She Redefined Trauma. Then Trauma Redefined Her.

NYT HEALTH: She Redefined Trauma. Then Trauma Redefined Her.
By Ellen Barry
Section: Health
Source: New York Times
Published Date: April 24, 2023 at 03:00AM

Dr. Judith Herman, who helped launch the field of trauma studies, has returned to publishing after a long, mysterious ordeal.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — In the fall of 1994, the psychiatrist Dr. Judith Herman was at the height of her influence. Her book “Trauma and Recovery,” published two years earlier, had been hailed in The New York Times as “one of the most important psychiatric works to be published since Freud.”

Her research on sexual abuse in the white, working class city of Somerville, Mass., laid out a thesis that was, at the time, radical: that trauma can occur not only in the blind terror of combat, but quietly, within the four walls of a house, at the hands of a trusted person.

More than most areas of science, psychology has been driven by individual thinkers and communicators. So what happened to Dr. Herman — as arbitrary as it was — had consequences for the field. She was in a hotel ballroom, preparing to present her latest findings, when she tripped on the edge of a rug and smashed her kneecap.

“Just, wham,” she said. “Smack.”

On and off for more than two decades, Dr. Herman groped her way through a fog of chronic pain, undergoing repeated surgeries and, finally, falling back on painkillers. The trauma researchers who surrounded her in the Boston area moved on with their work, and the field of trauma studies swung toward neurobiology.

Read more: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/24/health/judith-herman-trauma.html