Judith Lewis Herman

Herman names disempowerment and disconnection as the core of the injury, so recovery rests on regaining power and building new connections. A good therapist or group can help a great deal. But the survivor stays in charge of her own recovery; no one can heal on someone else's behalf.

Herman describes three stages: establishing safety, remembrance and mourning, and reconnection with ordinary life. Going over the past before a person is safe and steady can make things worse, not better. The stages are not a straight line, and people often return to earlier ones as life changes.

In her account the first tasks are basic ones: sleep, food, movement and care for yourself. From there safety extends to your surroundings, such as a safe place to live, enough money and people you can rely on. It is slow, practical work, and it matters more than any insight.

Herman proposed the term complex post-traumatic stress disorder for people who lived through long periods of captivity or control, in situations they could not easily leave. She argued that the standard diagnosis, built around single events, missed the changes she saw in these survivors' sense of self and in their relationships.

The book's boldest move is to put combat veterans, survivors of domestic and sexual abuse, and political prisoners in one frame. Herman shows how much their responses have in common. In doing so she ties private suffering to public life.

Herman traces three times the study of trauma came to light: hysteria in the late nineteenth century, the trauma of combat after the world wars and Vietnam, and sexual and domestic violence with the women's movement. Each time, attention faded when the movement behind it lost strength.

Herman points out that the person who did harm asks bystanders only to do nothing, while the person harmed asks them to share the weight of what happened. Bearing witness is uncomfortable, which is why it is so often avoided. For someone recovering, being believed matters.

The second stage, remembrance and mourning, is about putting the story into words in a safe setting and grieving what was lost. Herman is clear that this happens with support, at the survivor's own pace, and only once safety is in place.

The third stage, reconnection, turns toward the future: new relationships, new routines and a sense of self that is not defined by what happened. Herman also describes the value of groups, where survivors find that they are not alone.