The underlying primary purposes of Terr's (1990) book are to: a) comprehensively describe the nature of experience children go through when exposed to strong trauma; and b) discuss treatment of childhood trauma. The importance of understanding the nature of childhood trauma to counseling theory is highlighted by the fact that, as Terr points out, this is a very under-researched area. This means the existing body of knowledge does not provide a good foundation for theory development---and without a meaningful theoretical model, treatment is made more difficult.
The basic contribution to counseling theory of Terr's book on childhood trauma and its consequences is that she provides a much needed model of the psychoemotional and behavioral consequences associated with single episode childhood trauma. Her model is built on a psychoanalytic framework in which strong anxiety is said to often lead to suppression and repression---both strong elements of Terr's basic model. The model is built using a sample consisting of children who were kidnapped and buried in their school bus in Chowchella, California in 1976---children who, for the most part, were not given the immediately counseling they needed to begin to deal with what had just happened to them.
Essentially, Terr states that intense single-episode childhood trauma is likely to produce major shifts in personality associated with the psychoemotional processes of terror, rage, denial and numbing, grief and shame. She also notes that while children who experience an intense traumatic episode need immediately counseling, two factors can operate to withhold counseling from them.
First, as part of the general denial mechanism, the child will react in such a way that, at least at first glance, counseling appears to be unnecessary. For example, the child will behave in basically the same ways he did prior to the trauma. He will get up promptly and go to school on time. His scho...