Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21174 in Books
• Published on: 2001-08
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 302 pages

Synopsis
This publication looks at restoring connections: between the public and private worlds; between individuals and communities; and between men and women. The author, a psychiatrist, makes the link between the "heroic" suffering of men in war and political struggle, and the degraded suffering of women through rape, incest and domestic violence. She identifies a fresh diagnostic category for those suffering from "hidden" traumas, and proposes a recovery programme which favours a process of reintegration. With a new afterword, Judith Lewis Herman describes the controversy ignited by her work, the new research to emerge in this field of psychology and the far-reaching implications of this text on trauma situations worldwide.

Customer Reviews

Geniune and sensitive discussion of trauma
I found Herman's discussion of trauma to be thorough, and particularly useful in my clinical practice working with children, and families who are traumatised by crime.

She usefully re-assesses the categorisation of PTSD in cases where people are sexually abused which is a bold but necessary step she's taken.

Herman shows a thorough knowledge of the prejudice that female survivors of childhood abuse often encounter within the mental health system. I found her book able to put into words ideas that were difficult to convey, which has given me an incredibly useful book to recommend to others.

Common Sense gets to the crux of the matter.
Having worked my way through Kolk (good), Babette R (good), and several others, I arrived at Herman - who promptly managed to hit the nail precisely on its head. This book is clear and organised, factual and carefully thought-out. That makes it unusual. What makes it exceptional is the weight given to information collected from patients, your basic raw data (not an area in which mental health medicine covers itself in glory). So the conclusions drawn should be accorded respect. Read it. Finally, basic common sense wins through. Thank you.

Finally - and I said this around 10 years ago but the book went out of publication...
I was given this book to read by a therapist, who specialised in overcoming childhood sexual and emotional abuse. She knew (and was and is, one of the top people in the UK) that one of my 'coping mechanisms' was to read around and understand the topic more fully. I never rely upon just one person's opinion or analysis of a situation, including my own, and have benefitted from the objective view of others to enable me to come to an informed understanding.

This book was one of the very few, and certainly one of the most beneficial, in terms of the objective view, which helped me gain an enormous amount of help with my own subjective view, in that it helped me realise this (and no, I wasn't off me trolley! lol) was actually what I was experiencing. More importantly, at the time and since, has helped me talk to professionals in such a manner, that I can sound rational (after many, many years of being told I should have this put behind me and just get on with things...) and intelligently informed. What is very rewarding for me (sometimes, particularly when I have felt quite drained by the whole thing, I feel like I've been one of the original ones beating the path through), is that finally this can been recognised as being genuine, that complex, or chronic PTSD does actually exist.

Read this book, be informed and hang on to what you know. There are many professionals who still have not quite got there yet. This book was the first 'medical' and 'professional' book that gave me that knowledge, that what I was experiencing, was not in my imagination.

I cannot recommend this one highly enough for those who are ready to read it - and even to those who think they might not be. And many thanks to Sue, who gave me the opportunity to read it for the first time.