Thinking - about chronic abuse, capativity, and trauma - the effect being controlled on the victim is too often quite misunderstood

By: Tom Cloyd (Reviewed: 2025-02-27:2037 Pacific Time (USA))

“Captivity” here is a very general term - anything from being a kidnap victim, a prisoner of war, or a child in an abusive family. The dynamics and effect the author is speaking of are seen universally in such situations.

This is an excerpt from Judith Herman, M.D.’s much acclaimed 1992 book Trauma and recovery. She was a Harvard psychiatrist who was a pioneer in emphasizing the importance of health care professionals’ knowing about and responding to psychological trauma. (See full book citation at page bottom.)

“Most people have no knowledge or understanding of the psychological changes of captivity. Social judgment of chronically traumatized people therefore tends to be extremely harsh. The chronically abused person’s apparent helplessness and passivity, her entrapment in the past, her intractable depression and somatic complaints, and her smoldering anger often frustrate the people closest to her. Moreover, if she has been coerced into betrayal of relationships, community loyalties, or moral values, she is frequently subjected to furious condemnation.

“Observers who have never experienced prolonged terror and who have no understanding of coercive methods of control presume that they would show greater courage and resistance than the victim in similar circumstances. Hence the common tendency to account for the victim’s behavior by seeking flaws in her personality or moral character. Prisoners of war who succumb to “brainwashing” are often treated as traitors.¹ Hostages who submit to their captors are often publicly excoriated. Sometimes survivors are treated more harshly than those who abused them. In the notorious case of Patricia Hearst, for instance, the hostage was tried for crimes committed under duress and received a longer prison sentence than her captors. Similarly, women who fail to escape from abusive relationships and those who prostitute themselves or betray their children under duress are subjected to extraordinary censure.

“The propensity to fault the character of the victim can be seen even in the case of politically organized mass murder. The aftermath of the Jews and their “complicity” in their fate. But the historian Lucy Dawid-Holocaust witnessed a protracted debate regarding the “passivity” of the Jews and their “complicity” in their fate. But the historian Lucy Dawidowicz points out that “complicity” and “cooperation” are terms that apply to situation of free choice. They do not have the same meaning in situations of captivity.”

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This excerpt is the beginning of Chapter 6 (pp. 114-115) of:

Herman, J. L. (1992). “Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence ; from domestic abuse to political terror” (2015 edition). Basic Books.

 

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