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Ira Brenner's book, Injured Men, is a rare combination of an intellectually satisfying integration of the wide span of trauma literature, while at the same time remaining emotionally compelling, pulling the reader between the deepest of human despair and some sense of hope for modest recovery - which given the current state of this art, is realistic. I was particularly impressed by the manner in which the book communicates the profundity of the traumatic experience beyond the words actually used. This was most evident in Chapter 6, “Echoes from the Battlefield”, essentially a transcript of a Vietnam Veteran's accounting of his battlefield experience and recovery in a hospital.
The book provides an excellent model for the in-the-trenches, practicing clinician. It avoids the extremes of being overly drawn into the traumatic moment where all perspective is lost, or being too distant, even dissociated from it. While presenting relevant theory - even the neurological and biological, the realistic pall of the trauma inducing horrors was not out of sight, and the experience of the traumatic moment was not without some guiding theoretical orientation - an optimal clinical balance. The clinician is thereby better equipped to deal with what otherwise may not be tolerable.
Chapters 2 and 7, titled “Dissociation and its Vicissitudes”, and “Forged in the Holocaust” respectively, provide the best current thinking regarding the experience of trauma and its primary defense, dissociation. I especially appreciate the author's capturing of the neuropsychological and neurobiological components in a manner which would make sense to the relatively neuropsychogically uninformed, yet contains sufficient terminology and references to point the reader to deeper levels of understanding should there be a need, thereby sparing the more casual reader lengthy technical detail. In just three pages, (pp. 186-189) - as well as other places in the book - Brenner provides a neurobiological snapshot of b