Customer Reviews

Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath Of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

5 star:		(22)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After years of suffering .. and searching out answers .. this book was the one that brought it ALL home. It took me into some challenging areas that have brought me into a truly spiritual focus, in fact. I think the material on second-hand PTSD is truly a revelation and absolutely needed to be added to the therapeutic literature before it was too late.

I have given away at LEAST 30 copies of this book, and not because the people were too lazy to buy it; it just was very difficult to find it on Canadian bookstore shelves.

It's probably a bit "academic" for some sufferers of PTSD, and their families, but it sure covers the ground.

As the cover says, its a MUST read not JUST for professionals in the mental heaalth field, but for community organizers, lawyers and all kinds of so-called professionals.

I sold self help and therapeutic books for a long time, reviewed them and "catalogued" them. I would put this book in my Top 10.

I bought this book on the basis of the lengthy and highly positive reviews posted on this site. In many respects, what they say is true and the book most certainly has its merits. However, it has several significant drawbacks which seem have gone uncommented upon here and which were sufficient to make the book, for me, largely unreadable. Since there are more than enough comments about what is good, I will confine myself to what is bad about this book. Judith Herman not writing from a neutral perspective: she is both a feminist and an insufficiently critical devotee of psychoanalysis. She is candid about her agenda and about the fact that her perspective on trauma has a decidedly feminist and psychoanalytic bent. If you agree with her views and are interested in exploring her thesis, that is, if you are interested in approaching the issues of abuse and trauma from an academic perspective, then this is an intellectually stimulating work with a clear sense of direction. If you are a survivor of trauma then Dr. Herman's political and academic agenda seriously undermine the helpfulness of this work. It is wordy (even more wordy than this review), full of feminist, modernist, and psychoanalytic jargon, and not a book that I would recommend for anyone who is in the early stages of RECOVERING from trauma.

What insight! I also highly recommend reading Peaceful Heart: A Woman's Journey of Healing, by Aimee Jo Martin....a book that is a true testament to the human spirit and takes the reader thru a client's perspective of getting thru PTSD.

What a wonderfully honest book! It shares the heartbreak of what rape does to the human soul. I also highly recommend reading Peaceful Heart: A Woman's Journey of Healing, by Aimee Jo Martin....a book that is a true testament to the human spirit.

This multipurpose and truth telling detailed book deals with all forms of abuse and shows us, the reader that in the long run it is all abuse no matter the type and does alter our views on life.
Along with this book I would like to mantion a couple of other good books: Nightmares Echo and all of the David Pelzer Books

I have bought the new German translation of this book and it has been a great read. I can only subscribe to all the praise in the other reviews and think about what I can add to it.
I love that it is a political book as well as a psychological one. It calls Crime and Evil by their names and says that healing is not only personal, but includes the whole community - in the third and last step to healing means to go out and work for a better community.
It is a compassionate book that makes all the symptoms of Trauma suddenly make sense. It has taught me to be more compassionate towards myself and e.g. accept my "issues with trust" - accept that I take longer than other people to decide whether someone is trustworthy or not.
It is written in an understandable and clear way - not dry at all - just the right balance between clarity and objectivity and passion - passion against crime, passion to help the victims.
It has been a great help as well when other people ask me for help as friends. I won't push them any more to confront their traumata, nor will I prevent them from doing, but I just say: Take your time: First find stability and happiness, than look at the past. And I have learnt to be very careful - always leave control and responsibility with the person who asks for advice. (I am no therapist, just as everyone sometimes friends ask me for help and advice.) And I always recommend this book.

Judith Herman has to be a Renaissance Woman, because this is a multi-dimensional, wide-ranging, compassionate, and brilliantly useful book that no therapist nor patient should be without. The examples come from years of clinical work and - very wisely - from works of literature too, which often do a better job of explaining this intense and baffling condition. Deserves it's reputation as a great classic in the field, and it's held up well over the years, too.

Great book - could not put it down, very interesting.

Counsellors will love this. Psychologists will love this. Psychiatrists will love this. If you are one of them, buy this book, you will love this. I guarantee. But anyone who has actually lived through any real trauma is going to roll their eyes.

Mainstream psychology seems to be completely based on books written by people who had never experianced the things they are writting about! It's terrible! If any other author were to write a book on say, what it is like to like is Paris, when they have never lived there before, we would all laugh. But yet psychologists seem to get away with this all the time. And the usual therapy sheep have not yet been able to see this. The book is neatly written, and convincing, so that's all that matters. But this is not a debate people -you are working with people's lives here! There are consequences to getting it wrong!

There are so many people out there who seem content on taking advice on trauma from those that had never been through it. You would not take lessons on how to drive a car from someone who has never been in one -only watched others -so why is this any different? Take a moment to think about it! The answer may shock you!

I first read this book when I was 18, as a means to understand myself. But as I have grown up, this books seems increasily immature and shallow. Much of it is incorrect -as anyone who has been through trauma of any kind can tell you.

It has all the ingredients to be popular with therapists though. But if they were to actually take a closer look away from the well-written text, they would see that the world around them is not like this. It is not catorgorisable and predicatable. And these are not the answers to why people act this way. Time to tune into your logic and instinct here!

I certainly hope the author of this book is able to one day admit how egotistical it really is to claim such knowledge over topic she has not experainced. It honestly makes me quite angry that such a complex topic as trauma has been water-down to just this thin text that does nothing really to actually help anyone.

Do you disagree with me? Well, someone that hasn't been through trauma themselves has no right to sing the praises of this book, so sit back down please. Beacuse I can tell you from a very personal point of view, that this book only begins to scratch the surface of the topic it claims to cover.

Very kindergarten level. Really only belongs on the shelf -next to the latest science fiction title.

As a psychotherapist for the past sixteen years I can readily attest to the wealth of information in this book, so much so that I had to purchase it for my permanent book collection.

All too often, victims in my experience have been given the labels of Borderline Personality Disorder, or Masochistic Personality Disorder to the detriment of the invidividual's sole purpose of healing.

Dr. Herman's book states otherwise with sound research, excellent clearly understandable style of writing and certainly
will aid in comfort, knowledge and recovery to those who need it the most.

As an author of "SILENT BIRTHS: FRUIT OF THE WOMB (1STBOOKS.COM)
I can certainly attest to the wisdom in this book enabling those who are voiceless and helpless to come to mastery over not only their perpertrator, but within themselves - thereby becoming fully committed to health and healing and their Soul retrieval.