THE ORDINARY RESPONSE TO ATROCITIES is to banish them from
consciousness.
(...)
Like traumatized people, we have been cut off from the knowledge of our past.
Like traumatized people, we need to understand the past in order to reclaim the present
and the future. Therefore, an understanding of psychological trauma begins with
rediscovering history.
Clinicians know the privileged moment of insight when repressed ideas, feelings,
and memories surface into consciousness.
(...)
Because the traumatic syndromes have basic features in common, the recovery
process also follows a common pathway. The fundamental stages of recovery are
establishing safety, reconstructing the trauma story, and restoring the connection
between survivors and their community. The second part of the book develops an
overview of the healing process and offers a new conceptual framework for
psychotherapy with traumatized people. Both the characteristics of the traumatic
disorders and the principles of treatment are illustrated with the testimony of survivors
and with case examples drawn from a diverse literature.
(...)
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.(...)
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
defense. 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 rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same
predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the
victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on.
The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define
reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.
The perpetrator’s arguments prove irresistible when the bystander faces them in isolation.
Without a supportive social environment, the bystander usually succumbs to the temptation to look the other way.When the victim is already devalued (a woman, a child), she may find that the most
traumatic events of her life take place outside the realm of socially validated reality. Her
experience becomes unspeakable.
(...)
PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA is an affliction of the powerless. At the moment of
trauma, the victim is rendered helpless by overwhelming force. When the force is that of
nature, we speak of disasters. When the force is that of other human beings, we speak
of atrocities. Traumatic events overwhelm the ordinary systems of care that give people
a sense of control, connection, and meaning.
(...)
The many symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder fall into three main
categories. These are called “hyperarousal,” “intrusion,” and “constriction.” Hyperarousal
reflects the persistent expectation of danger; intrusion reflects the indelible imprint of the
traumatic moment; constriction reflects the numbing response of surrender. (...)
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 hyperarousal, which is the first cardinal symptom of
post-traumatic stress disorder, the traumatized person startles easily, reacts irritably to
small provocation’, and sleeps poorly.
Long after the danger is past, traumatized people relive the event as though it
were continually recurring in the present. They cannot resume the normal course of their
lives, for the trauma repeatedly interrupts. It is as if time stops at the moment of trauma.
The traumatic moment becomes encoded in an abnormal form of memory, which breaks
spontaneously into consciousness, both as flashbacks during waking states and as
traumatic nightmares during sleep. Small, seemingly insignificant reminders can also
evoke these memories, which often return with all the vividness and emotional force of
the original event. Thus, even normally safe environments may come to feel dangerous,
for the survivor can never be assured that she will not encounter some reminder of the
trauma.
(...)
Traumatized people relive the moment of trauma not only in their thoughts and
dreams but also in their actions. The reenactment of traumatic scenes is most apparent
in the repetitive play of children. Terr differentiates between normal play and the
“forbidden games” of children who have been traumatized: “The everyday play of
childhood . . . is free and easy. It is bubbly and light-spirited, whereas the play that
follows from trauma is grim and monotonous. . . . Play does not stop easily when it is
traumatically inspired. And it may not change much over time. As opposed to ordinary
child’s play, post-traumatic play is obsessively repeated. . . . Post-traumatic play is so
literal that if you spot it, you may be able to guess the trauma with few other clues.”
(...)
TRAUMATIC EVENTS CALL INTO QUESTION basic human relationships. They
breach the attachments of family, friendship, love, and community. They 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.
The damage to relational life is not a secondary effect of trauma, as originally
thought. Traumatic events have primary effects not only on the psychological structures
of the self but also on the systems of attachment and meaning that link individual and
community.The sense of safety in the world, or basic trust, is acquired in earliest life in the
relationship with the first caretaker. Originating with life itself, this sense of trust sustains
a person throughout the lifecycle. It forms the basis of all systems of relationship and
faith. The original experience of care makes it possible for human beings to envisage a
world in which they belong, a world hospitable to human life. Basic trust is the foundation
of belief in the continuity of life, the order of nature, and the transcendent order of the
divine. (...) A secure sense of connection with caring people is the foundation of personality
development. When this connection is shattered, the traumatized person loses her basic
sense of self. Developmental conflicts of childhood and adolescence, long since
resolved, are suddenly reopened. Trauma forces the survivor to relive all her earlier
struggles over autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy.
Unsatisfactory resolution of the normal developmental conflicts over autonomy
leaves the person prone to shame and doubt. These same emotional reactions reappear
in the aftermath of traumatic events. Shame is a response to helplessness, the violation
of bodily integrity, and the indignity suffered in the eyes of another person. Doubt reflects
the inability to maintain one’s own separate point of view while remaining in connection
with others. In the aftermath of traumatic events, survivors doubt both others and
themselves. Things are no longer what they seem.(...)
As the normal child develops, her growing competence and capacity for initiative
are added to her positive self-image. Unsatisfactory resolution of the normal
developmental conflicts over initiative and competence leaves the person prone to
feelings of guilt and inferiority.
(...)
Captivity, which brings the victim into prolonged contact with the perpetrator,
creates a special type of relationship, one of coercive control.(...)
In situations of captivity, the perpetrator becomes the most powerful person in the
life of the victim, and the psychology of the victim is shaped by the actions and beliefs of
the perpetrator. Little is known about the mind of the perpetrator. Since he is
contemptuous of those who seek to understand him, he does not volunteer to be
studied. Since he does not perceive that anything is wrong with him, he does not seek
help.(...)This idea is deeply disturbing to most people. How much more comforting it
would be if the perpetrator were easily recognizable, obviously deviant or disturbed. But
he is not. (...) The perpetrator’s first goal appears to be the enslavement of his victim, and he
accomplishes this goal by exercising despotic control over every aspect of the victim’s
life. But simple compliance rarely satisfies him; ; he appears to have a psychological need
to justify his crimes, and for this he needs the victim’s affirmation. Thus he relentlessly
demands from his victim professions of respect, gratitude, or even love.
(...)
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.(...)
REPEATED TRAUMA in adult life erodes the structure of the personality already
formed, but 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.
Chronic childhood abuse takes place in a familial climate of pervasive terror, in
which ordinary caretaking relationships have been profoundly disrupted.
Even more than adults, children who develop in this climate of domination develop pathological attachments to those who abuse and neglect them, attachments that they will
strive to maintain even at the sacrifice of their own welfare, their mown reality, or their
lives.In addition to the fear of violence, survivors consistently report an overwhelming
sense of helplessness. In the abusive family environment, the exercise of parental power
is arbitrary, capricious, and absolute. Rules are erratic, inconsistent, or patently unfair.
Survivors frequently recall that what frightened them most was the unpredictable nature
of the violence. Unable to find any way to avert the abuse, they learn to adopt a position
of complete surrender. (...)
Adaptation to this climate of constant danger requires a state of constant
alertness. Children in an abusive environment develop extraordinary abilities to scan for
warning signs of attack. They become minutely attuned to their abusers’ inner states.
They learn to recognize subtle changes in facial expression, voice, and body language
as signals of anger, sexual arousal, intoxication, or dissociation. This nonverbal
communication becomes highly automatic and occurs for the most part outside of
conscious awareness. Child victims learn to respond without being able to name or
identify the danger signals that evoked their alarm.
While violence, threats, and the capricious enforcement of rules instill terror and
develop the habit of automatic obedience, isolation, secrecy, and betrayal destroy the
relationships that would afford protection. It is by now a commonplace that families in
which child abuse occurs are socially isolated.
It is less commonly recognized that social isolation does not simply happen; it is often enforced by the abuser in the interest of preserving secrecy and control over other family members. Survivors frequently describe a pattern of jealous surveillance of all social contacts.
Their abusers may forbid them to participate in ordinary peer activities or may insist on the right to intrude into these activities at will. The social lives of abused children are also profoundly limited by the need to keep up appearances and preserve secrecy. Thus, even those children who
manage to develop the semblance of a social life experience it as inauthentic.
She perceives daily, not only that the most powerful adult in her intimate
world is dangerous to her, but also that the other adults who are responsible for her care
do not protect her. The reasons for this protective failure are in some sense immaterial to
the child victim, who experiences it at best as a sign of indifference and at worst as
complicit betrayal.
In this climate of profoundly disrupted relationships the child faces a formidable
developmental task. She must find a way to form primary attachments to caretakers who
are either dangerous or, from her perspective, negligent. She must find a way to develop
a sense of basic trust and safety with caretakers who are untrustworthy and unsafe. She
must develop a sense of self in relation to others who are helpless, uncaring, or cruel.
She must develop a capacity for bodily self-regulation in an environment in which her
body is at the disposal of others’ needs, as well as a capacity for self-soothing in an
environment without solace. She must develop the capacity for initiative in an
environment which demands that she bring her will into complete conformity with that of
her abuser. And ultimately, she must develop a capacity for intimacy out of an environment where all intimate relationships are corrupt, and an identity out of an environment
which defines her as a whore and a slave.
Though she perceives herself as abandoned to a power without mercy, she must find a way to preserve hope and meaning. The alternative is utter despair, something no child can bear. To preserve her faith in her parents, she must reject the first and most obvious conclusion that
something is terribly wrong with them. She will go to any lengths to construct an
explanation for her fate that absolves her parents of all blame and responsibility.
All of the abused child’s psychological adaptations serve the fundamental
purpose of preserving her primary attachment to her parents in the face of daily evidence
of their malice, helplessness, or indifference. To accomplish this purpose, the child
resorts to a wide array of psychological defenses. By virtue of these defenses, the abuse
is either walled off from conscious awareness and memory, so that it did not really
happen, or minimized, rationalized, and excused, so that whatever did happen was not
really abuse. Unable to escape or alter the unbearable reality in fact, the child alters it in
her mind.
The child victim prefers to believe that the abuse did not occur. In the service of
this wish, she tries to keep the abuse a secret from herself. The means she has at her
disposal are frank denial, voluntary suppression of thoughts, and a legion of dissociative
reactions. The capacity for induced trance or dissociative states, normally high in schoolage children, is developed to a fine art in children who have been severely punished or
abused. Studies have documented the connection between the severity of childhood
abuse and the degree of familiarity with dissociative states. While most survivors of
childhood abuse describe a degree of proficiency in the use of trance, some develop a
kind of dissociative virtuosity. They may learn to ignore severe pain, to hide their
memories in complex amnesias, to alter their sense of time, place, or person, and to
induce hallucinations or possession states. Sometimes these alterations of consciousness are deliberate, but often they become automatic and feel alien and involuntary.
Under the most extreme conditions of early, severe, and prolonged abuse, some
children, perhaps those already endowed with strong capacities for trance states, begin
to form separated personality fragments with their own names, psychological functions,
and sequestered memories. Dissociation thus becomes not merely a defensive
adaptation but the fundamental principle of personality organization. The genesis of
personality fragments, or alters, in situations of massive childhood trauma has been
verified in numerous investigations. The alters make it possible for the child victim to
cope resourcefully with the abuse while keeping both the abuse and her coping
strategies outside of ordinary awareness.
Not all abused children have the ability to alter reality through dissociation. And
even those who do have this ability cannot rely upon it all the time. When it is impossible
to avoid the reality of the abuse, the child must construct some system of meaning that
justifies it. Inevitably the child concludes that her innate badness is the cause. The child
seizes upon this explanation early and clings to it tenaciously, for it enables her to
preserve a sense of meaning, hope, and power. If she is bad, then her parents are good.
If she is bad, then she can try to be good. If, somehow, she has brought this fate upon
herself, then somehow she has the power to change it. If she has driven her parents to
mistreat her, then, if only she tries hard enough, she may some day earn their
forgiveness and finally win the protection and care she so desperately needs.
Self-blame is congruent with the normal forms of thought of early childhood, in
which the self is taken as the reference point for all events. It is congruent with the
thought processes of traumatized people of all ages, who search for faults in their own
behavior in an effort to make sense out of what has happened to them. In the
environment of chronic abuse, however, neither time nor experience provide any
corrective for this tendency toward self-blame; rather, it is continually reinforced. The
abused child’s sense of inner badness may be directly confirmed by parental
scapegoating. Survivors frequently describe being blamed, not only for their parents’
violence or sexual misconduct, but also for numerous other family misfortunes. Family
legends may include stories of the harm the child caused by being born or the disgrace
for which she appears to be destined. A survivor describes her scapegoat role: “I was
named after my mother. She had to get married because she got pregnant with me. She
ran away when I was two. My father’s parents raised me. I never saw a picture of her,
but they told me I looked just like her and I’d probably turn out to be a slut and a tramp
just like her. When my dad started raping me, he said, ‘You’ve been asking for this for a
long time and now you’re going to get it.’
Feelings of rage and murderous revenge fantasies are normal responses to
abusive treatment. Like abused adults, abused children are often rageful and sometimes
aggressive. They often lack verbal and social skills for resolving conflict, and they
approach problems with the expectation of hostile attack. The abused child’s predictable
difficulties in modulating anger further strengthen her conviction of inner badness. Each
hostile encounter convinces her that she is indeed a hateful person. If, as is common,
she tends to displace her anger far from its dangerous source and to discharge it unfairly
on those who did not provoke it, her selfcondemnation is aggravated still further. (...)
Children often resist becoming accomplices. They may even strike elaborate bargains with their abusers, sacrificing themselves in an attempt to protect others. These bargains inevitably fail, for no child has the power or the ability to carry out the protective role of an adult. At some point, the child may devise a way to escape her abuser, knowing that he will find another victim
By developing a contaminated, stigmatized identity, the child victim takes the evil
of the abuser into herself and thereby preserves her primary attachments to her parents.
Because the inner sense of badness preserves a relationship, it is not readily given up
even after the abuse has stopped; rather, it becomes a stable part of the child’s
personality structure.(...)
Similar failures of integration occur in the child’s inner representations of others.
In her desperate attempts to preserve her faith in her parents, the child victim develops
highly idealized images of at least one parent. Sometimes the child attempts to preserve
a bond with the nonoffending parent. She excuses or rationalizes the failure of protection
by attributing it to her own unworthiness. More commonly, the child idealizes the abusive
parent and displaces all her rage onto the nonoffending parent. She may in fact feel
more strongly attached to the abuser, who demonstrates a perverse interest in her, than
in the nonoffending parent, whom she perceives as indifferent. The abuser may also
foster this idealization by indoctrinating the child victim and other family members in his
own paranoid or grandiose belief system.
Such glorified images of the parents cannot, however, be reliably sustained. They
deliberately leave out too much information. The real experience of abusive or neglectful
parents cannot be integrated with these idealized fragments. Thus, the child victim’s
inner representations of her primary caretakers, like her images of herself, remain
contradictory and split. The abused child is unable to form inner representations of a
safe, consistent caretaker. This in turn prevents the development of normal capacities for
emotional self-regulation. The fragmentary, idealized images that the child is able to form
cannot be evoked to fulfill the task of emotional soothing. They are too meager, too
incomplete, and too prone to transform without warning into images of terror. (...)
Under conditions of chronic childhood abuse, fragmentation becomes the
central principle of personality organization. Fragmentation in consciousness prevents
the ordinary integration of knowledge, memory, emotional states, and bodily experience.
Fragmentation in the inner representations of the self prevents the integration of identity.
Fragmentation in the inner representations of others prevents the development of a
reliable sense of independence within connection. (...)
These three major forms of adaptation—the elaboration of dissociative defenses,
the development of a fragmented identity, and the pathological regulation of emotional states—permit the child to survive in an environment of chronic abuse. Further, they generally allow the child victim to preserve the appearance of normality which is of such
importance to the abusive family. The child’s distress symptoms are generally well
hidden. Altered states of consciousness, memory lapses, and other dissociative
symptoms are not generally recognized. The formation of a malignant negative identity is
generally disguised by the socially conforming “false self.” Psychosomatic symptoms are
rarely traced to their source. And self-destructive behavior carried out in secret generally
goes unnoticed. Though some child or adolescent victims may call attention to
themselves through aggressive or delinquent behavior, most are able successfully to
conceal the extent of their psychological difficulties. Most abused children reach
adulthood with their secrets intact.
(...)
Many abused children cling to the hope that growing up will bring escape and
freedom. But 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. She approaches the tasks of early adulthood—establishing
independence and intimacy—burdened by major impairments in self-care, in cognition
and memory, in identity, and in the capacity to form stable relationships. She is still a
prisoner of her childhood; attempting to create a new life, she reencounters the trauma.
The survivor’s intimate relationships are driven by the hunger for protection and
care and are haunted by the fear of abandonment or exploitation. In a quest for rescue,
she may seek out powerful authority figures who seem to offer the promise of a special
caretaking relationship. By idealizing the person to whom she becomes attached, she
attempts to keep at bay the constant fear of being either dominated or betrayed.
Inevitably, however, the chosen person fails to live up to her fantastic
expectations. When disappointed, she may furiously denigrate the same person whom
she so recently adored. Ordinary interpersonal conflicts may provoke intense anxiety,
depression, or rage. In the mind of the survivor, even minor slights evoke past
experiences of callous neglect, and minor hurts evoke past experiences of deliberate
cruelty. These distortions are not easily corrected by experience, since the survivor tends
to lack the verbal and social skills for resolving conflict. Thus the survivor develops a
pattern of intense, unstable relationships, repeatedly enacting dramas of rescue,
injustice, and betrayal.
Almost inevitably, the survivor has great difficulty protecting herself in the context
of intimate relationships. Her desperate longing for nurturance and care makes it difficult
to establish safe and appropriate boundaries with others. Her tendency to denigrate
herself and to idealize those to whom she becomes attached further clouds her
judgment. Her empathic attunement to the wishes of others and her automatic, often
unconscious habits of obedience also make her vulnerable to anyone in a position of
power or authority. Her dissociative defensive style makes it difficult for her to form
conscious and accurate assessments of danger. And her wish to relive the dangerous
situation and make it come out right may lead her into reenactments of the abuse. For all
of these reasons, the adult survivor is at great risk of repeated victimization in adult life.
THE CORE EXPERIENCES of psychological trauma are disempowerment and
disconnection from others. Recovery, therefore, is based upon the empowerment of the
survivor and the creation of new connections. Recovery can take place only within the
context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. In her renewed connections with
other people, the survivor re-creates the psychological faculties that were damaged or
deformed by the traumatic experience. These faculties include the basic capacities for
trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy. Just as these capabilities
are originally formed in relationships with other people, they must be reformed in such
relationships.
The first principle of recovery is the empowerment of the survivor. She must be
the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance,
affection, and care, but not cure.
RECOVERY UNFOLDS IN THREE STAGES:
- The central task of the first stage is the establishment of safety.
- The central task of the second stage is remembrance and mourning.
- The central task of the third stage is reconnection with ordinary life.
Like any abstract concept, these stages of recovery are a convenient fiction, not to be taken too
literally. They are an attempt to impose simplicity and order upon a process that is
inherently turbulent and complex.
SAFETY
Survivors feel unsafe in their bodies. Their emotions and their thinking feel out of
control. They also feel unsafe in relation to other people.
Establishing safety begins by focusing on control of the body and gradually
moves outward toward control of the environment. Issues of bodily integrity include
attention to basic health needs, regulation of bodily functions such as sleep, eating, and
exercise, management of post-traumatic symptoms, and control of self-destructive
behaviors. Environmental issues include the establishment of a safe living situation,
financial security, mobility, and a plan for self-protection that encompasses the full range
of the patient’s daily life. Because no one can establish a safe environment alone, the
task of developing an adequate safety plan always includes a component of social
support.
The survivor’s relationships with other people tend to oscillate between extremes
as she attempts to establish a sense of safety. She may seek to surround herself with
people at all times, or she may isolate herself completely. In general, she should be
encouraged to turn to others for support, but considerable care must be taken to ensure
that she chooses people whom she can trust. Family members, lovers, and close friends
may be of immeasurable help; they may also interfere with recovery or may themselves
be dangerous. An initial evaluation of the traumatized person includes a careful review of
the important relationships in her life, assessing each as a potential source of protection,
emotional support, or practical help, and also as a potential source of danger.
Establishing a safe environment requires not only the mobilization of caring
people but also the development of a plan for future protection. In the aftermath of the
trauma, the survivor must assess the degree of continued threat and decide what sort of
precautions are necessary. She must also decide what actions she wishes to take
against her attacker. Since the best course of action is rarely obvious, decision-making
in these matters may be particularly stressful for the survivor and those who care for her.
She may feel confused and ambivalent herself and may find her ambivalence reflected
in the contradictory opinions of friends, lovers, of family.
The guarantee of safety in a battering relationship can never be based upon a
promise from the perpetrator, no matter how heartfelt. Rather, it must be based upon the
self-protective capability of the victim. Until the victim has developed a detailed and
realistic contingency plan and has demonstrated her ability to carry it out, she remains in
danger of repeated abuse.(...) Like battered women, adult survivors of chronic abuse in childhood are often still entangled in complicated relationships with their abusers.
The survivor may wish to put the experience out of mind for a while and get on with her life. And she may succeed in doing so for a time. Nowhere is it written that the recovery process must follow a linear, uninterrupted sequence. But traumatic events ultimately refuse to be put away. At some
point the memory of the trauma is bound to return, demanding attention. Often the
precipitant is a significant reminder of the trauma—an anniversary, for instance—or a
change in the survivor’s life circumstances that brings her back to the unfinished work of
integrating the traumatic experience. She is then ready to embark upon the second
stage of recovery.
REMEMBRANCE AND MORNING
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. The basic principle of empowerment continues to apply during the second stage of recovery. The choice to confront the horrors of the past rests with the survivor.The next step is to reconstruct the traumatic event as a recitation of fact. Out of the fragmented components of frozen imagery and sensation.
The narrative includes not only the event itself but also the survivor’s response to it and the responses of the important people in her life. As the narrative closes in on the most unbearable moments, the patient finds it more and more difficult to use words. A narrative that does not include the traumatic imagery and bodily sensations is barren and incomplete. The ultimate goal, however, is to put the story, including its imagery, into words.
The recitation of facts without the accompanying emotions is a sterile exercise,
without therapeutic effect. She must reconstruct not only what happened but also what she felt.
The description of emotional states must be as painstakingly detailed as the description
of facts. She is not simply describing what she felt in the past but is reliving those feelings
in the present.
Reconstructing the trauma story also includes a systematic review of the
meaning of the event, both to the patient and to the important people in her life. The
traumatic event challenges an ordinary person to become a theologian, a philosopher,
and a jurist. The survivor is called upon to articulate the values and beliefs that she once
held and that the trauma destroyed. She stands mute before the emptiness of evil,
feeling the insufficiency of any known system of explanation. Survivors of atrocity of
every age and every culture come to a point in their testimony where all questions are
reduced to one, spoken more in bewilderment than in outrage:
Why? The answer is beyond human understanding.
Beyond this unfathomable question, the survivor confronts another, equally
incomprehensible question:
Why me?
The arbitrary, random quality of her fate defies the basic human faith in a just or even predictable world order. In order to develop a full understanding of the trauma story, the survivor must examine the moral questions of guilt and responsibility and reconstruct a system of belief that makes sense of her
undeserved suffering. Finally, the survivor cannot reconstruct a sense of meaning by the
exercise of thought alone. The remedy for injustice also requires action. The survivor
must decide what is to be done.
As the survivor attempts to resolve these questions, she often comes into conflict
with important people in her life. There is a rupture in her sense of belonging within a
shared system of belief. Thus she faces a double task: not only must she rebuild her
own “shattered assumptions” about meaning, order, and justice in the world but she
must also find a way to resolve her differences with those whose beliefs she can no
longer share.
The revenge fantasy is often a mirror image of the traumatic memory, in which
the roles of perpetrator and victim are reversed. It often has the same grotesque, frozen,
and wordless quality as the traumatic memory itself. The revenge fantasy is one form of
the wish for catharsis. The victim imagines that she can get rid of the terror, shame, and
pain of the trauma by retaliating against the perpetrator. The desire for revenge also
arises out of the experience of complete helplessness. In her humiliated fury, the victim
imagines that revenge is the only way to restore her own sense of power. She may also
imagine that this is the only way to force the perpetrator to acknowledge the harm he
has done her.
Though the traumatized person imagines, that revenge will bring relief, repetitive
revenge fantasies actually increase her torment. Violent, graphic revenge fantasies may
be as arousing, frightening, and intrusive as images of the original trauma. They
exacerbate the victim’s feelings of horror and degrade her image of herself. They make
her feel like a monster. They are also highly frustrating, since revenge can never change
or compensate for the harm that was done.
During the process of mourning, the survivor must come to terms with the impossibility of getting even. As she vents her rage in safety, her helpless fury gradually changes into a more powerful and satisfying form of anger: righteous indignation. This transformation allows the survivor to free herself from the prison of the revenge fantasy, in which she is alone with the perpetrator. It offers her a way to regain a sense of power without becoming a criminal herself. Giving up the fantasy of revenge does not mean giving up the quest for justice; on the contrary, it begins the process of joining with others to hold the perpetrator accountable for his crimes.
Revolted by the fantasy of revenge, some survivors attempt to bypass their
outrage altogether through a fantasy of forgiveness. This fantasy, like its polar opposite,
is an attempt at empowerment. The survivor imagines that she can transcend her rage
and erase the impact of the trauma through a willed, defiant act of love. But it is not
possible to exorcise the trauma, through either hatred or love. Like revenge, the fantasy
of forgiveness often becomes a cruel torture, because it remains out of reach for most
ordinary human beings. Folk wisdom recognizes that to forgive is divine. And even divine
forgiveness, in most religious systems, is not unconditional. True forgiveness cannot be
granted until the perpetrator has sought and earned it through confession, repentance,
and restitution.
Genuine contrition in a perpetrator is a rare miracle. Fortunately, the survivor
does not need to wait for it. Her healing depends on the discovery of restorative love in
her own life; it does not require that this love be extended to the perpetrator. Once the
survivor has mourned the traumatic event, she may be surprised to discover how
uninteresting the perpetrator has become to her and how little concern she feels for his
fate. She may even feel sorrow and compassion for him, but this disengaged feeling is
not the same as forgiveness.
The fantasy of compensation, like the fantasies of revenge and forgiveness, often
becomes a formidable impediment to mourning. Part of the problem is the very
legitimacy of the desire for compensation. Because an injustice has been done to her,
the survivor naturally feels entitled to some form of compensation. The quest for fair
compensation is often an important part of recovery. However, it also presents a
potential trap. Prolonged, fruitless struggles to wrest compensation from the perpetrator
or from others may represent a defense against facing the full reality of what was lost.
Mourning is the only way to give due honor to loss; there is no adequate compensation.
The fantasy of compensation is often fueled by the desire for a victory over the
perpetrator that erases the humiliation of the trauma. When the compensation fantasy is
explored in detail, it usually includes psychological components that mean more to the
patient than any material gain. The compensation may represent an acknowledgment of
harm, an apology, or a public humiliation of the perpetrator. Though the fantasy is about
empowerment, in reality the struggle for compensation ties the patient’s fate to that of
the perpetrator and holds her recovery hostage to his whims. Paradoxically, the patient
may liberate herself from the perpetrator when she renounces the hope of getting any
compensation from him. As grieving progresses, the patient comes to envision a more
social, general, and abstract process of restitution, which permits her to pursue her just
claims without ceding any power over her present life to the perpetrator.
The childhood that was stolen from them is irreplaceable. They must mourn the loss of the foundation of basic trust, the belief in a good parent. As they come to recognize that they were not responsible for their fate, they confront the existential despair that they could not face in childhood.
The confrontation with despair brings with it, at least transiently, an increased risk
of suicide. In contrast to the impulsive self-destructiveness of the first stage of recovery,
the patient’s suicidality during this second stage may evolve from a calm, flat, apparently
rational decision to reject a world where such horrors are possible. Patients may engage
in sterile philosophical discussions about their right to choose suicide. It is imperative to
get beyond this intellectual defense and to engage the feelings and fantasies that fuel
the patient’s despair. Commonly the patient has the fantasy that she is already among
the dead, because her capacity for love has been destroyed. What sustains the patient
through this descent into despair is the smallest evidence of an ability to form loving
connections.
The reward of mourning is realized as the survivor sheds her evil, stigmatized identity and dares to hope for new relationships in which she no longer has anything to hide.
The reconstruction of the trauma is never entirely completed; new conflicts and
challenges at each new stage of the lifecycle will inevitably reawaken the trauma and
bring some new aspect of the experience to light. The major work of the second stage is
accomplished, however, when the patient reclaims her own history and feels renewed
hope and energy for engagement with life. Time starts to move again. When the “action
of telling a story” has come to its conclusion, the traumatic experience truly belongs to
the past. At this point, the survivor faces the tasks of rebuilding her life in the present and
pursuing her aspirations for the future.
RECONNECTION
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. Her relationships have been tested and forever changed by the
trauma; now she must develop new relationships. The old beliefs that gave meaning to
her life have been challenged; now she must find a new sustaining faith. These are the
tasks of the third stage of recovery. In accomplishing this work, the survivor reclaims her
world. Survivors whose personality has been shaped in the traumatic environment often
feel at this stage of recovery as though they are refugees entering a new country. For
political exiles, this may be literally true; but for many others, such as battered women or
survivors of childhood abuse, the psychological experience can only be compared to
immigration. They must build a new life within a radically different culture from the one
they have left behind. Emerging from an environment of total control, they feel
simultaneously the wonder and uncertainty of freedom. They speak of losing and
regaining the world.
The issues of the first stage of recovery are often revisited during the third. Once
again the survivor devotes energy to the care of her body, her immediate environment,
her material needs, and her relationships with others. But while in the first stage the goal
was simply to secure a defensive position of basic safety, by the third stage the survivor
is ready to engage more actively in the world. From her newly created safe base she can
now venture forth. She can establish an agenda. She can recover some of her
aspirations from the time before the trauma, or perhaps for the first time she can
discover her own ambitions.
Helplessness and isolation are the core experiences of psychological trauma.
Empowerment and reconnection are the core experiences of recovery. In the third stage
of recovery, the traumatized person recognizes that she has been a victim and
understands the effects of her victimization. Now she is ready to incorporate the lessons
of her traumatic experience into her life. She is ready to take concrete steps to increase
her sense of power and control, to protect herself against future danger, and to deepen
her alliances with those whom she has learned to trust. A survivor of childhood sexual
abuse describes her arrival at this stage: “I decided, ‘Okay, I’ve had enough of walking
around like I’d like to brutalize everyone who looks at me wrong. I don’t have to feel like
that any more.’ Then I thought, ‘How would I like to feel?’ I wanted to feel safe in the
world. I wanted to feel powerful. And so I focused on what was working in my life, in the
ways I was taking power in real-life situations.”
Taking power in real-life situations often involves a conscious choice to face
danger. By this stage of recovery, survivors understand that their post-traumatic
symptoms represent a pathological exaggeration of the normal responses to danger.
They are often keenly aware of their continued vulnerability to threats and reminders of
the trauma. Rather than passively accepting these reliving experiences, survivors may
choose actively to engage their fears. On one level, the choice to expose oneself to
danger can be understood as yet another reenactment of trauma. Like reenactment, this
choice is an attempt to master the traumatic experience; unlike reenactment, however, it
is undertaken consciously, in a planned and methodical manner, and is therefore far
more likely to succeed.
Beyond the confrontation with physical danger, survivors at this point often
reevaluate their characteristic ways of coping with social situations that may not be
overtly threatening but are nonetheless hostile or.subtly coercive. They may begin to
question previous assumptions that permitted them to acquiesce in socially condoned
violence or exploitation. Women question their traditional acceptance of a subordinate
role. Men question their traditional complicity in a hierarchy of dominance. Often these
assumptions and behaviors have been so ingrained that they have operated outside of
awareness. She came to realize that her stereotypically feminine attitudes and behavior put her at risk. She is able to revise her attitudes, including her automatic and unrealistic expectations that dominant others would feel guilty about exploiting her and then be motivated by guilt to be concerned and
tender.
It bears repeating that the survivor is free to examine aspects of her own
personality or behavior that rendered her vulnerable to exploitation only after it has been
clearly established that the perpetrator alone is responsible for the crime. A frank
exploration of the traumatized person’s weaknesses and mistakes can be undertaken
only in an environment that protects against shaming and harsh judgment. Otherwise, it
becomes simply another exercise in blaming the victim.
As survivors recognize their own socialized assumptions that rendered them
vulnerable to exploitation in the past, they may also identify sources of continued social
pressure that keep them confined in a victim role in the present. Just as they must
overcome their own fears and inner conflicts, they must also overcome these external
social pressures; otherwise, they will be continually subjected to symbolic repetitions of
the trauma in everyday life. Whereas in the first stage of recovery survivors deal with
social adversity mainly by retreating to a protected environment, in the third stage
survivors may wish to take the initiative in confronting others. It is at this point that
survivors are ready to reveal their secrets, to challenge the indifference or censure of
bystanders, and to accuse those who have abused them.
Survivors who grew up in abusive families have often cooperated for years with a
family rule of silence. In preserving the family secret, they carry the weight of a burden
that does not belong to them. At this point in their recovery, survivors may choose to
declare to their families that the rule of silence has been irrevocably broken. In so doing,
they renounce the burden of shame, guilt, and responsibility, and place this burden on
the perpetrator, where it properly belongs.
Family confrontations or disclosures can be highly empowering when they are
properly timed and well planned. They should not be undertaken until the survivor feels
ready to speak the truth as she knows it, without need for confirmation and without fear
of consequences. The power of the disclosure rests in the act of telling the truth; how the
family responds is immaterial.
At this point also the survivor can sometimes identify positive aspects of the self
that were forged in the traumatic experience, even while recognizing that any gain was
achieved at far too great a price. From a position of increased power in her present life,
the survivor comes to a deeper recognition of her powerlessness in the traumatic
situation and thus to a greater appreciation of her own adaptive resources. For example,
a survivor who used dissociation to cope with terror and helplessness may begin to
marvel at this extraordinary capacity of the mind. Though she developed this capacity as
a prisoner and may have become imprisoned by it as well, once she is free, she may
even learn to use her trance capability to enrich her present life rather than to escape
from it.
Compassion and respect for the traumatized, victim self join with a celebration of
the survivor self. As this stage of recovery is achieved, the survivor often feels a sense of
renewed pride. This healthy admiration of the self differs from the grandiose feeling of
specialness sometimes found in victimized people. The victim’s specialness
compensates for self-loathing and feelings of worthlessness. Always brittle, it admits of
no imperfection. Moreover, the victim’s specialness carries with it a feeling of difference
and isolation from others. By contrast, the survivor remains fully aware of her
ordinariness, her weaknesses, and her limitations, as well as her connection and
indebtedness to others. This awareness provides a balance, even as she rejoices in her
strengths.
RECONNECTING WITH OTHERS
By the third stage of recovery, the survivor has regained some capacity for
appropriate trust. She can once again feel trust in others when that trust is warranted,
she can withhold her trust when it is not warranted, and she knows how to distinguish
between the two situations. She has also regained the ability to feel autonomous while
remaining connected to others; she can maintain her own point of view and her own
boundaries while respecting those of others. She has begun to take more initiative in her
life and is in the process of creating a new identity. With others, she is now ready to risk
deepening her relationships. With peers, she can now seek mutual friendships that are
not based on performance, image, or maintenance of a false self. With lovers and family,
she is now ready for greater intimacy.
The deepening of connection is also apparent within the therapeutic relationship.
The therapeutic alliance now feels less intense, but more relaxed and secure. There is
room for more spontaneity and humor.
Because the survivor is focusing on issues of identity and intimacy, she often
feels at this stage as though she is in a second adolescence. The survivor who has
grown up in an abusive environment has in fact been denied a first adolescence and
often lacks the social skills that normally develop during this stage of life. The
awkwardness and self-consciousness that make normal adolescence tumultuous and
painful are often magnified in adult survivors, who may be exquisitely ashamed of their
“backwardness” in skills that other adults take for granted. Adolescent styles of coping
may also be prominent at this time. Just as adolescents giggle in order to ward off their
embarrassment, adult survivors may find in laughter an antidote to their shame. Just as
adolescents band together in tight friendships in order to risk exploring a wider world,
survivors may find themselves developing intense new loyalties as they rebuild their
lives.
As the trauma recedes into the past, it no longer represents a barrier to intimacy.
At this point, the survivor may be ready to devote her energy more fully to a relationship
with a partner. If she has not been involved in an intimate relationship, she may begin to
consider the possibility without feeling either dread or desperate need. If she has been
involved with a partner during the recovery process, she often becomes much more
aware of the ways in which her partner suffered from her preoccupation with the trauma.
At this point she can express her gratitude more freely and make amends when
necessary.
Finally, the deepening of intimacy brings the survivor into connection with the
next generation. Concern for the next generation is always linked to the question of
prevention. The survivor’s overriding fear is a repetition of the trauma; her goal is to
prevent a repetition at all costs.
“Never again!” is the survivor’s universal cry.
In earlier stages of recovery the survivor often avoids the unbearable thought of repetition by
shunning involvement with children. Or if the survivor is a parent, she may oscillate
between withdrawal and overprotectiveness with her children, just as she oscillates
between extremes in her other relationships.
In the third stage of recovery, as the survivor comes to terms with the meaning of
the trauma in her own life, she may also become more open to new forms of
engagement with children. If the survivor is a parent, she may come to recognize ways
in which the trauma experience has indirectly affected her children, and she may take
steps to rectify the situation. If she does not have children, she may begin to take a new
and broader interest in young people. She may even wish for the first time to bring
children into the world.
