Common shock : witnessing violence every day : how we are harmed, how we can heal / Kaethe Weingarten.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Weingarten, Kathy.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Violence.

Violence--Prevention.

Physical Description:

385 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Dutton, [2003]

Summary:

Every single day, whether we realize it or not, we witness and are affected by violence -- often with serious, long-term consequences. At times the violence is extraordinary, impossible to neglect: The terrorist attacks of 9/11 made us anxious -- even panicky -- unable to sleep. More often the violence is mundane: The customer ahead of us in the cafeteria line berates the cashier and we feel inexplicably edgy for hours. Most of the time we don't even notice: Our twelve-year-old watches a murder on television (one of the more than 100,000 acts of TV violence he has seen by that age) and zones out. In her revolutionary new book, Common Shock, Harvard Medical School psychologist Kaethe Weingarten, Ph.D., defines a problem that up until now had no name. Drawing on the latest scientific research and her years of clinical and community experience, Kaethe Weingarten describes common shock -- the biological and psychological responses that are triggered when we witness violence. It is common because it happens all the time, to everyone in any community. It is a shock because whether our response is spaciness, distress, or bravado, it affects the mind, body, and spirit. Addressing the full range of violence we all experience, Dr. Weingarten offers us tools to take effective action. Practical, hopeful, and inspirational, this breakthrough guide lets us discover what we can do in our homes and neighborhoods to transform common shock into a compassionate prescription for healing ourselves, our families, our communities, and the world.

Contents:

Part 1 What Is the Matter? 1

Chapter 1 "The Thousand Natural Shocks ..." 3

Chapter 2 The Varieties of Witnessing Experience 20

Chapter 3 The Consequences of Common Shock 39

Part 2 How Do We Pass Along Common Shock? 63

Chapter 4 The Toll of Illness and Dying in Families 65

Chapter 5 Double Jeopardy or Do No Harm 91

Chapter 6 The Blindness of One's Heart 117

Chapter 7 Putting It All Together: Our Planet, Ourselves 133

Part 3 What We Can Do 157

Chapter 8 Foundations of Witnessing 159

Chapter 9 Steps to Compassionate Witnessing 191

Chapter 10 Transforming Violence 225.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [315]-370) and index.

ISBN:

0525947426

OCLC:

51769179