Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1997, page 101
child and the abused, misunderstood Black man in society. She admits that when her heart
is wrung, she equates it with sensations of love. The author saw herself as having a
soothing, stabilizing effect on Hakim when he would become verbally violent and
aggressive. She was 14 years older than he, and liked to mother him. She thought she
inhibited his God-feelings.
For his part, Hakim was able to manipulate Athill‟s emotions, tell her what she wanted to
hear, keep her wrapped up in him. She says, “I have never known anyone so impossible to
disregard” (p. 24). She saw signs of madness early on, such as his calling himself God, his
interest in the occult, and his seeing himself as a bestower of bliss. She obviously has read
about psychopaths, as she exhibits knowledge of them. Nevertheless, she does not provide
her story a frame of reference as she describes her continued involvement with Hakim:
giving him money, trying to help him, letting him and his girlfriend Halé (Halé was the
daughter of a former member of Parliament) stay in her flat.
Both Jean Seberg, the film star, and Halé showed their own signs of madness, and both died
in connection with Hakim (Seberg later committed suicide). And Athill admits to some of her
own lunacy in her relationship with Hakim. Athill becomes sexually involved with Hakim and
describes their three sexual encounters unnecessarily graphically, almost as if she is trying
to portray herself as a very liberated middle-aged woman. She tells Hakim that she sees
nothing wrong with incest or infantile sex. At one point she thinks, “Incest must be
delicious” (p. 27), as she‟s embracing him and feeling motherly toward him.
Hakim and Halé traveled from place to place, until they ran out of money, were kicked out,
or both. They spent time in Morocco, the United States, Guyana, then Trinidad, and at one
point hooked up with Michael X (another troubled person), to whom Hakim then passed on
the title of God. Halé was murdered very brutally by several of Michael X‟s men (it was
described as a bonding experience for them, and they were apprehended, charged, and
found guilty of the crime). Later, in Boston, Hakim is murdered, seemingly by accident.
It is this murder that Athill focuses on: the tragedy of the poor little ugly Black boy
murdered in the ghetto in which he was raised. Athill gives very little mention of Halé being
sucked in by Hakim‟s persuasive charm. Athill calls Halé‟s “a crazy infatuation --because
some vacuum in her needed filling with an emotion of sacrifice and self-immolation” (p. 95).
The author appears to have little understanding of how one person is able to manipulate
and control another.
Early in the story Athill says she dislikes and distrusts Michael X, but Hakim she likes. She
ends the book speaking of her sadness regarding this loving man who didn‟t have a chance.
Although she‟s a good, interesting writer, I was disturbed by the incongruity between her
cheerful detachment in relating these events and their inherent horribleness. I attempted to
puzzle out the author‟s approach and her point in writing this book more than 20 years after
the narrated events occurred. It‟s not quite a personal cult experience because the author is
not that introspective (although it incidentally becomes a good portrayal of what appears to
be a psychopath, yet only because she describes his deterioration as she sees him through
the years). I seemed to find the answer in her statement: “What a glutton I am for
discussing my own and everyone else‟s behavior ...even if I‟d murdered someone it
wouldn‟t seem „unspeakable‟ to me (I‟d have written a book about it by now!)” (p. 80).
Kathy Klein
Former cult member
Berkeley, California

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, 1997, page 102
Trauma and Recovery. Judith Lewis Herman. Basic Books, New York, 1992, 276
pages.
Judith Herman is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Director of Training at the
Victims of Violence Program at Cambridge Hospital‟s Department of Psychiatry. Although her
groundbreaking Trauma and Recovery was published several years ago, the book remains a
significant one, and in our increasingly violent society, may be even more significant than
when it was first published. My response to this important work is both personal and
professional.
From a personal perspective, as I read Trauma and Recovery the first time, I began to
understand why even today, when I say good-bye to my 22-year-old daughter who lives in
another state, I feel the same heart-wrenching pain I felt more than 15 years ago when I
first had to leave her behind with her controlling, verbally and emotionally abusive father.
Three years ago, she and her boyfriend were violently attacked by strangers in San
Francisco and almost died. In our first phone conversation a few weeks later, she shared
some deeply personal feelings and details about that experience. When I saw her the next
time, she wasn‟t the daughter I knew. I learned from her only then that even during the
months before their California experience, her boyfriend had been emotionally abusing and
controlling her. He is the now the father of their 20-month-old son, and they are still
together.
The accumulated pain and sadness I still feel sometimes overwhelms me. In Trauma and
Recovery, Herman validates these feelings, bringing to bear her professional background,
human sensitivity, and wisdom to address both the psychological bases for the pervasive
effects of primary and secondary traumatic experiences and the critical components in
effective clinical treatment. She offers insights into the impact of “terrible events” on both
victims and witnesses. Although our culture often denies such events and the “crisis of faith”
they often create, their existence resonates with me in light of my daughter‟s experiences
and my own.
Herman draws clear and convincing psychological parallels between victims of war crimes,
political terrorism, and domestic violence, with substantial historical and empirical evidence
to support her views. In her own words, “This is a book about restoring connections --a
book about commonalities, between rape survivors and combat veterans, between battered
women and political prisoners.” Herman summarizes the research into psychological trauma
from the study of hysteria, the “archetypical psychological disorder of women” in the 19th
century, through the long-term effects of combat studied long after the Vietnam War. By
1980, the American Psychiatric Association had included the post-traumatic stress disorder
(PTSD) category in its official manual of mental disorders, legitimizing PTSD for combat
veterans. The culmination of this progression, from Herman‟s self-acknowledged feminist
perspective, is in the professional acknowledgment of the equivalent psychological
syndrome in survivors of rape, incest, and domestic abuse.
Throughout the book, Herman elaborates on the most characteristic feature of post-
traumatic stress: the victim‟s alternation between intrusive symptoms (intense fear and
overwhelming emotion) and constrictive symptoms (emotional numbness, inability to act,
feel, or respond). This fluctuation between emotional states can intensify the victim‟s sense
of helplessness. With trauma, one‟s sense of the fundamental safety of the world is often
destroyed over time, this state can become one of “existential crisis” in which the sense of
self remains shattered. The dialectic of constriction and intrusion becomes habitual, and any
action has potentially dire consequences for the chronically traumatized person. Protracted
depression is the most common finding in virtually all clinical studies of chronically
traumatized people.