Judith Lewis Herman

Judith Lewis Herman
Born	1942
Nationality	United States
Fields	Psychiatry
Known for	Research on complex post-traumatic stress disorder and incest

Judith Lewis Herman (born 1942) is a psychiatrist, researcher, teacher, and author who has focused on the understanding and treatment of incest and traumatic stress.

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 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, 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 and the 2000 Woman in Science Award from the American Medical Women's Association. In 2003 she was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association.

Career

Perhaps her most distinctive contribution to the understanding of trauma and its victims is the concept of complex post-traumatic stress disorder (CPTSD), which extends the diagnostic category post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) — a diagnosis that, according to the United States Veterans Administration's Center for Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, "accurately describes the symptoms that result when a person experiences a short-lived trauma"^[1] — to include "the syndrome that follows upon prolonged, repeated trauma."^[2]

It was in Herman's second book Trauma and Recovery that she coined the term complex post-traumatic stress disorder.^[3] 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.^[4]

Publications

Books

• Herman, Judith Lewis (1997). Trauma and recovery: The aftermath of violence from domestic abuse to political terror ((Previous ed.: 1992) ed.). Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-08730-2. 
• Herman, Judith Lewis (2000). Father-Daughter Incest ((Previous ed.: 1981) ed.). Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-00270-9. 

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