Uwe Jacobs, Ph.D. is a psychologist and Director of Survivors International a non-profit organization dedicated to providing essential psychological and medical services to survivors of torture who have fled from around the world to the San Francisco Bay Area. Survivors International aims to help survivors put the pieces back together by providing the support they need to re-establish healthy and productive lives after their experiences of torture. Since 1990, Survivors International has provided treatment to over 2000 survivors from 96 countries, treating an average of 25 to 35 patients a week. These services are available through the SI’s growing network of providers which include physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, and volunteers. Currently there are over 41 staff clinicians who provide services free or at a minimal fee. Survivors International is one of the original members of the National Consortium of Torture Treatment Centers in the U.S. This consortium allows the development of dialogue between the 20 + torture treatment centers in the United States, and the pooling of organizational and clinical ideas among these organizations. We close with the podsafe tune “Peace- In the Spirit of John Lennon” by Brad Stanfield.
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I found this show very interesting, is it possible that you could do a more in depth show about maybe a particular type of trauma experienced by victims and discuss symptoms that victims exhibit.
Since reading Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet On The Western Front” I was always interested in psychological trauma. Remarque writes that his protagonist still felt the war inside himself even when the war was already over. For him the war was still going on, no matter how the circumstances had changed on the outside. I was flabbergasted. How could this be?
Also I could relate to this kind of feeling. Not as severe as Remarque described it, but still. A feeling of “not being at home in the world” anymore, that’s how the title of a tv documentary names it.
So I searched for a nonfictional book about this topic. And I found “Traume and Recovery” by Judith Herman, M.D. and suddenly all made sense… I could find myself in very many symptoms of PTSD and this was an immense relief for me….
Allthough there are many other books about PTSD on the market now, I still deem Herman’s book as one of the most important, readable (for the layman) and empathic books about Trauma.
Maybe it’s not a coincidence that the New York Times wrote about this book: “One of the most important psychiatric works to be published since Freud.”
Quite a high praise, huh? 🙂 But very well earned IMHO.
Reinhard from Austria