Herman, Judith. Trauma and Recovery.

Basic Books, 1992.

Herman argues for a new category of diagnosis, which she calls “complex PTSD.”
Complex PTSD occurs for people who experience prolonged trauma, either as children or in
other situations, such as sexual slavery or being a prisoner of war. Complex PTSD can interfere
with actual developmental stages for children, and/or pile many different kinds of trauma on
top of one another over time. She responds to the previous notion that PTS occurs from a
single incident. In previous research and clinical treatment, ptsd was thought to mostly occur
for people who had experienced an event “outside the normal realm of everyday human
experiences:” a car wreck, a crime, the traumatic and sudden loss of a loved one. Herman
points out that for many people, “warfare” is a permanent state of existence where they live.
For others, such as those growing up in abusive households or cults, the ones who cause the
trauma are caregivers. Reviewing primary documents from many different kinds of trauma
survivors, as well as drawing from her own practice, Herman brings together both private and
public kinds of traumas. This book revolutionized thinking about trauma. Though Herman did
not manage to get CPTSD put into the DSM, many, many clinicians themselves do use the
schema that she laid out. It is crucial to my research because of her innovations in thinking
through trauma experiences for a wide variety of people.