Childhood trauma can affect adults throughout their lives. This book gives answers to adults who have had traumatic experiences as children on how to deal with your past and how to move forward. Treatment alternatives are also presented in the book. When children witness or experience sudden, shocking events, how do they assimilate the horror? Terr found they don’t simply forget and grow up unscathed. Evidence proves the trauma is recorded and repeatedly replayed by the mind. That these recurring images manifest themselves in different guises is especially intriguing in light of her speculation about repressed trauma in the work of Hitchcock, Stephen King and others. The stories here will break your heart, but Terr’s advice for aiding traumatized children can help counter the blows of a violent world. The author explores the dire effects of childhood trauma, defined here as “a single overwhelming experience or a series of overwhelming ordeals.” She focuses on the 1976 abduction of a group of children in Chowchilla, a California farm town, who were seized from a bus as they were returning from day camp. The author, who interviewed the victims soon after their release from the abandoned rock quarry where they were buried, and who continues to make periodic assessments of the children, analyzes their attendant losses in cognitive and emotive function. Expanding on her Chowchilla research, Terr discusses post-traumatic behavior patterns she discerns in the works of writers such as Poe, Hawthorne and Stephen King, and in the films of Ingmar Bergman. Written in an anecdotal format, the book is penetrating and illuminating.
Authors: Lenore Terr
Publishers: Basic Books
Date of Publication: 1990
No. of pages: 372