Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence—From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

Trauma is political1

Psychological trauma is inseparable from its social and political context; private horrors like child abuse parallel public ones like war.

Extending the diagnosis2

It treated rape victims’ symptoms as post-traumatic stress, a diagnosis then reserved almost entirely for male combat veterans.

A political solution2

Recovery depends on social conditions, so trauma is a psychological problem with a largely political solution.

Single versus repeated trauma3

One-off events differ from prolonged, repeated trauma, whose wider syndrome she called complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

Three stages of recovery4

First establish safety, then remembrance and mourning for what was lost, then reconnection with community and society.

Recovery in relationship4

Recovery only happens within a healing relationship, and only if it empowers the survivor; it need not be a therapist.

Not "masochistic"4

Survivors of prolonged abuse risk being misread as dependent or self-defeating, as women were once misdiagnosed with hysteria.

Disbelief as a second injury2

It gives equal weight to the event and to the moral injuries of disbelief and betrayal that follow.

What safety can cost4

Gaining safety can mean painful choices: battered women may lose homes and livelihoods, abuse survivors their families, refugees their homeland.

A memorial2

A chapter contrasting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial with the absence of memorials for rape victims inspired a survivor to win one in Minneapolis, opened in 2020.

Truth and Repair

Herman's 2023 follow-up: what justice survivors themselves want.

Father-Daughter Incest

Her first book, the incest research this one draws on.

Complex PTSD

How the diagnosis she proposed is defined and treated today.

The Body Keeps the Score

The best-known later trauma book, and the arguments over its science.