The moral stance of the therapist
Survivors of atrocity of every age and every culture come to a point in their testimony where all questions are reduced to one, spoken more in bewilderment than in outrage: Why? The answer is beyond human understanding.
Beyond this unfathomable question, the survivor confronts another, equally incomprehensible question: Why me? The arbitrary, random quality of her fate defies the basic human faith in a just or even predictable world order. In order to develop a full understanding of the trauma story, the survivor must examine the moral questions of guilt and responsibility and reconstruct a system of belief that makes sense of her undeserved suffering.
Finally, the survivor cannot reconstruct a sense of meaning by the exercise of thought alone. The remedy for injustice also requires action. The survivor must decide what is to be done.
As the survivor attempts to resolve these questions, she often comes into conflict with important people in her life. There is a rupture in her sense of belonging within a shared system of belief. Thus she faces a double task: not only must she rebuild her own “shattered assumptions” about meaning, order, and justice in the world but she must also find a way to resolve her differences with those whose beliefs she can no longer share.’ Not only must she restore her own sense of worth but she must also be prepared to sustain it in the face of the critical judgments of others.
The moral stance of the therapist is therefore of enormous importance. It is not enough for the therapist to be “neutral” or “nonjudgmental.” The patient challenges the therapist to share her own struggles with these immense philosophical questions. The therapist’s role is not to provide ready-made answers, which would be impossible in any case, but rather to affirm a position of moral solidarity with the survivor.
Throughout the exploration of the trauma story, the therapist is called upon to provide a context that is at once cognitive, emotional, and moral.