"The conflict between knowing and not knowing, speech and silence, remembering and forgetting, is the central dialectic of psychological trauma. This conflict is manifest in the individual disturbances of memory, the amnesias and hypeamnesias [inabilities to forget], of traumatized people. It is manifest also on a social level, in persisting debates over the historical reality of atrocities that have been documented beyond any reasonable doubt.  

Social controversy becomes particularly acute at moments in history when perpetrators face the prospect of being publically exposed or held legally accountable for crimes long hidden or condoned. This situation obtains in many countried emerging from dictatorship, with respect to political crimes such as murder and torture.

It obtains in this country with respect to the private crimes of sexual and domestic violence. " Herman J. L Herman.

"The systematic study of psychological trauma (therefore) depends on the support of a political movement. ....The study of war trauma becomes legitimate only in a context that challenges the sacrifice of young men in war. The study of trauma in sexual and domestic life becomes legitimate only in a context that challenges the subordination of women and children. Advances in the field occur only when they are supported by a political movement powerful enough to legitimate an alliance between investigators and patients and to counteract the ordinary social processes of silencing and denial. In the absense of strong political movements for human rights, the active process of bearing witness inevitably gives way to the active process of forgetting. Repression, dissociation, and denial are phenomena of social as well as individual consciousness."-Judith Herman, M.D.in Trauma and Recovery