Trauma and Recovery - By Judith Lewis Herman

Traumatic event s destroy the ties that bind the individual and the community.  The solidarity of the group is the strongest protection in the fact of fear and despair and the strongest medicine for the traumatic experience. Trauma isolates, and the group returns and creates a feeling of belonging. Trauma stains and embarrasses; the group witnesses and approves. Trauma degrades the victim; the group elevates him. Trauma revokes the victim's humanity; the group restores it.  Again and again survivors tell in their testimony of the moment when the revelation of honest and natural kind-heartedness of another person restored the feeling of communication to its rightful place. Something that seemed irretrievably lost- trust, decency, courage - returns and is re-awakened in the face of common altruism.  The survivor who is reflected in the actions of others identifies and restores to himself that lost part of himself. At that moment, the return to the human collective begins.  When group solidarity and intimacy develop, that's the beginning of a complex process of reflection.  The more the participant gives of himself to others, the greater his capacity to take from them the gifts they offer him. Even though this sort of interaction can happen in any sort of human relationship, the group experience greatly intensifies this. This process has been described as spiraling adaptation. It occurs when the group expands the self-image of every one of its members and increases their capacity to receive from each other. Groups give not only an opportunity to create relationships of mutual interactions, but also the opportunity for group empowerment.  Members of the group see each other as similar and equal. Even though every one of them suffers, and is in need of help, each of them has something to contribute.  The groups demands and develops the strengths of each of its members. Accordingly, the group in its entirety is capable of withstanding and merging the traumatic experience that is greater than the experience of each of its members. Every member can partake in the collective resources in order to advance his own personal integration.

Evidence of the therapeutic potential of the group arises from the entire spectrum of victims. In one community study, women who had escaped battering relationships, named women's groups as the top source of effective help. The psychiatrists John Walker and James Nash, who deal with war veterans, report that many of their patients who got little out of individual psychotherapy, succeeded beautifully in a group. The sense of fraternity and group spirit nullified the feelings of suspicion and deep isolation of the war veterans. Yael Danieli confirms that the chances of recovery of Holocaust survivors are far better when the first therapy is group-oriented and not individual therapy. Richard Molke reports that when his refugee patients from East Asia were given group therapy with other victims in addition to individual therapy, there was a transition from therapeutic pessimism to optimism.

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