Lenore Terr

Lenore C. Terr is a pediatric, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist and author known for her work with post traumatic stress disorder within children. Terr graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School with an MD. She is the winner of the Blanche Ittleson Award for her research on childhood trauma. [ [http://www.terrmd.com/LenoreTerr/AboutLenoreTerr.htm About Lenore Terr, M.D. ~ Adult and Child Psychiatry ] ]

Career

Lenore C. Terr, M.D., known for her work with post traumatic stress disorder in children, has been studying the psychology of normal and disordered children her entire medical career. Dr. Terr graduated from the University of Michigan Medical School with honors. Starting as an academic psychiatrist at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio, during which time she published two pioneering studies on “battered children,” she then went on to practice psychiatry in San Francisco and to teach at UCSF. She is the winner of the Blanche Ittleson Award for her research on childhood trauma. She sees children as young as a year and adults as old as Methusalah. “Everyone is in some stage of development,” she says with a smile. “If they need medicine, I can prescribe it. I specialize, however, in psychotherapy. But whatever I do, it always comes with some playfulness and humor.”

Dr. Terr is best known for her landmark naturalistic and longitudinal study of the children involved in the 1976 school bus kidnapping in Chowchilla, California (and a comparison group of 25 children 100 miles to the south). It set the standards for what is now accepted as childhood Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In Dr. Terr’s first book, Too Scared to Cry (1992) she examined the kidnapping event that occurred in 1976, and then explained its effects in terms of the children’s emotions, thinking, behavior, and contagion. This book emphasizes how trauma not only affected the children she observed, but us all. Dr. Terr’s second book Unchained Memoires: True Stories of Traumatic Memories, Lost and Found (1994) consists of seven detailed cases designed to illustrate how childhood memories can be repressed, dissociated, otherwise forgotten, or even implanted and later retrieved. Dr. Terr has recently written Magical Moments of Change: How Psychotherapy Turns Kids Around (2008), incorporating contributions from 34 Academy members and the ongoing true story of a traumatized “wild child.”

"Too Scared To Cry"

Terr's book "Too Scared to Cry" is divided into four parts focusing on the following aspects of childhood psychic trauma: emotions, mental work, behavior and treatment and contagion. Within this book she describes several cases that illustrate the troubling problem of children's statements and behaviors that are based in factitious traumatic events. Within this book she details the results of her review of twenty pre-schoolers, and concludes that trauma suffered before the age of three years old was rarely able to be fully described verbally, instead events were reenacted behaviorally. Lastly, Terr notes the distinction between a single, sudden traumatic event as being clearly held in a child's mind and subsequently accessible to verbal remembering, versus repetitive or prolonged trauma that severely compromises accurate verbal recall.

"Unchained Memories"

"Unchained Memories: True Stories of Traumatic Memories, Lost and Found" consists of seven detailed cases designed to illustrate how memories can be repressed, dissociated or otherwise forgotten and later retrieved. Lenore Terr is a strong advocate for the theories of repression and dissociation of trauma and she is often cited by the recovered memory advocates. She believes that repressed memories, once retrieved, are highly detailed and accurate, although there may be some minor mistakes in what is recalled. She sees repressed memories as different from those that are dissociated. According to Terr, in repression, the individual unconsciously and energetically defends against remembering, whereas in dissociation the traumatic memories are set aside from normal consciousness during the event itself. Therefore, compared to the sharp and accurate details of retrieved repressed memories, those that are dissociated are likely to remain fuzzy, unclear, and filled with holes. Dissociated memories, according to Terr, rarely come back clear and complete.

Terr believes that traumatic memories operate differently than do ordinary memories. She claims there are two types of trauma. Type I traumas, which occur when the child is subjected to a single, unanticipated traumatic event, and which include full, clear, detailed verbal memories, although there may be some mistakes. The children kidnapped and buried in Chowchilla illustrate Type I traumas.

Type II traumas, which occur when there is longstanding or repeated exposure to trauma, result in dissociation or repression. The theory is that dissociation is a powerful and common defense against repeated childhood trauma and because the child dissociates during the trauma, the trauma is lost from conscious awareness. Terr has written previously on her many cases of children suffering documented trauma, and since in these cases, there are no instances of children over the age of three who are completely amnesic for the event, the repeated trauma theory is used to explain why children with documented trauma remember the trauma.

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