PAST APPROACHES

In the last two decades of the 20th century trauma increasingly was understood as a form of mental illness afflicting an individual following the overwhelming fright of an external violent event. Literature from this period examines processes of recovery in relationship to medical interventions. In 1980 in the face of mounting pressure from Vietnam veterans’ and sexual assault advocacy groups post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was included in the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manuel of Psychiatric Disorders (DSM) allowing diagnosis and treatment as well as legal recognition and in some cases compensation (Harms, 2015). As Suarez-Orozco & Robben, (2000) describe, the hegemony of the PTSD concept was so great that psychotherapeutic treatment of individuals in the two decades following its acknowledgement that collective manifestations of massive trauma were largely neglected. A normative shift took place regarding beliefs about trauma and victimization resulting in the almost universal acceptance of PTSD (Fassin and Rechtman, 2009). This shift placed trauma in the context of symptomology and a diagnosis, creating a value in the PTSD label albeit a condition from which one could recover. Beginning with Judith Herman M.D.’s Trauma and Recovery in 1992 the prevalence of societal trauma and need for healing even apart from PTSD symptomology in military veterans began to be recognized, but on an individual level. Herman’s (1992) research pronounced distinct effects on victims’ ‘sense of self’; loss of autonomy and control over their bodies; a sense of betrayal; and a breach of trust resulting in a withdrawal yet desperation for social intimacy. Literature regarding recovery, like the study of trauma, was individually focused. Theories of ‘post-traumatic growth’ were proposed to describe the unexpected positive outcomes of traumatic experiences included enhanced self-concepts and relationship with others and a sense of new possibilities (Tedeschi & Caloun, 1995 cited in Harms, 2015). One of the earliest conceptualizations of recovery from trauma stressed a continuum of post-trauma wellness from survival, to recovery and thriving (O’Leary & Ickovis, 1995 cited in Harms, 2015). Similarly, Werner and Smith (1992) developed a theory of resistance to characterize first children and later adults able to withstand traumatizing events without developing symptomology of mental disorders (as roughly 90% of people are); it is also used to mean unconscious buffers and resilience which sustains people through traumatic experiences (Werner & Smith, 1992 cited in Harms, 2015).