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Paul Valent, retired medical doctor, psychiatrist, psychotherapist and traumatologist, describes the struggles and discoveries in his varied four-decade career. Each chapter offers a glimpse into the psychotherapeutic encounter, from the author's field work with survivors of the Ash Wednesday bushfires, to the private challenges of unearthing ch...

Violence is the plague of our civilization. Its many tentacles – domestic violence, criminal violence, sexual abuse, terrorism, state violence, revolution, war and genocide tentacles – threaten us. The new discipline of traumatology amply describes the consequences of violence. But there is as yet no corresponding discipline of violentology to explain why violence occurs in the first place. Inexorably, Paul Valent was drawn professionally to take the leap from healing the minds of victims to trying to understand the minds of perpetrators. Valent unpicks the minds of perpetrators in each field of violence. He develops a lens for illuminating violence, whether individual or international, primitive or spiritual. We come to understand how aggressions that helped our species to survive now threaten it with extinction. Valent explains his thesis by recounting many stories. One story interwoven throughout is his own. A child who survived the Holocaust, he examines the minds of his perpetrators in his quest to prevent future violence. Violence, for Valent, is not an isolated feature of the human condition. Surprisingly close to violence are struggles for love. Readers also learn about that aspect of humanity.

At the end of the Second World War approximately 1.5 million Jewish children had been killed by the Nazis. In this book, ten child survivors tell their stories. Paul Valent, himself a child survivor and psychiatrist, explores with profound analytical insight the deepest memories of those survivors he interviewed. Their experiences range from living in hiding to physical and sexual abuse. Child Survivors of the Holocaust preserves and integrates the personal narratives and the therapist's perspective in an amazing chronicle. The stories in this book contribute to questions concerning the roots of morality, memory, resilience, and specifc scientific queries of the origins of psychosomatic symptoms, psychiatric illness, and trans-generational transmission of trauma. Child Survivors of the Holocaust speaks to the trauma facing contemporary child victims of abuse worldwide through past narratives of the Holocaust.

First published in 1998. Paul Valent sees that the dialectic is not between "life and death" but between "life and trauma". This text theorizes that the big issues of life can now be approached through the science of traumatology. Through communication with, and observation of, people whose lives have been stretched under stress or disrupted by trauma, the fulfilling components of their lives can be defined, oriented and categorized. It introduces the theory on the back of clinical and historical material, examining the current state of such concepts as stress, trauma, defences, memories, post post-traumatic stress disorder, and other illnesses. It should be of interest to those in the healing professions or to those who work with traumatized individuals, lawyers, social workers, clergy and those in the humanities in general.

PAMPHLETEER Series No 7 ‘The pandemic threw our world up in the air. We deal with the immediacy of survival. We try to orientate ourselves, but our minds are in a fog. We are captured by many feelings and sensations …’ The purpose of this book is to help us make sense of the very wide mental health effects of this pandemic, and thereby to relieve distress and fashion a better future. Paul Valent is an internationally renowned traumatologist with a background in Medicine, Psychiatry and Psychotherapy.

People frequently say that the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented. Yet from a bird’s eye point of view it has similarities with other pandemics, even other illnesses, and with other stresses and traumas. In fact, each situation of stress and trauma illuminates all the others. People frequently say that the COVID-19 pandemic is unprecedented. Yet from a bird’s eye point of view it has similarities with other pandemics, even other illnesses, and with other stresses and traumas. In fact, each situation of stress and trauma illuminates all the others. We are on the cusp of a science of stress and trauma. In this book we indicate how the current pandemic interweaves with that science, both benefiting and contributing to it. In other words, though in this pandemic each person and community feel that their sufferings are unique, in fact they overlap with other areas of suffering that can provide benefit to our collective wisdom. In this book two scientists from different parts of the world have come together to meld their knowledge of stress and trauma and apply it, together with their current observations, to understanding of the pandemic. Reciprocally, because all traumatic situations overlap, lessons from the pandemic will benefit other situations of stress and trauma. Thus the contents of this book are relevant to every traumatic situation. The book is laid out in the following. Chapter 1 considers previous traumatic situations, while chapter 2 compares them with the pandemic. Chapter 3 introduces stress and trauma terms and applies them to the pandemic. Chapters 4-6 explore the range of stress and trauma processes and consequences all the way from cellular to international levels. Chapter 7 explores the dialectic between death and resilience, while chapter 8 summarises the previous chapters. Finally, chapter 9 applies stress and trauma understanding to amelioration and treatment of COVID-19 consequences.

Trauma results in a wide variety of human unhappiness. In parallel, treatment of the consequences of trauma ranges from drugs, to single session psychological techniques, to management and cognitive therapies, to psychotherapies which take years. Some therapies deal with individuals, others with groups, some with children, and others with adults. With such a multiplicity of options, it can be difficult to make sense of the variety of manifestations and treatments. This work aims to clarify the situation by offering tools to conceptualize and treat a range of symptoms and illnesses, and to replace them with equally well conceptualized fulfillment alternatives. It is geared towards traumatologists, psychologists, counsellors, and social workers who help those who have suffered assault, bereavement, sexual abuse, or disasters. Upper level undergraduates students, graduate students and professors in trauma, loss, and bereavement.

First published in 1998. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

An anthology consisting of 12 child survivors' Holocaust recollections, the impact on their lives and accomplishments after rebuilding their lives