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Judith Lewis Herman Quotes

Recovery can only take place within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation.

Recovery can only take place within the context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation.

Judith Lewis Herman
Recovery, Isolation

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.

Judith Lewis Herman
Pain, Bystanders, Speak No Evil
Judith Lewis Herman (1997). “Trauma and Recovery”, p.7, Basic Books

In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure no one listens.

Judith Lewis Herman
Escaping, Order, Silence
Judith Lewis Herman (1997). “Trauma and Recovery”, p.8, Basic Books

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.

Judith Lewis Herman
Growing Up, Memories, Children

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.

Judith Lewis Herman
Self, Might, Return
Judith Lewis Herman (1997). “Trauma and Recovery”, p.35, Basic Books

The ordinary response to atrocities is to banish them from consciousness. Certain violations of the social compact are too terrible to utter aloud: this is the meaning of the word unspeakable.

Judith Lewis Herman
Atrocities, Ordinary, Consciousness
Judith Lewis Herman (1997). “Trauma and Recovery”, p.1, Basic Books

The conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.

Judith Lewis Herman
Events, Denial, Conflict
"Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - from Domestic Abuse to Political Terror". Book by Judith Lewis Herman, www.huffingtonpost.com. June 11, 1992.

The legal system is designed to protect men from the superior power of the state but not to protect women or children from the superior power of men. It therefore provides strong guarantees for the rights of the accused but essentially no guarantees for the rights of the victim. If one set out by design to devise a system for provoking intrusive post-traumatic symptoms, one could not do better than a court of law.

Judith Lewis Herman
Strong, Children, Men
Judith Lewis Herman (1992). “Trauma and recovery”, Basic Books

Over time as most people fail the survivor's exacting test of trustworthiness, she tends to withdraw from relationships. The isolation of the survivor thus persists even after she is free.

Judith Lewis Herman
People, Survivor, Tests
Judith Lewis Herman (1997). “Trauma and Recovery”, p.93, Basic Books

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.

Judith Lewis Herman
Self, Safety, Heartfelt
"Trauma and Recovery". Book by Judith Lewis Herman, 1992.

... in practice the standard for what constitutes rape is set not at the level of women's experience of violation but just above the level of coercion acceptable to men.

Judith Lewis Herman
Men, Practice, Levels
Judith Lewis Herman (1997). “Trauma and Recovery”, p.72, Basic Books

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