|
|
| De Amazon — TBR |
| THE RECKONING Our Nation's Trauma and Finding a Way To Heal Mary L. Trump, PhD New York: St. Martin's Press, August 2021 |
Rating: 4.5 High |
|||
| ISBN-13 978-1-250-27845-6 | ||||
| ISBN 1-250-27845-7 | 193pp. | HC | $28.99 | |
Mary Trump's previous book was all about her uncle Donald J. Trump and the trauma he wrought in his family, which he extended to the whole nation and the world when he became 45th president of the United States.1 Here she broadens her scope and looks at the nation's long-running traumas: the European genocide of Native Americans, and slavery and racial injustice. She also considers more transitory troubles like the COVID-19 pandemic. Her uncle played a part in all these traumas: he and his father, both racists, discriminated against Blacks in apartments they owned back in the 1970s; he presided over the Interior Department slashing the size of national monuments holding Native American burial sites; and he bungled the response to the coronavirus in 2020. He also thoroughly bollixed the federal government for his four years in the Oval Office, with eager assistance from Republicans in Congress.
Mary Trump approaches these traumas from her professional perspective as a clinical psychologist specializing in recovery from trauma. She argues that the massacres of Native Americans, the lynchings of Blacks, the takeover of government by corporate interests, and the rest must be faced rather than ignored. That necessarily requires White Americans to face the privileges their Caucasian race confers on them.2
In her final chapter, "Facing the Truth," she writes:
As we are learning too often these days, PTSD can last for the lifetime of the sufferer, and can blight that life as well as others close to it. But new discoveries in epigenetics raise the possibility that trauma suffered during one generation can propagate down the years, affecting generation after generation.
|
The diagnosis of complex PTSD is a potential consequence if an individual is repeatedly subjected to a trauma or "totalitarian control over a prolonged period," according to Judith Herman, in her seminal work, Trauma and Recovery. Dr. Joy DeGruy, a researcher and educator, has introduced the concept of post-traumatic slave syndrome, "a condition that exists when a population has experienced multigenerational trauma resulting from centuries of slavery and continues to experience oppression and institutional racism today." In addition to the traumatic fear of death enslaved people experienced every day of their lives, they were also subjected to spiritual abuse suffered when they lost their culture and were forbidden to practice their native religions; emotional abuse when forced to watch or participate in the abuse of other enslaved people or when separated from their families; psychological abuse resulting from the interdiction against literacy; sexual abuse in the form of rape or being forced to participate publicly in sexual acts; and physical abuse that took the form of whippings, beatings, and whatever creative tortures their "owners" could devise. The psychological and emotional impact of the totality of all of these abuses would have been incalculable. What would the effects be on the next generation and the generations to follow? The field of epigenetics suggests that trauma can so profoundly affect our bodies that genetic markers are "placed" on our DNA. In this way the effects of trauma we experience can be passed on to subsequent generations, creating, according to Rachel Yehuda, a professor of psychiatry with a specialty in epigenetics, a "predisposition rather than an inevitable outcome." They can also increase both an individual's vulnerability and resilience. Either way, as she puts it, our traumatic "experiences lodge physiologically" and the effects of trauma endure. – pages 95-96 |
Trauma can never be outrun, but it is a human impulse to try. We resist being stuck in one place because it makes it harder to avoid our feelings, and when we're running it's so much easier to pretend we don't have any. But during the pandemic, the one thing we needed most to do in order to save our lives and the lives of those we love was stay home. Being trapped in the place in which you're being traumatized is its own version of hell. *
* * The pull to forget is even stronger than the pull to run. Forgetting makes us complicit with the trauma we're trying to escape, and by ignoring the experience of it and, more important, the way the experience made us feel, a part of us, in some cases the most vital part of who we are, remains tethered to the past. By cutting ourselves off from that emotion we shut down access to the full range of who we are. But the price of release is steep, and it's so much easier to live our lives pretending we're whole. Judith Herman, in Trauma and Recovery, quotes a Vietnam vet who said, "If at the end of a war story you feel uplifted, or if you feel that some bit of rectitude has been salvaged from the larger waste, then you have been made the victim of a very old and terrible lie." It's remarkable how desperately we want to salvage that rectitude, as if the only way to give meaning to pain is to lie about it. It's counterproductive, of course, but it isn't just individuals who are motivated to forget. The desire to move on, especially after large-scale betrayals, is irresistible. As soon as the dust clears, the people in power tell us everything is fine; there is no need to look back. After all, what atrocities don't we want to put behind us? What crimes against humanity would we like to dredge up? There are as many reasons to forget as there are people on the planet—guilt, shame, agony, the desperate need to avoid pain or evade responsibility, or a personally tailored mix of those. But as seductive as it is, wiping out chapters in our history, individual or collective, leaves future generations vulnerable. We know this. Only remembering will heal us. Maybe it will even set us free. – Pages 159 & 161-162 |
The information Mary Trump provides in this book is accurate; the problems she describes are distressing, and the references she includes are valuable. All that said, I still feel she is too close to the problem to give us a truly objective analysis. And perhaps I should say "problems," for discussion of any one of them alone could fill a book. And indeed, such discussions have filled many books. And this book, at only 193 pages, can do little more than skim the surface. But skimming the surface is vital as a first step, and for such an urgent panoply of problems, must be taken soonest. For all these reasons I recommend The Reckoning as a must-read. A Bibliography of 91 references is provided, but there is no index. Therefore I don't consider it a keeper.
To contact Chris Winter, send email to this address.