I'm so glad I found this book through my random browsing on Amazon; 'Trauma and Recovery; The Aftermath of Violence – From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror' by Judith L. Herman. Having written most of my research paper, with the exception of the conclusion - I think this book contains the key to resolving my argument. A lot of the book looks at the impacts of war on veterans, which was not quite on the topic of my research paper but nonetheless the psychological impacts of state-sponsored violence were still relevant. But the examination of the psychology of trauma in domestic abuse has been essential to resolving the conclusion of my research paper - specifically how art can both raise awareness of abuse of power as well as support the recovery of victims.
Key Quotes
‘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.’ (page 1)
‘when the traumatic events are of human design, those who bear witness are caught in the conflict between victim and perpetrator. It is morally impossible to remain neutral in this conflict. The bystander is forced to take sides.’ (page 10)
‘In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defence. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalisation.’ (page 10)
‘Fifty years ago, Virginia Woolf wrote that “the public and private worlds are inseperably connected… the tyrannies and servilities of one are the tyrannies and servilities of the other”.’ (page 46)
‘Psychological trauma is an affliction of the powerless. At the moment of trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force.’ (page 48)
‘Trauma, by definition, shatters the “inner schemata.” Horowitz suggests that unassimilated traumatic experiences are stored in a special kind of “active memory,” which has an “intrinsic tendency to repeat representation of contents.” The trauma is resolved only when the survivor develops a new mental “schema” for understanding what has happened.’ (page 61)
‘Traumatic events… shatter the construction of the self that is formed and sustained in relation to others. They undermine the belief systems that give meaning to human experience. They violate the victim’s faith in a natural or divine order and cast the victim into a state of existential crisis.’ (page 74)
‘Women traumatised in sexual and domestic life struggle with similar issues of self-regulation… Society gives women little permission either to withdraw or to express their feelings.’ (page 94)
‘Women who recover most successfully are those who discover some meaning in their experience that transcends the limits of personal tragedy. Most commonly, women find this meaning by joining with others in social action.’ (page 106)
‘A single traumatic event can occur almost anywhere. Prolonged, repeated trauma, by contrast, occurs only in circumstances of captivity.’ (page 108)
‘Captivity, which brings the victim into prolonged contact with the perpetrator, creates a special type of relationship, one of coercive control.’ (page 109)
‘The desire for total control over another person is the common denominator of all forms of tyranny. Totalitarian governments demand confession and political conversion of their victims. Slaveholders demand gratitude of their slaves. Religious cults demand ritualised sacrifices as a sign of submission of the divine will of the leader. Perpetrators of domestic battery demand that their victims prove complete obedience and loyalty by sacrificing all other relationships.’ (page 111)
‘The methods of establishing control over another person are based upon the systematic, repetitive infliction of psychological trauma. They are the organised techniques of disempowerment and disconnection. Methods of psychological control are designed to instil terror and helplessness and to destroy the victim’s sense of self in relation to others.’ (page 112)
‘Once the perpetrator has succeeded in establishing day-to-day bodily control of the victim, he becomes a source not only of fear and humiliation but also of solace.’ (page 114)
‘In the absence of any other human connection, she will try to find the humanity in her captor. Inevitably, in the absence of any other point of view, the victim will come to see the world through the eyes of the perpetrator.’ (page 118)
‘Terror, intermittent reward, isolation, and enforced dependency may succeed in creating a submissive and compliant prisoner. But the final step in the psychological control of the victim is not completed until she has been forced to violate her own moral principles and betray her basic human attachments. Psychologically, this is the most destructive of all coercive techniques, for the victim who has succumbed loathes herself.’ (page 121)
‘People subjected to prolonged, repeated trauma develop an insidious, progressive form of post-traumatic stress disorder that invades and erodes the personality. While the victim of a single acute trauma may feel after the event that she is “not herself,” the victim of chronic trauma may feel herself to be changed irrevocably, or she may lose the sense that she has any self at all.’ (page 125)
‘When the victim has been reduced to a goal of simple survival, psychological constriction becomes an essential form of adaption. This narrowing applies to every aspect of life – to relationships, activities, thoughts, memories, emotions, and even sensations.’ (page 127)
‘even years after liberation, the former prisoner continues to practice doublethink and to exist simultaneously in two realities, two points in time. The experience of the present is often hazy and dulled while the intrusive memories of the past are intense and clear.’ (page 131)
‘If, under duress, she has betrayed her own principles or has sacrificed other people, she now has to live with the image of herself as an accomplice of the perpetrator, a “broken” person. The result, for most victims, is a contaminated identity. Victims may be preoccupied with shame, self-loathing, and a sense of failure.’ (page 137)
‘These deformations in consciousness, individuation, and identity serve the purpose of preserving hope and relationship, but they leave other major adaptive tasks unsolved or even compound the difficulty of these tasks.’ (Page 157)
‘Self-injury is also frequently mistaken for a suicidal gesture. Many survivors of childhood abuse do indeed attempt suicide. There is a clear distinction, however, between repetitive self-injury and suicide attempts. Self-injury is intended not to kill but rather to relieve unbearable emotional pain, and many survivors regard it, paradoxically, as a form of self-preservation.’ (page 160)
‘the personality formed in an environment of coercive control is not well adapted to adult life. The survivor is left with fundamental problems in basic trust, autonomy, and initiative.’ (page 161)
‘the adult survivor is at great risk of repeated victimisation in adult life.’ (page 163)
‘Most people have no knowledge or understanding of the psychological changes of captivity. Social judgement of chronically traumatised people therefore tends to be extremely harsh… Observers who have never experienced prolonged terror and who have no understanding of coercive methods of control presume that they would show greater courage and resistance than the victim in similar circumstances.’ (page 168)
‘The first principle of recovery is the empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery.’ (page 191)
‘In the second stage of recovery, the survivor tells the story of the trauma. She tells it completely, in depth and in detail. This work of reconstruction actually transforms the traumatic memory, so that it can be integrated into the survivor’s life story.’ (page 254)
‘As the narrative closes in on the most unbearable moments, the patient finds it more and more difficult to use words. At times the patient may spontaneously switch to nonverbal methods of communication, such as painting and drawing. Given the “iconic” visual nature of traumatic memories, creating pictures may represent the most effective initial approach to these “indelible images”. The completed narrative must include a full and vivid description of the traumatic imagery.’ (page 257)
‘After many repetitions,34 the moment comes when the telling of the trauma story no longer arouses quite such intense feeling.’ (page 284)
‘Having come to terms with the traumatic past, the survivor faces the task of creating a future. She has mourned the old self that the trauma destroyed; now she must develop a new self… These are the tasks of the third stage of recovery. In accomplishing this work, the survivor reclaims her world.’ (page 286)
‘Helplessness and isolation are core experiences of psychological trauma. Empowerment and reconnection are the core experiences of recovery.’ (page 287)
‘Her task now is to become the person she wants to be. In the process she draws upon those aspects of herself that she most values from the time before the trauma, from the experience of the trauma itself, and from the period of recovery. Integrating all these elements, she creates a new self both ideally and in actuality.’ (page 295)
‘Survivors also understand that those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it. It is for this reason that public truth-telling is the common denominator of all social action.’ (page 304)
‘Her recovery is based not on the illusion that evil has been overcome but rather on the knowledge that it has not entirely prevailed and on the hope that it has not entirely prevailed and on the hope that restorative love may still be found in the world.’ (page 309)
‘Her view of life may be tragic, but for that very reason she has learned to cherish laughter. She has a clear sense of what is important and what is not. Having encountered evil, she knows how to cling to what is good.’ (page 311)
‘The solidarity of a group provides the strongest protection against terror and despair, and the strongest antidote to traumatic experience. Trauma isolates; the group re-creates a sense of belonging. Trauma shames and stigmatises; the group bears witness and affirms.’ (page 313)
‘The survivor must be ready to relinquish the “specialness” of her identity. Only at this point can she contemplate her story as one among many and envision her particular tragedy within the embrace of the human condition.’ (page 344)
‘But as the history of the trauma field has shown repeatedly, increasing scientific knowledge and raising public awareness are only the first steps in efforts to end violence. Moving from awareness to social action requires a political movement strong enough to overcome pervasive denial, the passive resistance of institutional inertia, and the active resistance of those who benefit from the established order.’ (page 368)
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