It is a rather daunting and humbling task to review a book
that is written on a subject matter that the reviewer specializes in but which
the author has taken to a whole new level. My hope is that I can come close to
doing justice to the intricacy, complexity and sensitivity of this important
work.
Most readers will find The
Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep: A relational approach to internalized perpetration
in complex trauma survivors (Routledge, 2013), especially the small
minority who specialize in treating victims of
complex trauma, dissociative disorders, and organized child abuse, to be both inspiring and intimidating. This is as it
should be when readers are fortunate enough to come across a book that goes
beyond the limits of contemporary thinking on a range of important matters.
This book offers hope and guidance to any who are required
to walk into and understand the profound forms of chaos and darkness that are
inevitably encountered when helping others to undo and rework the most
insidious and damaging effects of severe child abuse,
multiple perpetrator abuse, group violence, trauma bonding, mental programming
and “soul murder.” All of what Dr. Schwartz describes must be known from
the inside and out, if therapists are going to lead afflicted individuals out
of their shattered identities/realities and back into the human community.
This book displays an uncanny ability to explore the darkest
dimensions of human relatedness, i.e., systematic torture, mind control and
murder of the spirit, as well as many, if not all, of trauma’s most complex
effects, e.g., dissociation, identity fragmentation, loss of innocence and
identification with and internalization of one’s perpetrators, as well as, the
destruction of any sense of personal identity and belief in collective or
archetypal goodness. Judith Herman opened up the notion of Complex PTSD and
Harvey Schwartz takes it to another level and also shows how to successfully
work with its most complex aspects.
The author explores territories that most mental health
professionals and contemporary citizens would hesitate to enter. Dr. Schwartz
is willing to enter into the moral wastelands where the people he treats in
psychotherapy have been deposited by their tormentors. He records the geography
and dangers that are endemic to this terrain in a manner that that no book has
previously done in the trauma field. Almost all contemporary forms of clinical
thought are unwilling and unable to address or work with the darkest aspects of
human nature and human societies. The work of documenting and analyzing the
methods, madness and social complicity responsible for the Holocaust presents
an ongoing challenge to our human capacity to face horrors of such magnitude.
Yet the task is essential for the societal evolution of an ethic of care. In
the same spirit, The Alchemy of Wolves
and Sheep enters the terrain of unspeakable atrocity and emerges with
valuable knowledge that applies to all forms of intentional and large-scale
violence.
This reviewer knows from professional experience that those
who have been intentionally fragmented by sophisticated perpetrators are not
able to purposefully gain access to or work through the complexity of their
internal systems without the skills, courage and care of an unusually knowledgeable therapist. How to language
and work with the complexity of what is involved in coerced perpetration trauma
and the restructuring of a personality that has been nearly destroyed is a task
of monumental proportion. This restoration and
healing of a personality system that has become riddled with
self-hatred, self-doubt, psychic sabotage, perpetual evasiveness and almost
total mistrust of other human beings is something that most therapists (and
theoreticians) are not well equipped to approach and process.
Like his first book Dialogues
With Forgotten Voices: Relational perspectives on child abuse trauma and
treatment of dissociative disorders (Basic Books, 2000), Dr. Schwartz’s
second book, The Alchemy of Wolves and
Sheep takes the trauma field for
a quantum leap and would be helpful to many clinicians, theorists, and lay
people working in the field. The book
will likely expand readers’ capacities to better understand, work with and
respect anyone who has survived coerced perpetration trauma (i.e., those whose
capacities for perpetration were activated and developed by disturbed family
members, criminal groups, cult, cartel, and charismatic leaders, and corrupt
military and para-military personnel, as in the case of child soldiers). The
chapter, Perpetrators and Perpetrator
States, is the highlight of the book. It integrates essential
psychoanalytic concepts with the trauma and dissociation literature. By
exposing this previously hidden, poorly understand and universal form of trauma
(coerced perpetration trauma), The
Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep provides therapists with new perspectives to
potentiate effective witnessing and healing for the many trauma survivors whose
suffering has gone unrecognized and untreated for far too long.
In his first book, Dialogues
with Forgotten Voices, Dr. Schwartz probed deeply into the complexities of
organized child abuse, intergenerational familial abuse, severe dissociative disorders and relational approaches to
treatment. In that book, he detailed how predatory individuals disrupt,
fragment, empty and annihilate the identities of their prey. He also examined
patterns of individual and social complicity, and created a map of patterns of
perpetration. While attempting to unlock some of the
key puzzles of posttraumatic psychological adaptation, Dr. Schwartz’s
earlier book examined the interdependence between psychosocial complicity and
survivors’ internalization of patterns of complicity/collusion and their
long-standing effects.
In The Alchemy of
Wolves and Sheep, Schwartz dives much deeper into an
analysis that he started in his first book. Here, he delves into how
perpetrators break and control their victims through a sophisticated mixture
of: inducing intolerable levels of pain, terror, and isolation; slaughtering
innocence; alternating “rescuing” with torturing; fomenting traumatic
attachments; engineering dissociative splits in the personality; implanting fail-safe
mechanisms; and, utterly destroying any hope that individuals will be rescued,
forgiven or redeemed. The book meticulously dissects how perpetrators bind
their victims to their own wounded psyches, to malevolent family, cult,
criminal systems, and pedophile networks, and para-military units. It
catalogues a blueprint of interpersonal and intrapsychic dynamics containing
the mindsets and methodologies used by perpetrators to transform vulnerable
individuals (typically children) into psychological containers for the damaged,
dead and toxic aspects of their personalities, while exploiting their victims’
constant fears of identity loss, engulfment and psychic annihilation.
The Alchemy of Wolves
and Sheep takes readers into the deep end of the pool. The
book dives down into the daunting clinical challenge of trying to remain
compassionate and effective in the face of an individual’s obliterated sense of
self and spirit. Schwartz describes, with a level of insight and precision
rarely seen in an academic book, how victims of malevolent perpetration attempt
to hold onto their humanity and essential spirituality through a sophisticated
usage of dissociation, internalization/identification processes, and
archetypical imagery. This material is presented in a way that helps
practitioners navigate through a labyrinth of dissociative obstacles, while
also providing hope to both therapists and clients, especially when the essence
of this work requires one to work with a population
who identifies with being beyond hope, repair or redemption.
Because the psychological, interpersonal and spiritual
damage sustained by the individuals described in his book was done in and
through some distorted form of human relatedness, Schwartz posits the healing
must be done through some transformational form of human relatedness.
Describing the process of relational return in an intricate, nuanced and
compassionate manner, the author illuminates how the persistent,
non-judgmental, committed and knowledgeable care of a single human being can
help light the path out of the nightmare maze created by scripted programming,
torture and abuse, and complex traumatic bonding
(all of which were deployed to shatter, destroy and ultimately control every
aspect of an individual’s being).
Working at the extreme end of the interpersonal continuum,
i.e., in terms of polyfragmented dissociative self-organization, radical
subterfuge, and the internalization of and/or identification with evil, the
author’s methods are multifaceted and designed to grapple with a myriad of
malevolent forces
that have been enacted upon the bodies, psyches, and spirits of
his clients. The last chapter of the book takes a profound look at the
transpersonal and archetypal issues that typically emerge in the wake of having
been repetitively and systematically traumatized (deconstructed) by other human
beings. When evil is major part of perpetration (i.e., desire to obliterate
another’s sense of psychic integrity, goodness and divinity), then matters of
the spirit will inevitably enter into any authentic healing process.
By adopting the best aspects of relational psychoanalysis
and expanding beyond them, Schwartz provides readers with a blueprint of
interpersonal and intrapsychic dynamics that are so complex and convoluted that
only a highly experienced trauma specialist could put them into words, let
alone articulate how to use these dynamics in an effective and therapeutic
manner. What is described in this book involves a level of knowledge that only
a true sifu could acquire through years of having done combat with a range of
violent and malevolent forces. Bridging relational and archetypal perspectives
on trauma and treatment the author transcends some of the unnecessary polarization and fragmentation that plague the
mental health field, offering integrative clinical approaches than have not
been previously conceived or developed. This book advocates for clinicians to
move beyond limited ideologies and constrictive paradigms of treatment, finding
new forms of creativity and courage to effectively meet the suffering (and the
unique clinical challenges and confusing presentations) of savagely abused
human beings.
There are several aspects of this book that are of
particular interest and which deserve special recognition:
- The
archetypal journey of child soldiers as therapeutic model for
transformation
· Mutations
and restorations of innocence
· Therapists
as transitional objects for trauma survivors, providing linking and integration
functions across a range of dissociated ego and affect states
· A
therapist’s multiple relational approaches with multiple subjectivities
· Reparative
tactics for damaged responses to pain and pleasure
· The
technological intricacies of intentionally fragmenting another human being’s
identity
· Traumatic
attachment and loss of one’s subjectivity and identity to another person
· Primitive
envy and its role in the eradication of another person’s psychic vitality and
personal spirit
· Deprogramming
methods for survivors of mind control and coercive violence against others
· Treating
internalization of perpetrators’ malevolent values as survival responses
· The
importance of self-forgiveness for perpetration or collusion against a third
party
· The
role of transpersonal and archetypal energies in healing and transformation
This book is a must-read for any who want to better
understand and treat those who have been exposed to the most malevolent forms
of human exploitation as well as for those who want to better appreciate the
many paradoxical forms of courage that are manifested by the most
psychologically wounded members of the human race. It should be a requisite
field manual in the rucksack of all spiritual warrior clinicians who dare enter
a psychic war zone, triage those who lie broken, and eventually bring some of them
back home. Very few in the field of trauma are willing to enter such dangerous
territory, let alone dare to succeed or to fail in assisting others back to an
“ordinary” life.
The Alchemy of Wolves
and Sheep is an intense read.
It is densely packed and almost every line has been carefully honed to convey
maximum understanding for the difficult plight of working with the
traumatically afflicted with internalized perpetration. There is little room to
breathe in this book. As a result, readers have to proceed slowly. They should
allow themselves to be affected by and digest material that will take them
beyond the parameters of mainstream awareness. Because The Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep provides breakthrough perspectives
to allow previously unknown points of access to better understand and treat
some of the most intractable conditions of the human spirit. Readers who work with these populations will most
likely find that their own worldviews and practices have been transformed. If
clinicians are able to comprehend and work with the populations that are
mentioned throughout this book, then working with other types of traumatized
individuals should be a piece of cake. For this reason alone, The Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep is worth
its weight in gold.
Robert Grant Ph.D.
Oakland, California 2014
