Trauma and Recovery

“The normal response to brutality is to put it out of mind. Certain violations of the social contract are too horrific to say out loud; the word for it is ‘unspeakable.’”
War veterans, victims of domestic violence and rape, victims of childhood abuse and incest… Witnesses to the “unspeakable,” the brutality… And bystanders who must take sides… It is tempting to side with the perpetrator because every perpetrator wants the bystander to do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire not to see, hear, or speak of what is evil. And in the absence of a strong human rights movement, the process of active witnessing inevitably yields to the active process of forgetting. Repression, dissociation, and denial are phenomena of the individual consciousness as well as of the social.
In this work, Trauma and Recovery, which established trauma as an illness in medical literature and thus entered medical history, Judith Lewis Herman focuses particularly on the issues of domestic and sexual violence, and emphasizes that no one can face trauma alone. Stating that the correct diagnosis of the disease, ensuring the safety of the patient and the relationship between the patient and the therapist are the basic steps on the path to recovery, Herman argues that the patriarchal understanding that has dominated both in the field of psychiatry and in social life and law in the past and today has been inadequate in addressing women's issues, especially violence against women and rape, and has even reached wrong conclusions. Trauma and Recovery is a comprehensive study that will fill a big gap in this field, based on the testimonies of the victims, and that both doctors and anyone interested in the subject should not miss reading.