Traumatic experiences and their consequences are often the core of life stories told by survivors of violence. In Trauma: Life Stories of Survivors leading academics explore the relationship between the experiences of terror and helplessness that have caused trauma, the ways in which survivors remember, and the representation of these memories in the language and form of their life stories.International case studies include the migration of Ethiopian Jews to Israel, the life stories of Guatemalan war widows, violence in South Africa, persecution of political prisoners in South Africa and the former Czechoslovakia, lynching in the Mississippi Delta, resistance in Zimbabwe's liberation war, sexual abuse, and the ongoing Irish troubles. The volume reveals the complexity of remembering and forgetting traumatic experiences, and shows that survivors are likely to express themselves in stories containing elements that are imaginary, fragmented, and loaded with symbolism. Trauma: Life Stories of Survivors is a groundbreaking work of relevance across the social sciences. This new perspective on trauma will be of particular importance to researchers in psychology, history, women's studies, anthropology, sociology and cultural studies.

In this volume leading academics explore the relationship between the experiences of terror and helplessness, the way in which survivors remember and the representation of these memories in the language and form of their life stories.

The Trauma Story is at the heart of the medical and mental health care of persons who have survived violence. Over the past 30 years the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma (HPRT) has cared for over 10,000 sufferers of extreme violence. HPRT through its scientific research has discovered the four major dimensions of the Trauma Story: 1) The "brutal" facts. 2) Cultural meaning of trauma. 3) Revelation. 4) Listener-Storyteller relationship that exist in all trauma narratives. The importance of the Trauma Story as an element of "self-healing" has also been revealed. The TSAT is a new journal approach for eliciting the trauma story and building on the survivor's resiliency. The TSAT allows the listener to enter into an empathic dialog and discover their implications of their story for healing. This approach emerged from the new book Healing Invisible Wounds: Path to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World. The TSAT can be used by all health care and mental health practitioners.

Exploring life writing from a variety of cultural contexts, Haunted Narratives provides new insights into how individuals and communities across time and space deal with traumatic experiences and haunting memories. From the perspectives of trauma theory, memory studies, gender studies, literary studies, philosophy, and post-colonial studies, the volume stresses the lingering, haunting presence of the past in the present. The contributors focus on the psychological, ethical, and representational difficulties involved in narrative negotiations of traumatic memories. Haunted Narratives focuses on life writing in the broadest sense of the term: biographies and autobiographies that deal with traumatic experiences, autobiographically inspired fictions on loss and trauma, and limit-cases that transcend clear-cut distinctions between the factual and the fictional. In discussing texts as diverse as Toni Morrison's Beloved, Vikram Seth's Two Lives, deportation narratives of Baltic women, Christa Wolf's Kindheitsmuster, Joy Kogawa's Obasan, and Ene Mihkelson's Ahasveeruse uni, the contributors add significantly to current debates on life writing, trauma, and memory; the contested notion of “cultural trauma”; and the transferability of clinical-psychological notions to the study of literature and culture.

This book addresses the multifaceted nature of trauma by bringing together the many theoretical perspectives that explain how people cope with traumatic life experiences. Practitioners working across the people professions frequently find themselves working with service users, patients and clients who are survivors of trauma. Ranging between attachment, person-centred and anti-oppressive approaches, this text will help students and practitioners widen their approaches to such clients' experiences. Whether you are a student or practitioner of counselling, social work or mental health, this book provides the foundations for understanding people's responses and resilience against traumatic life experiences.

Looking at the life stories of ex-drug misusers in their own words, this book offers insights into the nature of addiction and how it can be tackled. Etherington highlights the therapeutic value of listening to drug misusers' life stories and the importance of understanding how social environments and wider cultural influences shape people's lives.

This volume is filled with anecdotal examples of social work with individuals and groups in a variety of settings that include nonprofit agencies, child welfare services, and veteran's health care. Each story is followed by the author's personal and professional insights on how these experiences have informed her practice. She created this work in response to the need for undergraduate and graduate students to hear about real-life experiences working with traumatized clients and for new social workers experiencing the "baptism by fire" as they enter the profession. The author's main message to all social workers is that they can be more effective by getting "back to basics" and staying in touch with the core values of the profession. She notes that one of the most important services that social workers can provide is to be fully present in "witnessing the pain" of a traumatized client. She feels that the self-knowledge and compassion that emerge from this mindfulness make all the difference in working with clients who are overwhelmed by difficult circumstances.

First-person accounts by five PTSD survivors bring hope to the millions suffering from but not yet diagnosed with this affliction—and their loved ones. First-person accounts by five PTSD survivors bring hope to the millions suffering from but not yet diagnosed with this affliction--and their loved ones. Each year millions of people are afflicted by Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Most struggle to simply make it through the day as sights, sounds, and smells bring their life's most harrowing experience front and center, to be relived again and again. And many are unaware of the root problem of these symptoms or are unwilling to admit one exists.Through moving firsthand accounts 5 Survivors sheds an intimate light on the impact of PTSD on three veterans of war, a survivor of Hurricane Katrina, and a victim of childhood sexual abuse. With courage and honesty, they tell their stories of trauma, revealing the struggles they faced later in life, and how they eventually worked toward positive change and healing.With the guidance of PTSD expert and researcher Tracy Stecker, Ph.D. who outlines the symptoms and progress of each survivor, those living untreated with PTSD may see themselves in these stories, realize they are not alone, and take action to get help. Friends and family of those who have been greatly impacted by trauma will gain a more intimate understanding of a loved one's struggle and pain.About the author Tracy Stecker, Ph.D., is a psychologist at the Dartmouth Psychiatric Research Center. She developed a curriculum titled Using a Brief Intervention to Motivate Clients to Get Help in collaboration with Hazelden. Her focus is on treating veterans of Iraq and Afghanistan returning with PTSD and/or substance abuse issues. Several of these projects have been funded by the National Institute of Mental Health and the National Institute for Alcoholism and Alcohol Abuse.

The Politics of Trauma and Integrity uses the lenses of gender and trauma to tell the stories of narratives testified by two contrasting Japanese "comfort women" survivors. Through an innovative interdisciplinary study of the politics of gendered memory and trauma in historical context, with numerous primary sources for analysis including diaries, interviews, letters and oral testimonies, this book uncovers the life-or-death struggles of Japanese survivors in pursuit of public recognition as the victims of state violence against women. It is set within a gender history of modern Japan, supplemented by feminist activist methodology premised upon political agency that seeks social justice. The author’s analysis draws upon three key concepts: trauma, coherence of the self, and integrity. Focusing upon the role of gender and trauma as the nexus between memory construction and identity formation in modern Japan, the author reveals these women’s relentless quest for their recovery and creation of new identities. This book provides a better understanding of the victims of sexual violence and encourages readers to listen to the voice of trauma, as well as making a significant contribution to the existing research on the ongoing history of sexual violence against women in Japan, the rest of Asia and beyond. It will be of interest to scholars, researchers, activists and all who are interested in the issue of women’s human rights. It provides supplementary reading and research material for history and politics courses relating to Japan and East Asia, memory, identity, trauma, gender, war and feminist activism. This book will also be beneficial to victims of sexual violence as well as the counsellors/psychologists engaging with them.