Post-Trauma: Reclaiming a Child

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Was Elizabeth Smart brainwashed, as her father insists? Does she need to be deprogrammed like some runaway Moonie or Hare Krishna? Or is she simply a victim of the famous Stockholm syndrome, named for a 1973 Swedish bank robbery in which the hostages began to identify with their captors?

The first step in helping this 15-year-old recover, say psychiatrists, is to recognize that snap diagnoses of brainwashing and programming aren't much help. "Terms like these don't have any real clinical definition," says Dr. David Fassler, a professor at the University of Vermont and a psychiatrist who works with traumatized kids. People have made much of the fact that Smart did not cry out in public or try to escape. But this doesn't mean she was brainwashed. She may have been threatened with harm if she made a peep and thus pursued an unconscious survival strategy of trying to win the goodwill of her captors. Such behavior might, from the outside, resemble affection or even love.

Children who have been traumatized in this way can begin to come to terms with their psychic wounds, but Fassler warns that it's not easy. The first rule, he stresses, is not to push things. "We used to feel we had to rush in and have kids report everything that happened right away," he says. "Now we feel it's best to let them tell the story when they're ready, at their own pace." This, he concedes, often puts doctors at odds with law-enforcement officials, who tend to need as much information as they can get as quickly as possible. It may fall to the parents to act as referees.

When the child is ready to open up, treatment may have several components, including individual therapy, counseling in school and especially family counseling. "All of the relationships in the family change after a kidnapping," Fassler says. "There's a desire to pick up where things stopped, but you can't do that. You've missed out on a significant period of time in each other's lives. Relationships among the siblings and even between the parents may change as a result of the experience."

Most important, it's essential that kidnap victims and the people around them realize that recovery may never be truly complete. Years after an abduction, children and adults report that certain places or images may call up traumatic memories of the event, signs of a deep emotional shift that never wholly resolves itself. "It doesn't mean you can't go on," says Fassler, "but there are scars." The Smart family was still basking in the joy of their reunion last week. There will be time enough to tend to their wounds.