Unspeakable Truths and Happy Endings: Human Cruelty and the New Trauma Therapy
Posttraumatic stress disorder was not admitted into psychiatry's diagnostic manual until the early 1980s. Though it seems intuitive that trauma can cause psychic harm, other aspects of the disorder are very controversial. Coffey, a health and mental health journalist, brings an open mind to her examination of the problem. She intersperses horrific personal testimony with professional literature and her own reactions to stories of Nazi genocide, gang rape, incest, and other traumas. Coffey largely succeeds in her aim to empower survivors and to validate their histories as well as to help covictimized family and friends learn how to listen and cope with trauma's legacies. The author's analysis of the "false memory" debate is sound, and she writes convincingly about how Freud's early belief that actual childhood trauma caused mental illness was transformed into the Oedipal theory. Unfortunately, lengthy and graphic torture tales weaken the book's appeal to a nonprofessional audience. For comprehensive psychology collections; others can rely on Judith Lewis Herman's Trauma and Recovery (BasicBks., 1992), a more authoritative synthesis and self-help books covering specific types of trauma.?Antoinette Brinkman, Southwest Indiana Mental Health Ctr. Lib., EvansvilleCopyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc.