Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World (Hardcover)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: experienced extreme violence, trauma story, traumatized persons, Khmer Rouge, Pol Pot, Neang Nee (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Mollica breaks with what he says is the conventional wisdom that torture victims are untreatable. In limpid prose, Mollica, director of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, celebrates instead "the capacity of persons to recover from violent events and to engage in self-healing." He explains how his clinic offers traumatized refugees to America housing, emotional support, counseling in their own language and participation in therapeutic self-healing programs. Demonstrating the importance of cultural sensitivity, especially to language, and the significant healing power of attuned listening to the "trauma story," Mollica writes: "Survivors must be allowed to tell their stories their own way. We must not burden them with theories, interpretations, or opinions, especially if we have little knowledge of their cultural and political background." Relating harrowing survivor stories from Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and the World Trade Center, among others, Mollica describes the psychological effects of humiliation, cultural annihilation and sexual violence, showing how victims "suffer a divide in their conscious minds" between hope and despair. Mollica advocates moral and emotional discipline in both healer and patient. Passionately endorsing a humanitarian, holistic and culturally sensitive approach to healing, Mollica persuades with pertinent reference to contemporary neuroscience and to ancient and non-Western healing practices. (Dec.)
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From Booklist

As director and cofounder of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, Mollica has born witness to the devastating consequences of the most unspeakable acts of violence humans have conceived. Furthermore, he has seen firsthand how victims of inhumanity have found the inner strength to overcome life-altering trauma with renewed faith and have even regained humor and optimism. After a slow start, Mollica's book reaches a passionate peak as he relates his clients' experiences in the prison camps of the Khmer Rouge, as Bosnian genocide survivors, and as victims of domestic violence. When he describes self-healing techniques, including verbalizing one's own story and the importance of faith, he speaks from the wisdom of his practice not as a healer as much as a guide for those on the road to wellness. His empowering message is that the invisible wounds left by violence are not intractable, that people can and will persevere, and he offers a handful of the necessary skills. Donna Chavez
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Harcourt; 1 edition (December 4, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0151010366
• ISBN-13: 978-0151010363
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #433,907 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Courageous and Revolutionary, January 25, 2007

By	M. Hurst "avid reader" (boston, ma USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Dr. Paul Farmer, the subject of "Mountains Beyond Mountains" by Tracy Kidder, describes Healing Invisible Wounds as "a welcome salve in a world of want and pain." I couldn't agree more. If you're exhausted from violence, war, and fear, look it square in the eye, and Mollica will show you the previously invisible resilience of the human mind and heart.

The book provides a courageous, inspiring, and radical message of the human capacity for self-healing. Mollica reveals the intricate relationship of humiliation, depression, and violence, providing deep insight both into international headlines and into our own lives. He describes the relationship of personal- and social-healing, illuminating and artfully deconstructing their systemic obstacles and showing a middle way.

Defying genre, and far from clinical in style, the book is a philosophical inquiry into the soul of man while providing skills rooted in scientific study for both understanding and recovering from trauma. The book is as applicable to the average person that is witness to ambient violence as to the survivor of extreme violence.

I've told everyone I know about it.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Inspiring and Disappointing, May 15, 2009

By	C. Macauley "cmacauley" (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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This review is from: Healing Invisible Wounds: Paths to Hope and Recovery in a Violent World (Paperback)

I have been an admirer of Richard Mollica ever since I heard him speak in Boston in 1987. His work with refugees and survivors of trauma is monumental and profoundly humanistic and his research contributions have improved our understanding of recovery immeasurably. So I had high expectations when I sat down to read Healing Invisible Wounds as a preparation for a course on trauma and recovery. Mollica is a skilled writer and the depth of his compassion for survivors resounds throughout this book. Unfortunately I often found the logic and evidence behind many of his conclusions to be flawed, although I feel confident that his overall thesis--that healing is a natural process and that medically-based treatment often interferes with it--is valid.

Much of the evidence Mollica presents is derived from his decades of experience with Cambodian refugees, among the most severely traumatized people in the world. Indeed, the gravity of their trauma is due not only to the horrors of the Pol Pot era but to grotesque human rights abuses they suffered while trapped on the Thai-Cambodian border in the 1980s and early 90s. Sadly, I found Mollica's description of Site 2 to be wildly inaccurate (I know, I was there): Contrary to his description, no one was "severely punished" for praying or writing letters and the camp did have businesses, temples and schools (Mollica says "inmates were forbidden to...go to school [p. 101]" when in fact over 37 thousand children were in school when he visited Site 2 in Oct 1988--which tells us how observant he was!). Nonetheless it was a cruel and hopeless existence for the 160,000 people who stagnated there behind barbed wire at the mercy of Thai border guards, and this is Mollica's point, that some of the worst trauma takes place after the traumatic events, and our misguided efforts to assist refugees and victims of war and violence can often make their problems worse.

Mollica describes an interesting experiment that he conducted with Cambodians in the US, intended to promote self-healing by encouraging diet, exercise and meditation. This is a superb example of the direction that trauma recovery should take, and the results are inspiring. However I had one nagging question: if self-healing is a natural process, why had these refugees not healed themselves, 20 years after Pol Pot and more than a decade after leaving the camps? Throughout the book Mollica implies that a patronizing, drug-dependent and arrogant health care system is often to blame, but he himself says that in most cases the subjects of this particular study had never received treatment. The answer is of course that "self healing" really only happens once survivors understand that it is not only possible but necessary. The subjects in Mollica's study began to heal as they realized that an active program of self-care could relieve their loneliness and depression. Self-healing may be "natural" but it doesn't happen by itself, as Mollica implies; it requires awareness and active implementation on the part of the survivor.

The chapter on interpretation of dreams was a breath of fresh air to me. I have long believed that dreams are significant in the processing of traumatic experiences, as is the act of telling the story, and Mollica's description of how and why these two phenomena are therapeutic is beautifully expounded. In particular, his prescription for how to tell the survivor story, focusing not on the horrifying details but rather on the meaning it holds for the survivor, is enlightening and useful, although hardly new (see Lennis Echterling's Crisis Intervention: Promoting Resilience and Resolution in Troubled Times). Mollica also has valuable insights on the importance of work for trauma survivors, as a means of social rehabilitation, and on the need for survivors to recover dignity in response to the humiliation many experience as part of their trauma.

As a result of this book I am now inspired to use story-telling and dream analysis in my own work with survivors, and to spread the word about self-healing and how to promote it. I believe that Mollica has made a major impact on the theory behind trauma recovery, and I look forward to reading more of his work in the future.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More than a book -- a gift!!!, May 25, 2007

By	Mick "Mick" (New Haven, CT USA) - See all my reviews

All too rarely, it seems, the public is privileged to receive a book that is neither text nor tome, but rather gift. Richard Mollica's Healing Invisible Wounds is such a gift - a gift of hope for all who inhabit this violent world. One of the most widely accessible books I have read, Healing Invisible Wounds speaks to clinicians, policy makers, survivors and all who wish to live responsibly toward their neighbor in an increasingly global world. Having developed international recognition as a leading researcher/scientist in the field of psychiatry and trauma, Mollica departs from hard, empirical science and turns his attention toward the grace-filled trauma stories of which he has long been the recipient in his work with refugees, torture survivors, and victims of disaster. Such a shift is not easy - evidence-based research exerts an indomitable influence on the practice of healthcare. Yet, with this book, Mollica demonstrates his commitment to individuals - real people struggling with real pain yet capable of real healing. In this book, we do not find statistical evidence to support hypotheses about the mental health sequelae of violence; instead, what we find are stories of people - Somaly, Dr. Nakas and Liz - whose resilience, spirit and grace lead readers to a newfound understanding of "healing."

As a religious professional, I cannot recommend this book enough to clergy, congregations and individuals seeking to make an active, faith-based commitment to their communities. Resounding throughout Healing Invisible Wounds is Mollica's dedicated attention to the powerful force of spirituality, empathy and narrative in regards to healing. Were I to attempt to re-energize an adult faith study at my church, this is the book with which I would begin - inspiring, courageous, visionary and hopeful, Mollica's gift to us is one to be read, discussed and shared for years to come.