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Judith Lewis Herman

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Famous Judith Lewis Herman Quotes

“The ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable. Atrocities, however, refuse to be buried. Equally as powerful as the desire to deny atrocities is the conviction that denial does not work. Folk wisdom is filled with ghosts who refuse to rest in their graves until their stories are told. Murder will out. Remembering and telling the truth about terrible events are prerequisites both for the restoration of the social order and for the healing of individual victims. The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. People who have survived atrocities often tell their stories in a highly emotional, contradictory, and fragmented manner that undermines their credibility and thereby serves the twin imperatives of truth-telling and secrecy. When the truth is finally recognized, survivors can begin their recovery. But far too often secrecy prevails, and the story of the traumatic event surfaces not as a verbal narrative but as a symptom. The psychological distress symptoms of traumatized people simultaneously call attention to the existence of an unspeakable secret and deflect attention from it. This is most apparent in the way traumatized people alternate between feeling numb and reliving the event. The dialectic of trauma gives rise to complicated, sometimes uncanny alterations of consciousness, which George Orwell, one of the committed truth-tellers of our century, called "doublethink," and which mental health professionals, searching for calm, precise language, call "dissociation." It results in protean, dramatic, and often bizarre symptoms of hysteria which Freud recognized a century ago as disguised communications about sexual abuse in childhood. . . .”

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Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“First, the physiological symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder have been brought within manageable limits. Second, the person is able to bear the feelings associated with traumatic memories. Third, the person has authority over her memories; she can elect both to remember the trauma and to put memory aside. Fourth, the memory of the traumatic event is a coherent narrative, linked with feeling. Fifth, the person's damaged self-esteem has been restored. Sixth, the person's important relationships have been reestablished. Seventh and finally, the person has reconstructed a coherent system of meaning and belief that encompasses the story of trauma.”

HealingTraumaRecoveryTherapyPtsdPsychotherapyHealing ProcessPost Traumatic Stress DisorderComplex PtsdRecovery From AbuseHealing AbusePosttraumatic Stress DisorderTraumatic StressTrauma Therapy
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“...some patients resist the diagnosis of a post-traumatic disorder. They may feel stigmatized by any psychiatric diagnosis or wish to deny their condition out of a sense of pride. Some people feel that acknowledging psychological harm grants a moral victory to the perpetrator, in a way that acknowledging physical harm does not.”

HealingPridePrejudiceMental HealthDefeatTraumaMental IllnessRecoveryDenialTherapyDefeatedPtsdStigmaAbuse SurvivorsPsychotherapyPowerlessnessTraumatic ExperiencesLabelingMental Health StigmaMental DisorderPost Traumatic Stress DisorderHealing From AbusePosttraumatic Stress DisorderTorturedSelf StigmaLabellingTorture SurvivorsMale SurvivorPolitical Refugees
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“Admitting the need for help may also compound the survivor's sense of defeat. The therapists Inger Agger and Soren Jensen, who work with political refugees, describe the case of K, a torture survivor with severe post-traumatic symptoms who adamantly insisted that he had no psychological problems: "K...did not understand why he was to talk with a therapist. His problems were medical: the reason why he did not sleep at night was due to the pain in his legs and feet. He was asked by the therapist...about his political background, and K told him that he was a Marxist and that he had read about Freud and he did not believe in any of that stuff: how could his pain go away by talking to a therapist?”

HealingPsychologyPrideMental HealthMental IllnessDenialTherapyPtsdPsychoanalysisStigmaAbuse SurvivorsPsychotherapyPowerlessnessTraumatic ExperiencesMental DisorderFreudPost Traumatic Stress DisorderHealing From AbusePosttraumatic Stress DisorderSigmund FreudTorturedSelf StigmaTorture SurvivorsMale SurvivorPolitical Refugees
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“This book appears at a time when public discussion of the common atrocities of sexual and domestic life has been made possible by the women’s movement, and when public discussion of the common atrocities of political life has been made possible by the movement for human rights. I expect the book to be controversial—first, because it is written from a feminist perspective; second, because it challenges established diagnostic concepts; but third and perhaps most importantly, because it speaks about horrible things, things that no one really wants to hear about.”

AbuseHuman RightsFeministTraumaTerrorismTortureWomen S RightsPtsdDomestic ViolenceSexual AbuseControversialAtrocitiesUnspeakablePolitical LifeSociety DenialChallenging Status QuoHuman Rights ViolationsHorror Of WarPosttraumatic Stress DisorderTraumatic StressDenial Of AbuseDenial Of Child AbuseWomen S MovementDenial Of IncestHorror Of RapeHorror Of Life
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“It has become clear that, as Janet observed one hundred years ago, dissociation lies at the heart of the traumatic stress disorders. Studies of survivors of disasters, terrorist attacks, and combat have demonstrated that people who enter a dissociative state at the time of the traumatic event are among most likely to develop long-lasting PTSD.”

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Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“HYPERAROUSAL After a traumatic experience, the human system of self-preservation seems to go onto permanent alert, as if the danger might return at any moment. Physiological arousal continues unabated. In this state of hyerarousal, which is the first cardinal symptom of post-traumatic stress disorder, the traumatized person startles easily, reacts irritably to small provocations, and sleeps poorly. Kardiner propsed that "the nucleus of the [traumatic] neurosis is physioneurosis."8 He believed that many of the symptoms observed in combat veterans of the First World War-startle reactions, hyperalertness, vigilance for the return of danger, nightmares, and psychosomatic complaints-could be understood as resulting from chronic arousal of the autonomic nervous system. He also interpreted the irritability and explosively aggressive behavior of traumatized men as disorganized fragments of a shattered "fight or flight" response to overwhelming danger.”

MilitaryTraumaAggressionPtsdNeurosisTraumatizedWorld War 1Post Traumatic Stress DisorderWorld War OnePosttraumatic Stress DisorderFight Or FlightCombat PtsdIrritabilityHypervigilanceAggressive BehaviorFight Or Flight ResponseHyperarousal
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“...repeated trauma in childhood forms and deforms the personality. The child trapped in an abusive environment is faced with formidable tasks of adaptation. She must find a way to preserve a sense of trust in people who are untrustworthy, safety in a situation that is unsafe, control in a situation that is terrifyingly unpredictable, power in a situation of helplessness. Unable to care for or protect herself, she must compensate for the failures of adult care and protection with the only means at her disposal, an immature system of psychological defenses.”

TrustPersonalityTraumaBetrayalOverwhelmingChild AbusePtsdOverwhelmedCopingAbuse SurvivorsPowerlessnessTraumatic ExperiencesUnsafeTraumatizedOut Of ControlPost Traumatic Stress DisorderComplex PtsdUntrustworthyAbusive ParentsPosttraumatic Stress DisorderPersonality DisordersBetrayal TraumaDefense MechanismTerrifyingParental AbuseAbused ChildPsychological DefenceHelpelessness
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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