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Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror Paperback – 7 July 2015
by Judith Herman (Author)
4.7 4.7 out of 5 stars (2,767)
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When Trauma and Recovery was first published in 1992, it was hailed as a ground-breaking work. In the intervening years, Herman's volume has changed the way we think about and treat traumatic events and trauma victims. In a new afterword, Herman chronicles the incredible response the book has elicited and explains how the issues surrounding the topic have shifted within the clinical community and the culture at large. Trauma and Recovery brings a new level of understanding to a set of problems usually considered individually. Herman draws on her own cutting-edge research in domestic violence as well as on the vast literature of combat veterans and victims of political terror, to show the parallels between private terrors such as rape and public traumas such as terrorism. The book puts individual experience in a broader political frame, arguing that psychological trauma can be understood only in a social context. Meticulously documented and frequently using the victims' own words as well as those from classic literary works and prison diaries, Trauma and Recovery is a powerful work that will continue to profoundly impact our thinking.
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Review
Advance Praise for Adventures in Human Being "From shell shock in World War I to childhood sexual abuse today, the reality of trauma has been denied. But as this indispensable book makes clear, '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.'" --Gloria Steinem, New York Times' T Magazine
About the Author
Judith Herman, M.D., one of this country's leading experts on trauma and abuse, is professor of clinical psychiatry at the Harvard Medical School, and director of training at the Victims of Violence Program at Cambridge Hospital. She is also a founding member of the Women's Mental Health Collective in Massachusetts. Herman was the recipient of the 1996 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies.
Product details
Publisher : Basic Books
Publication date : 7 July 2015
Edition : 1R
Language : English
Print length : 336 pages
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From other countries
まき
5.0 out of 5 stars 日本語版も良いけど原書で読むのはもっと良い
Reviewed in Japan on 23 July 2021
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非常に分かりやすい英語で書かれています。
日本語版よりシンプルでストレートな表現です。
日本語版も良いけど私にはこちらの方が伝わってくるものがありました！
翻訳と原書のニュアンスの違いも結構あって、こちらを読んで良かったです。
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christian sauzede
5.0 out of 5 stars appréciation sur Trauma and recovery
Reviewed in France on 23 August 2014
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une très bonne étude sur ces différents états émotionnels. Texte clair et précis pouvant être compris sans difficulté par une personne n'étant pas médecin.
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ilovemigisomuch
5.0 out of 5 stars THE book to understanding trauma and depression
Reviewed in the United States on 5 July 2013
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I have suffered from severe, debilitating depression for several years as a result of a trauma that is actually completely unrelated to what this book focuses on. Despite not having suffered trauma due to a rape, war or kidnapping, I found this book to be life-changing. I looked and searched endlessly for in-depth information to explain why I feel the way I do, and until this book, there was absolutely nothing out there. I came across countless webpages, medical literature, books, shows, blogs, essays, research papers, medical sites, and none explained WHY. A great deal of them focused on symptoms, but only general symptoms that could apply to a great deal of things. Besides, I already knew what my symptoms were. Another significant portion were dedicated to veterans and PTSD. I would read them, but again, they would still only discuss things on a very superficial basis. Blogs would talk about what medications people took, and arguments would ensue about who had the worse story. Medical literature would delve into explanations of which receptor and which brain lobe shrunk or expanded, and shock rates of rats. Why was there no simple explanation for why people feel these symptoms when suffering from trauma? I even asked my psychiatrist that I see twice a week -I would beg him to explain to me in detail what I had, why I had this, when I would get better, and why I experienced these awful symptoms. He would always respond the same way.... that I had "complicated depression," "complicated grief," and that I had "experienced a severe trauma." Any symptom I specifically asked about, was just a "symptom common in trauma." Was there just NO explanation?
Based on my past experience with being let down, I had little faith this book would be able to explain what I have been going through for several years now, ESPECIALLY because it focuses on trauma related to rape, war, kidnapping. "Trauma and Recovery," however, explains trauma in a way that relates to EVERYONE and explains it in GREAT DETAIL. The detail and depth was beyond any hope I had or anything I could have imagined. It brought up points that I did not even consider, and thoughts that made me learn a great deal about my affliction. In fact, this book brought to light answers and closure for issues that I had tried to address with my $300/hr psychiatrist for the past 3 years. I thought to myself, "wtf?! what took my doctor so long and why has he been torturing me about this???!" Yes - this book WILL drum up emotions, and it did cost me plenty of tears and opening of wounds that were supposedly healed over, however, I definitely needed to understand the answers to these questions in order to move on.
This is an ideal book to have your family, spouse, significant other, or other supportive individual read. A great struggle for me, and one that has brought me much pain, is feeling as though I constantly have to explain myself and my actions/affliction to my family. They are actually the most supportive people anyone could ever hope for, yet they STILL can't understand what it is that I am going through or why I do the things I do. It is an awful feeling. I begged them to read this book, they didn't unfortunately, but I truly believe that if you love someone who is going through PTSD, depression/trauma/grief, you would show amazing support in reading this to help them.
In terms of what I have, and how this helped me.... I have experienced ups/downs, cycles of feeling great, then feeling terrible, not being able to get out of bed or my home for days even weeks, withdrawing socially, unable to work for several years, feeling unbelievably overwhelmed by the littlest of things, losing track of time, barely able to keep up with anything, uninterested in anything, no form of romantic relationships whatsoever, flashbacks to the event(s), extreme fatigue, uncontrollable sobbing, anxiety, hopelessness, chest pain, accelerated aging, feeling like something in me has permanently changed and I'm not "me", indifference, guilt. This is the foremost work in bringing to light the underlying cause(s) for these symptoms and why/how trauma affects us differently that just plain depression.
If you need this book, I send you my prayers and wish you the best in your or your loved one's recovery.
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Sara Kjeldsen
5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book about the effects of C-ptsd and PTSD
Reviewed in Canada on 23 June 2025
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I read this book as part of my counselor training in college and recently bought it again after some traumatic events myself. I love how the author describes c-ptsd and its effects on the mind. She does very good work and it's worth a read, whether you are studying to be a therapist or would like to read it for your personal development.
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Cliente Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars An exceptional book
Reviewed in Italy on 22 January 2021
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Judith Herman's is a very important contribution to learning about and treating trauma. It has a very broad vision and is well rooted in social and cultural issues. Trauma is not only seen from a medical-scientific perspective but rather by inserting the person within the human, family, relational and social context at all levels. It denounces inequality and violence, recalls the urgency to unhinge them for greater social justice.
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Surabhi GK
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly written book
Reviewed in India on 30 July 2017
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Recommended book for therapists.
Brilliantly written book for both therapists and survivors. I personally lend my book to my therapists to read and understand and treat accordingly
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JulsO
5.0 out of 5 stars Vital para trabajar el trauma.
Reviewed in Spain on 24 July 2022
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El enfoque de la integración del trauma desde dos tipos de traumas tan fuertes y tan distintos a la vez es maravilloso. Un "must" para el psicólogo clínico.
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Luis Reyes
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente
Reviewed in Mexico on 1 July 2024
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Llegó en perfecto estado
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Andrea Renay
5.0 out of 5 stars Essential, powerful and definitive
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 11 February 2018
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I bought this as part of a huge Amazon haul of books on trauma, abuse and PTSD but this volume, Herman's Trauma and Recovery, was far and away the most powerful, the most affecting and the deepest. Herman goes into the root causes, symptoms and sensations of trauma but she also has a brilliantly wide, sensitive frama of reference: she looks at how a traumatised person fits (or doesn't fit, or struggles to fit) into the wider familial, social, political and cultural world. She goes into victim-blaming, perpetrator impunity, silencing and shame. But she also pays amazing tribute to the power of survivors and the body, mind and soul's ability to heal themselves. If you haven't been directly affected by the issues she covers, this will be a rich, informative read, extremely interesting and fascinating as a cultural history. If you are a survivor it'll become a bible.
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Alexander Huelle
5.0 out of 5 stars A classic full of empathy
Reviewed in Germany on 8 October 2024
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Dr. Herman's book has been an indispensable standard work in trauma therapy for many years. It helped me to understand the impact of traumatic experiences in the work of an international NGO and to improve toxic working conditions. Recommended reading.
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ManueLo
5.0 out of 5 stars Without a doubt, an unmissable work.
Reviewed in Mexico on 6 January 2022
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I don't have enough words to describe how much this book changed my paradigms and my professional practice, undoubtedly an unmissable work that is becoming more relevant every day.
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Cjh
5.0 out of 5 stars Know your mind and body
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 3 December 2024
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This is a good book to learn about yourself and to build up your confidence knowledge and understanding of what you can achieve
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Amazona
5.0 out of 5 stars Classic to trauma
Reviewed in Germany on 1 October 2021
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Valuable classic about trauma and the effects of trauma (PTSD and complex PTSD).
The author has decades of experience and is a scientist. That is the quality of this book. Absolute recommendation.
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Lion_cub
5.0 out of 5 stars Integrative
Reviewed in Canada on 26 March 2025
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Judith Herman has underlined the importance of an integrative approach to healing from trauma and provided the evidentiary support framework. Highly recommended
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Fairy
5.0 out of 5 stars Brilliantly explained in a language that is both scholarly and ...
Reviewed in India on 22 July 2016
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A must book for anyone who wants to understand about trauma. Brilliantly explained in a language that is both scholarly and easily understandable by anyone
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MicheleKay
5.0 out of 5 stars Thorough Work on Understanding & Treating Trauma
Reviewed in the United States on 1 April 2016
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Excellent, in-depth book on various types of trauma and the effects & treatments.
There is some political slant, but it is not the focus of the book. If you are serious about understanding trauma and people, this is an incredible book. I'm amazed how thorough it is. I'm amazed this much information can be in one book that is only 276 pages long and not a text book. It's well-written. There is some sophisticated vocabulary in it...Several times I had to look up words in my online dictionary to fully understand what the author is communicating. She is wonderfully gifted in her approach to this subject.
She starts with history, goes into trauma and various treatments. She delineates differences of acute trauma of a single event vs chronic traumas. She delineates further on how even just one good support can help someone with trauma, vs the results of someone experiencing trauma yet having no validating support. One of her key points is Chaper 6..."A New Diagnosis"... discussing that complaints of chronically traumatized people are not well-understood. For example:... "Survivors of child abuse who become patients appear with a bewildering array of symptoms....They may collect a virtual pharmacopeia of remedies: one for headaches, another for insomnia, another for anxiety, another for depression. None of these tends to work very well, since the underlying issues of trauma are not addressed".
She talks about getting the correct diagnosis. Investigating under the symptoms, thoroughly knowing the history. After that, the treatments are not just medication or psychotherapy. It's often both, but in a certain way... Safety first, then trauma work, then reconnection. It even goes into the strengths & support the therapist needs to treat people who have experienced trauma as well as details of individual vs group therapies. This book also discusses medications, but doesn't have a multitude of pages devoted to medications.
Please understand my description here is just a slight outline. Trauma and Recovery is an incredibly thorough and well-written work. It also includes many pages of its referenced sources.
The epilogue discusses many things including recent studies, advances and programs since the book was written 2 decades ago.
I highly recommend this book.
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Cliente Amazon
5.0 out of 5 stars Complete and very interesting
Reviewed in Spain on 22 August 2019
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Interesting for psychologists or person working with trauma and violence. Highly recommended has some typo and sometimes it is something dense to read.
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Moringa
5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic
Reviewed in Germany on 21 October 2013
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I've been a regular customer at amazon for years now, but it's the first time I actually take the time to write a review. Great book, which I stumbled upon coinicdentally while writing a term paper on psychological trauma. Also helped me to understand myself and trauma victims better. Easy and logical to follow, great read.
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Ruth Henriquez Lyon
5.0 out of 5 stars A political and very necessary book.
Reviewed in the United States on 18 October 2004
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This is not your usual trauma recovery book. Most books on healing explain symptoms, offer exercises, and provide illuminating case histories. Judith Herman does all this, but she goes beyond just focusing on healing oneself in isolation. We are social animals, and must live within our culture. Thus, how our culture regards trauma and traumatized people is very important to those trying to become reintegrated into society after massive psychic shock. Dr. Herman explains our modern Western culture's attitudes toward trauma and the traumatized, gives a fascinating and pertinent history of how those attitudes have changed throughout the past century, and shows how those attitudes affect how survivors recover.
Dr. Herman sets forth most of this broader cultural history in Part 1, Chapter 1, "A Forgotten History." She begins with the female hysteria patients of 19th Century Europe, and ends up with the Vietnam veterans' movement to demand treatment for battle induced post-traumatic stress. The veterans' work bore fruit. In 1980 the American Psychiatric Association included "post-traumatic stress disorder" in its official manual of mental disorders. This paved the way in the 1980s for victims of rape, childhood abuse, and domestic violence to be treated for post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.
Part of the history Herman sets forth explores why people tend to shun and try to silence trauma survivors. She writes, "It is very tempting to take the side of the perpetrator. All the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing. He appeals to the universal desire to see, hear, and speak no evil. The victim, on the contrary, asks the bystander to share the burden of pain. The victim demands action, engagement, and remembering."
I would guess that most people recovering from trauma have experienced the dynamic of those around them "taking the side of the perpetrator." Without understanding why they are doing so only compounds the suffering the survivor experiences, and intensifies the feeling that one is tainted, bad, or defective for having been traumatized in the first place. In exploring the cultural dynamics of collective repression and denial, Herman does a great service to those who must heal and re-enter a culture which can sometimes be seen to be in league with the perpetrators in our world.
The remainder of Part 1 deals with the types of abuse and the symptoms which follow. This information can be found in other books, but here it is set in a larger cultural context which helps the reader to make more sense out of the symptoms.
Part 2 describes the stages of recovery. This information is very concrete, very helpful, and hopeful as well. Dr. Herman outlines three main stages: establishing safety, remembering and integrating one's story, and re-integrating oneself back into the social world.
This book is probably the most helpful book I have read on trauma recovery in 20 years. Dr. Herman's idea of exploring the social matrix in which healing occurs is brilliant. After all, we are all connected. We cannot heal ourselves without making some sort of peace with the culture around us. We cannot always change the attitudes of those around us, but we can learn to understand, and thus approach those who cannot comprehend our reality with at least some measure of forgiveness and compassion.
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Cactus Valley
4.0 out of 5 stars An enlightening book on the subject.
Reviewed in France on 4 October 2014
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I chose this book because firstly the comments posted were very constructive about it and then I was looking for the theme dealt with in this book, which was very enlightening indeed. What I liked about this book was the descriptive and very professional treatment of the subject, i.e. the clinical interviews conducted by the author herself. I welcome the quality of the wording used to describe the “traumatic” situations that he discusses throughout the book. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject and with a knowledge and practice of English and therapeutic conversations. C. Cavalié
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Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror4.7 out of 5 stars2,767
by Judith Lewis Herman MD
The groundbreaking work on trauma
"One of the most important psychiatric works to be published since Freud."―New York Times
Trauma and Recovery is the foundational text on understanding trauma survivors. By placing individual experience in a political frame, psychiatrist Judith L. Herman argues that psychological trauma is inseparable from its social and political context. Drawing on her own research on incest, as well as a vast literature on combat veterans and victims of political terror, she shows surprising parallels between private horrors like child abuse and public horrors like war.
This edition includes a new epilogue by the author assessing what has—and hasn’t—changed in understanding and treating trauma over the last three decades.
Hailed by the New York Times as “one of the most important psychiatry works to be published since Freud,” Trauma and Recovery is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand how we heal.
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Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice4.6 out of 5 stars178
by Judith Herman
Part manifesto, part exploration of what justice truly means for survivors of trauma and abuse, Judith Herman forces us to reconsider our perspective on victims, revealing uncomfortable truths about our justice systems and proposing new ways to implement justice. A follow-up to the bestselling Trauma and Recovery the book is divided into three parts, Part One :Power, examines the structure and nature of tyranny, patriarchy and white supremacy; Part Two: Visions of Justice, reveals how our current system is woefully ill-equipped for victims and corrects our misguided assumptions about what survivors need in the aftermath of violence, and finally in Part Three: Centring Survivor Justice, Herman proposes alternative methods of justice, offering hopeful new ways to think about its meanings and possibilities.
Truth and Repair is a profound and timely commentary that lies at the intersection of several cultural moments including the #MeToo movement, a resurgent interest in trauma, and the global movements focusing on racial injustices and abuses of power towards people of colour. Thoughtful, visceral and moving, Truth and Repair is a necessary call to action that invites us to envision a new approach to justice-one that centres on healing and solidarity to stand with survivors everywhere.
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Father-Daughter Incest: With a New Afterword4.5 out of 5 stars75
by Judith Lewis Herman
Through an intensive clinical study of forty incest victims and numerous interviews with professionals in mental health, child protection, and law enforcement, Judith Herman develops a composite picture of the incestuous family. In a new afterword, Herman offers a lucid and thorough overview of the knowledge that has developed about incest and other forms of sexual abuse since this book was first published.
Reviewing the extensive research literature that demonstrates the validity of incest survivors' sometimes repressed and recovered memories, she convincingly challenges the rhetoric and methods of the backlash movement against incest survivors, and the concerted attempt to deny the events they find the courage to describe.
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