This publication looks at restoring connections: between the public and private worlds; between individuals and communities; and between men and women. The author, a psychiatrist, makes the link between the heroic suffering of men in war and political struggle, and the degraded suffering of women through rape, incest and domestic violence. She identifies a fresh diagnostic category for those suffering from hidden traumas, and proposes a recovery programme which favours a process of reintegration. With a new afterword, Judith Lewis Herman describes the controversy ignited by her work, the new research to emerge in this field of psychology and the far-reaching implications of this text on trauma situations worldwide.