Community-based Reparative Action as Moral Injury Recovery

This paper presentation will contend with Judith Herman’s recent publication, Truth and Repair (2023) which presents the scholarly wisdom of an influential voice in the discourse of trauma studies. While Herman herself previously presented at AAR facilitated by the Moral Injury and Recovery Unit, her book does not directly adopt the concepts and frameworks that have defined the work on moral injury. This paper presentation will seek to bridge Herman’s emphasis on trauma and justice with best practices of recovery in the aftermath of moral injury, paying particular attention to what Herman addresses as the "moral community."

Moral distress, and its more severe form of moral injury, destabilizes the moral orienting system, defined here as a dynamic matrix of meaningful beliefs, values, behaviors, and relationships (Moon, 2019). If one’s moral orienting system is capable of assimilating or accommodating the experience it will not be experienced as morally traumatic; however, moral injury overwhelms the sense of tolerability and disrupts familiar routines, coping strategies, and meaning making. Sense of responsibility is at the center of moral distress – with evaluations of one’s own moral responsibility and/or the moral responsibility of another – generating a sense of transgression, betrayal, grief, and/or anger in the process.

While moral injury resembles post-traumatic stress in its symptomology, its recovery processes cannot be fully addressed pharmaceutically because one’s moral orienting system is not static nor individual in nature, but rather dynamic and social-relational. Therefore, recovery necessitates attention to broken connections with trust, compassion, and sense of goodness. While these can be addressed, with attention to the pro-social function of moral emotions being key, in some therapeutic modalities, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (Evans et al, 2020), community-based reparative action more fully realizes the social-relational dimensions of recovery.

Mission Continues and Team Rubicon have demonstrated the power of teamwork-based community service; and the sustained activism of Veterans for Peace, Women in Black, and labor union organizing are a few of many examples of how organized communities engaged in justice work create new or strengthened social-relational bonds as they amplify a collective moral voice. Restorative Justice practices also have value in recovery pathways in the aftermath of moral injuries as they center truth speaking, accountability, and recalibration of the social-relational equilibrium. Such examples are supported by Herman’s framework, but often go under-the-radar because they are not clinical or therapeutic in character. This paper will highlight these three – community service, activism, and Restorative Justice practices – as positively impactful approaches with moral injury.

The significance of “repair” has existed in the moral injury discourse since the seminal work of Brock and Lettini (2012) introduced the terminology of “soul repair.” However, the matter of where the “repair” is meant to take place becomes a quandary that must be attended to sincerely. It is not sufficient to address repair in an isolated, invidual sense; repair must be a collective undertaking. By examining these instances of recovery through community-based reparative action, the deficits in our current response to moral injury as a PTSD-adjacent clinical matter come into focus. The Western clinical-medical paradigm is not capable of fully addressing the needs of the moral injured because it is not designed to respond to the demands created by moral transgressions (i.e. injustices). Without community-based reparative action a person develops a learned helplessness resulting in worsening social-relational isolation, destructive behaviors, depression, etc. (Seligman, 1975).

Because moral injury is social-relational in nature, recovery must integrate pro-social reparative action rooted in an engaged, trustworthy and compassionate community. This paper will address how these three community-based reparative action approaches are effective: (1) by functioning as an engaged, trustworthy, and compassionate community; and (2) by exercising moral responsibility as a collective matter not an individual pathology.

References

Brock, R. & Lettini, G. (2012). Soul repair: Recovering from moral injury after war. Boston, MA: Beacon Press.

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Drescher, K. D., & Foy, D. W. (2010). When horror and loss intersect: Traumatic experiences and traumatic bereavement. Pastoral Psychology, 59, 147–158.

Evans, W. et al (2020). The moral injury workbook: Acceptance and Commitment Therapy skills. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

Herman, J. (1997). Trauma and recovery. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Herman, J. (2011). Posttraumatic stress disorder as a shame disorder. In R. L. Dearing & J. P. Tangney (Eds.), Shame in the therapy hour (pp. 261-275). Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.

Herman, J. (2023). Truth and repair: How trauma survivors envision justice. New York, NY: Basic Books.

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Moon, Z. (2017). 'Turn now, my vindication is at stake': Military moral injury and communities of faith. Pastoral Psychology.

Moon, Z. (2019). Warriors between worlds: Moral injury and identities in crisis. New York, NY: Lexington Books.

Seligman, M. (1975). Helplessness: On depression, development, and death. San Francisco, CA: W. H. Freeman and Company.