Truth and Repair: How Trauma Survivors Envision Justice

Herman (Trauma and Recovery), a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, delivers an incisive report on the links between patriarchy and gendered violence, and offers a plan for helping victims to heal and bringing perpetrators to justice. Drawing on testimony from survivors of childhood abuse, domestic violence, and other forms of trauma, Herman describes how abusers “break the will” of victims and deprive them of “agency” by isolating them from their friends and families and making them feel “repulsive.” Elsewhere, she describes patriarchy as the “most widespread and enduring form of tyranny,” detailing how it oppresses women in the domains of “production, reproduction, sex, and child rearing.” For Herman, justice and repair can only happen when survivors recognize “they are not alone, they have nothing to be ashamed of, and theirs is not a private misfortune.” She draws on Greek myth and social contract theory to suggest that “when a community rallies to the victim’s support, vengeful feelings are transformed into shared righteous indignation, which can be a powerful source of energy for repair,” and calls for society to dismantle “our most deeply embedded structures of oppression and to create new structures where everyone is respected, everyone is included, and everyone has a voice.” The result is a scrupulous and ardent call for change. (Mar.)