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Judith Lewis Herman (born 1942) is a psychiatrist, researcher, and author. She is Professor of Clinical Psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School and Director of Training at the Victims of Violence Program in the Department of Psychiatry at the Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Her work has had a profound and widespread influence in the contemporary understanding and treatment of victims of incest, child sexual abuse, domestic violence, war, torture, and other forms of what she has called "subjection to totalitarian control." Examples of this concept include:

...hostages, prisoners of war, concentration-camp survivors, and survivors of some religious cults. Examples also include those subjected to totalitarian systems in sexual and domestic life, including survivors of domestic battering, childhood physical or sexual abuse, and organized sexual exploitation.

Perhaps her most distinctive contribution to the understanding of these conditions and their victims is the concept of complex post-traumatic stress disorder, which extends the diagnostic category post-traumatic stress disorder — a diagnosis that "accurately describes the symptoms that result when a person experiences a short-lived trauma. For example, car accidents, natural disasters, and rape" — to include "the syndrome that follows upon prolonged, repeated trauma."

Herman is the author of two books, Father Daughter Incest, first published in 1981,and Trauma and Recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror, first published in 1992. It was in Trauma and Recovery that she coined the term complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

Trauma and Recovery is considered a classic and ground-breaking work. It remains widely influential.

Bibliography

• Herman, Judith Lewis (1997). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books. ISBN 0465087302.
• Herman, Judith Lewis (2000). Father-Daughter Incest ((Previous ed.: 1981) ed.). Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674002709.

Footnotes

1. Herman, Judith Lewis (1997). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books. {{cite book}}: Text "P. 121" ignored (help)
2. Whealin,Ph.D., Julia M.; Slone,Ph.D., Laurie (2007-05-22). "National Center for PTSD Fact Sheet: Complex PTSD". National Center for PTSD, Department of Veterans Affairs. Retrieved 2008-03-15. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
3. Herman, Judith Lewis (1997). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror. Basic Books. {{cite book}}: Text "P. 119" ignored (help)
4. http://www.amazon.com/Trauma-Recovery-Judith-Lewis-Herman/dp/0863584306

External Links

• Interview with Dr. Judith Lewis Herman, Conversations with History: Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley (transcript and no-cost podcast)

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