The title for this review is a fitting quotation from William Faulkner for the topic of this book. In "Denial: A Memoir of Terror", Jessica Stern reviews her personal motivations for becoming a highly respected expert on international terrorism. Although her academic career began as a bench chemist, her fascination with the weapons of terror, and ultimately the motivation of terrorists, lead her to complete a doctorate in public policy. She describes becoming curious as to her ability to interview terrorists, engaging them in a way to maximize revealing their inner motivations for the terror they seek to inflict.
What unfolds in this narrative is an intriguing and admittedly harrowing account of the latter part of Dr. Stern's childhood, beginning with the rape of herself and her sister by a stranger in the early 1970s when they were in their early teens. On account of this incident, the memoir focuses on many "whys": Why did this rapist terrorize young women and girls and why did he ritualize the act; why did her father not return immediately from Europe upon hearing of the event; why did the police not connect the details of the rape to ultimately 40 others with the same MO; and why despite decades in a professional career did the incident appear to be affecting Stern's ability to lead an emotionally satisfying life? With the help of therapy, interviews with her father and those connected to the rapist, and a veteran of the Iraq war, Stern begins to accept that many of her symptoms and motivations derive from the rape and the denial by herself and those around her of the impact of these colluding factors. Through her analysis, Stern begins to realize the importance of shame and humiliation in the production of not only those who terrorize, but also potentially those complicitous in being terrorized. In this regard, written as a memoir, "Denial" represents a powerful self-revelation of the impact of traumatic events, and their acceptance or non-acceptance by caregivers and loved ones, on emotional functioning later in life.
And yet......
And yet I was dismayed with certain aspects of the work. Granted a memoir is not a scientific treatise and one cannot expect it to be organized as such. Still, Dr. Stern does use references at certain points in the book, but omits references or even the crediting of others for insights not uniquely her own. For example, she boldly states a hypothesis of hers that humiliation is the well-spring from which savagery emerges. Even a cursory review of this topic indicates the quite common number of authors and literary works that would agree with this hypothesis and have formulated it previously. In particular, Drs. Arno Gruen and Alice Miller have written extensively on the links between humiliation/shame as the force behind the Nazis in Germany and this root message similarly comes through in the recent Cannes-awarded film, Das Weisse Band (The White Ribbon). A nonacademic writer producing a memoir that included such a revelation might be excused of such omissions, but not one with the credentials and resources of the author. Secondly, Dr. Stern repeatedly denigrates work done in the psychological fields by reducing, wholesale, their findings to 'psychobabble'. Indeed, she outright states that her motivation for interviewing a soldier with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) was due to her mistrust of the diagnosis of her own symptoms from a therapist. In this regard, I found her arrogance to be quite similar to that of her father's, who repeatedly reminded his daughters not to be "candy-assed" and further to feel superior to those around them. Those such as Dr. Frank Putnam who have worked much with PTSD symptoms in rape victims hopefully will overlook the omission of their work.
Finally, and most intriguingly, Dr. Stern focuses the bulk of her memoir on her rape, her rapist and the investigation surrounding it, and her father's reaction (or lack thereof) to the incident. This is noteworthy for the fact that it is presented against a backdrop of hints by the author that she was sexually abused possibly by the time she was 3 years old, and clearly emotionally maltreated for much of her youth. What I found myself sensing was that I was reading a case of "layers of denial". In this case, the denial that Dr. Stern is confronting head on is that erected by her father, the police, and others who invalidated the impact of her rape. Focus on this this denial, however, allows a second denial to remain intact; one that potentially occurred over many years, with no police...indeed no one.... to whom this could be revealed and which was perpetrated by a loved one(s). Such contrasting sources and durations of childhood abuse, and their relative impacts, are discussed thoroughly by the likes of Dr. Jennifer Freyd with her Betrayal Trauma hypothesis, but there are others as well.
In the end, "Denial" is nevertheless a bold work and the author can be commended on choosing this approach to her memoir. I certainly hope that it has provided some measure of resolution and healing in Dr. Stern. In a culture where denial drives our daily lives, it is one more story revealing the prison in which such dark secrets lock away those maltreated during their childhoods. We can only hope such revelations eventually lead to larger cultural changes for the better....indeed the future.... of humanity and the planet.
