Treating Victims of Torture and Violence: Theoretical, Cross-Cultural, and Clinical Implications by Peter Elsass translated by John Andersen and Harald Fuglsang New York:  New York University Press, 1997,  xii + 198 pp., $40.00

Treating Victims of Torture and Violence is a helpful manual for mental health professionals who treat victims of torture, prisoners of war, and the psychiatric casualties of forced migration. The author is a psychoanalytically oriented psychologist who did some research on the treatment of torture survivors and provided supervision for therapists who worked at the Rehabilitation Center for Torture Survivors in Copenhagen. This center was founded by physicians associated with Amnesty International who attempt to reveal both the existence of torture and its devastating psychological consequences on its victims.

Elsass writes, “The phenomenology of the trauma [following torture] is a paralyzed, overwhelmed state with immobilization, withdrawal, and with a probability of depersonalization and disorganization” (p. 49).

This volume is divided into five sections dealing with the following topics: basic concepts of torture, violence and aggression, the torture syndrome, psychotherapeutic treatment, the cultural psychology of the torture syndrome, and cultural psychological treatment. Treating Victims of Torture and Violence discusses a wide range of psychotherapeutic approaches, including the use of classical psychoanalytic, cognitive-behavioral, and supportive