Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

Herman identifies the human tendency to hide “atrocities,” arguing that such events “refuse to be buried” (8). This conflict, between wanting to suppress and to “proclaim” the trauma one has endured, is a common response. However, as Herman argues, honestly acknowledging psychological trauma is a precursor for both individual and social healing.

Often, traumatized individuals experience “alterations of consciousness” (8). These alterations have been noted by multiple thinkers: Novelist George Orwell named the phenomenon “doublethink,” professionals in mental health refer to these shifts in consciousness as “dissociation,” and Sigmund Freud described the symptoms as “hysteria.” Herman asserts that traumatic events and the subsequent dissociation—a sense of disconnection from both the self and the environment—impact both victims and bystanders, and that they occur on both individual and societal levels.

Healing from trauma, Herman argues, requires recognition. She discusses her experience living through the women’s rights movement in the 1970s, noting that speaking up about traumas helped many individuals heal—”we realized the power of speaking the unspeakable and witnessed firsthand the creative energy that is released when the barriers of denial and repression are lifted” (9).

Trauma and Recovery, Herman explains, is a culmination of decades of mental health work and research centered on victims of a variety of traumatic events, from sexual and domestic violence to combat and terrorism.