Prologue

In my experience, all friends, family and colleagues can cite their precise whereabouts and activities, when the events of September 11th shattered their sense of emotional safety and invulnerability. And so it is with me as well. Early that morning before the arrival of my first patient of the day, I composed and sent a fax to relatives in Israel. My message bemoaned the endless catastrophic crisis of daily life there, since the onset of incessant suicide attacks. I felt twinges of guilt for living safely far away, in one of the world's most exhilarating cities. To assuage these feelings and in accord with my obsessive monitoring of violence in the Middle East, I turned on the television, 8:00 am September 11th. Focused on my desk work with half an eye on the television screen, I saw the collision into the first tower and instantly identified that as a deliberate crash and as sabotage and terrorism. For me it could not be otherwise, so direct was the course of the plane, so glorious and perfect the weather that a mistaken flight course seemed beyond imagination. The assault on the second tower appeared as direct and deliberate as the first and I experienced more shock, rage and terror, immediately faxing my relatives in Israel, saying, now, we too, faced the hell of terrorism, since it is clearly no longer only in their part of the world.

In the hours, days and weeks that followed, I was and remained intensely aware of every nuance of old and current feelings. I believe this self-examination enabled me to provide some measure of help to myself, my patients and students at New York University School of Social Work. The reality that we all, simultaneously, had experienced this shocking trauma brought people together in a manner that was palpable and one that called for and demanded atypical self-disclosure. Patients' questions about this assault and fear about