls. ...more info
• Trauma in Detail
  For a beginner student in the area of Trauma Psychology, Judith Herman brings about a thorough and comprehensive overview of the types of trauma, effects and roads to recovery from soup to nuts.
  
  It serves as the overview which enables the student to refer to other sources in order to specialize in disorders like PTSD, Child Sexual Abuse and Medical Trauma.
  
  A true source for creating a foundation in the study of Trauma in Detail....more info
• Good insight on Stalking Predators.
  This book offers cogent insight into predatory parents who stalk their children thru life; compulsively and intrusively contacting their adult offspring's associates, colleagues, employers and professional contacts. Professing deep dismay at lack of contact with their grown children, manipulatively intruding into work situations and expressing "shocked dismay" that their adult offspring are "for inexplicable reasons" not in contact, while eliciting sympathy from relative strangers in order to manipulate such people into "helping straighten our loved one out." Such parents compulsively construct blatant misrepresentations of "what a loving family we used to be." Lest the truth about drunken fondling pedophilia, incest, spousal abuse, and/or the frustrated sadism of a battered wife abandoned during her husbands blatant infidelities with young girls including his own daughter become common knowledge.
  
  Those parents with too much to hide create elaborate screens of religious self righteousness, flagrant donations to religious organizations and highly publicized prayer services to garner attention to the suffering of the mystifyingly abandoned parents. All such compulsive attention getting maneuvers and melodramatic pleas for sympathy are screens to distract and dissuade anyone from questioning what precisely led such offspring to have chosen to live out of contact with such self identified "loving parents."
  
  This books speaks cogently and forcefully for those who just try to make a life for themselves beyond and despite the persistent intrusions of parents with too much to hide.
  
  From the first chapter of Herman's seminal work;
  
  ----In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator's first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it on herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.---
  
  Read this book. You may never silence the perpetrators, but you will find their persistent intrusions to be just what they actually are, the impotent gasps of those who no longer have the power to use you as an object to fill their own drunken needs, or frustrated perversions any longer.
  
  Read this book, and Live....more info
• An Informative Work on Trauma and its Damage to Selfhood and Trust
  The text Trauma and Recovery is an insightful book that outlines the many horrors and ramifications of psychological and physical trauma, as well as the arduous path to partial recovery. I use the word partial because it is not only what the text itself states (211), it is what I have observed as a ministry professional. Traumatized persons lose their senses of trust and selfhood, senses that are extremely difficult to regain once they are lost. This is especially true of those who are chronically abused.
  Dr. Herman begins her treatise of this topic with an historical backdrop and proceeds with a well articulated presentation of trauma as is it is commonly seen and understood by practitioners as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The various symptoms of this disorder are outlined and explained clinically and pragmatically. As the chapters unfolded, I found myself in a position where I could almost hear the screams and cries for help coming from the oppressed and abused. From my past work with war veterans in a clinical setting, I revisited many of Dr. Herman's case studies in the context of my own mind and experience. I believe that she is extremely accurate in her descriptions of PTSD in the various populations of victims.
  The two major emphases of the book, trauma and recovery, are logically connected in its content. For example, on Page 133, the author states that the core experiences of trauma are disempowerment and disconnection from others. Therefore, recovery seeks to empower the survivor and create new connections. It is interesting how much emphasis Dr. Herman places on relationships within the healing process. Isn't it intriguing that the corrective for abusive or traumatic relationships are wholesome relationships, and that healing can only happen within the context of these wholesome relationships?
  ...more info