Terror within and without - John Bowlby Memorial Conference

As clinicians we want to further our understanding of work with adult clients who have experienced massive and cumulative psychic trauma to which there is no possible adaptive response strategy. This monograph of the 2008 John Bowlby Memorial Conference brings together papers by leading contributors to the field of attachment and trauma that explore the means by which individuals struggle to cope with exposure to war zones, both large scale conflicts and societal breakdown, and the domestic war zones where adults and children experience violence and sexual abuse. These papers seek to further our understanding of the intergenerational transmission of experiences of trauma, as in the examples of the Holocaust and slavery. In times where talk of terror is everywhere, psychotherapists offer a clinical perspective on terror which may translate to the world at large.