TOW #1- Article: "Trauma Needs a Witness"

“Trauma Needs a Witness” was written by Alison Carper, a psychologist from New York, about a patient discovery and breakthrough.  Paul, a patient of Alison’s, suffered through an abusive childhood, but never talked in detail about it with his psychologist.  He always seemed as if he wasn’t affected immensely by the trauma he experienced.  This wall that he put up between himself and the world was unhealthy, causing him to still feel tense when he heard an argument, and still freeze up whenever his wife narrowed an eyebrow.  Alison found that when Paul opened up about his abusive experiences, they were mostly about instances in which a witness was present.  Through this discovery, Alison could more appropriately handle Paul’s emotions toward his abuse, and get him to open up about it with her.  I think this text was written to any other psychologists who feel the same way with their patients.  Hopefully, after reading this, they can try to use this technique on their own patients to get them to open up about trauma in the past. 

The purpose of this piece was to explain to the audience that trauma is better handled when there is a witness present.  The victim would feel less at fault for the abuse if someone else is seeing it and telling them that it is wrong of the abusers to be treating them a certain way.  I think that Carper accomplished her purpose by communicating the information using rhetorical strategies.  She uses a simile when describing her connection with her patient once she broke through to him.  Carper writes, “And if I still sense, on occasion, a distance between us, I feel freer to talk about it.  When I do, the distance shrinks, like shadow exposed to light.” (Carper para. 16) This use of imagery and a simile helps Carper accomplish her purpose.  By conveying to the audience how she can easily and openly talk about the distance between her and her patient, she shows the success of her breakthrough.  By searching for traumatic events that were witnessed, and then talking about the patient’s abuse from that point, Carper experiences this breakthrough with Paul that she has not seen before.  I'm very curious to see if this technique is carried out by different psychologists, and is deemed successful.  Thanks to Carper, there may be a new way of handling closed-off patients who have experiences of damaging trauma in their past.