Judith Lewis Herman is a psychiatrist, researcher, teacher, and author who has focused on the understanding and treatment of incest

Incest

Incest is sexual intercourse between close relatives that is usually illegal in the jurisdiction where it takes place and/or is conventionally considered a taboo. The term may apply to sexual activities between: individuals of close "blood relationship"; members of the same household; step...

 and traumatic stress

Traumatic stress

Traumatic Stress is a commonly used term describing reactive anxiety . It is not a medical term and is not included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders . What is popularly referred to as Traumatic Stress is covered in DSM-IV by Adjustment Disorders...

.

Herman is Professor of clinical psychiatry at Harvard University Medical School and Director of Training at the Victims of Violence Program in the Department of Psychiatry at the Cambridge Health Alliance

Cambridge Health Alliance

Cambridge Health Alliance is a healthcare system in Cambridge, Somerville, and Boston, Massachusetts' metro-north communities and one of the academic teaching hospitals of Harvard Medical School....

 in Cambridge

Cambridge

The city of Cambridge is a university town and the administrative centre of the county of Cambridgeshire, England. It lies in East Anglia about north of London. Cambridge is at the heart of the high-technology centre known as Silicon Fen – a play on Silicon Valley and the fens surrounding the...

, Massachusetts

Massachusetts

The Commonwealth of Massachusetts is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. It is bordered by Rhode Island and Connecticut to the south, New York to the west, and Vermont and New Hampshire to the north; at its east lies the Atlantic Ocean. As of the 2010...

, and a founding member of the Women’s Mental Health Collective.

She was the recipient of the 1996 Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies

International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies

International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies, , was established on March 2, 1985 in Washington, D.C. for professionals to share information about the effects of trauma...

 and the 2000 Woman in Science Award from the American Medical Women's Association

American Medical Women's Association

The American Medical Women's Association is a professional advocacy and educational organization of women physicians and medical students. Founded in 1915 by Bertha VanHoosen, the AMWA works to advance women in medicine and to serve as a voice for women's health...

. In 2003 she was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association

American Psychiatric Association

The American Psychiatric Association is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the most influential worldwide. Its some 38,000 members are mainly American but some are international...

.

Career

Perhaps her most distinctive contribution to the understanding of trauma and its victims is the concept of complex post-traumatic stress disorder

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder

Complex post-traumatic stress disorder is a psychological injury that results from protracted exposure to prolonged social and/or interpersonal trauma with lack or loss of control, disempowerment, and in the context of either captivity or entrapment, i.e. the lack of a viable escape route for the...

 (CPTSD), which extends the diagnostic category post-traumatic stress disorder

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Posttraumaticstress disorder is a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma. This event may involve the threat of death to oneself or to someone else, or to one's own or someone else's physical, sexual, or psychological integrity,...

 (PTSD) — a diagnosis

Diagnosis

Diagnosis is the identification of the nature and cause of anything. Diagnosis is used in many different disciplines with variations in the use of logics, analytics, and experience to determine the cause and effect relationships...

 that, according to the United States Veterans Administration's Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, "accurately describes the symptom

Symptom

A symptom is a departure from normal function or feeling which is noticed by a patient, indicating the presence of disease or abnormality...

s that result when a person experiences a short-lived trauma

Psychological trauma

Psychological trauma is a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a traumatic event...

" — to include "the syndrome that follows upon prolonged, repeated trauma."

It was in Herman's second book Trauma and Recovery that she coined the term complex post-traumatic stress disorder. Herman was interviewed by Harry Kreisler, Executive Director of the Institute of International Studies at the University of California at Berkeley, for his ongoing series Conversations with History at the Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley.

Articles

• Dutra L, Callahan K, Forman E, Mendelsohn M, Herman J. Core schemas and suicidality in a chronically traumatized population. J Nerv Ment Dis. 2008 Jan; 196(1):71-4.
• Herman JL. Justice from the victim's perspective. Violence Against Women. 2005 May; 11(5):571-602.
• Herman JL. The mental health of crime victims: impact of legal intervention. J Trauma Stress. 2003 Apr; 16(2):159-66.

Footnotes