Troy Terwilliger’s Reviews > Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror > Status Update

“The most sophisticated epidemiological survey was conducted in the early 1980s by Diana Russell, a sociologist and human rights activist. Over 900 women, chosen by random sampling techniques, were interviewed in depth about their experiences of domestic violence and sexual exploitation. The results were horrifying. One woman in four had been raped. One woman in three had been sexually abused in childhood.”

Michael Norman: “When old soldiers from "good" wars are dragged from behind the curtain of myth and sentiment and brought into the light, they too seem to smolder with choler and alienation.... So we were angry. Our anger was old, atavistic. We were angry as all civilized men who have ever been sent to make murder in the name of virtue were angry.”

“The psychiatrists who pioneered these techniques understood that unburdening traumatic memories was not in itself sufficient to effect a lasting cure. Kardiner and Spiegel warned that although hypnosis could expedite the retrieval of traumatic memories, a simple cathartic experience by itself was useless.” (p.17)

Grinker and Spiegel used sodium amytal, a technique they called "narcosynthesis." As in the earlier work on hysteria, the focus of the "talking cure" for combat neurosis was on the recovery and cathartic reliving of traumatic memories, with all their attendant emotions of terror, rage, and grief.

Herman concludes that hysteria, combat neurosis, and domestic trauma are fundamentally the same condition—demonstrating that the study of trauma depends directly on supportive political movements (secular democracy, antiwar advocacy, and women's liberation) to survive without being forgotten again.

Epidemiological studies (such as Diana Russell's) revealed that 1 in 4 women had experienced rape and 1 in 3 had been sexually abused in childhood. Researchers like Ann Burgess and Lynda Holmstrom ("rape trauma syndrome") and Lenore Walker ("battered woman syndrome") showed that civilian survivors of sexual and domestic violence suffered from symptoms identical to those seen in combat veterans.

The Women's Liberation Movement of the 1970s brought interpersonal violence out of the private sphere through consciousness-raising groups and rape crisis centers. Feminist researchers redefined rape as a crime of violence and political control rather than a sexual act, highlighting that domestic and sexual abuse were pervasive cultural realities.

1970s, antiwar vets organized "rap groups" outside medical establishments to process their experiences and demand recognition for combat trauma. Veteran advocacy pressured the VA into creating Operation Outreach and funding studies on combat exposure. This movement resulted in the American Psych. Ass. formally defining Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in 1980, legitimizing decades of forgotten trauma research.

Early treatments using hypnosis or sodium amytal ("narcosynthesis") retrieved traumatic memories, but researchers like Kardiner, Spiegel, and Grinker emphasized that simple catharsis without cognitive integration was ineffective. Despite treating immediate symptoms to return 80% of psychiatric casualties to duty, long-term post-war care was neglected, allowing trauma knowledge to fade again after World War II ended.

Abram Kardiner highlighted the recurring tendency of psychiatry to forget past trauma research between wars. By WWII, researchers like Appel and Beebe proved that prolonged combat exposure (200–240 days) would break any soldier regardless of character, establishing that psychological breakdown is an inevitable response to extreme trauma.