Interdisciplinary Book and Film Reviews

THERAPY AFTER TERROR:        9/11, PSYCHOTHERAPISTS,    AND MENTAL HEALTH By     Karen M. Seeley  (2008) Reviewed by   September K. Trent       and   Geoffrey W. Sutton “Everybody’s trauma was so raw. It didn’t matter who you were talking to —relief worker, direct victim, other therapists —you were all the same body in some ways”  (p. 152).  Seeley peppers her analysis of the effects of 9/11 on psychotherapists and the field of mental health with excerpts from pungent and thoughtful interviews. We glimpse the chaos through the eyes of psychotherapists who lived the trauma in their personal and professional lives. On the morning of September 11, 2001, New York therapists are running to the Red Cross shelters to donate their time, psychologists are treating patients who are eyewitnesses to the worst enemy attack on the American homeland, and counselors, themselves victims who lost everything, are trying to counsel others through trauma-colored lenses. Seeley examines the diagn

AMISH GRACE:            HOW FORGIVENESS TRANSCENDED TRAGEDY By    Donald Kraybill, Steven M. Nolt,     & David L. Weaver-Zercher Reviewed by    Geoffrey W. Sutton The horrific slaughter of Amish children attending school in the Old Order Amish community of Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, garnered international attention in October, 2006. When the Amish responded with forgiveness and reconciliation, people were doubly shocked. Christian teaching and psychological research on forgiveness can appear as sterile narratives until tragedies upend everyday life. The authors of  Amish Grace offer informed readers the kind of details and analyses that allow Christian clinicians and researchers to consider how Christian virtues and psychological research on forgiveness and reconciliation may be integrated. The authors explore the virtues of grace, forgiveness, and reconciliation as they review the Amish response to the tragic school shooting of October 2, 2006 in Nickel Mines, Pennsy