No abstract

This article seeks to place the concept of continuous traumatic stress (CTS) in its historical context and revisit the debates that shaped its genesis. It explores the implications for treatment of a very particular context of CTS-civil conflict, the context that first shaped the term. This exploration focuses on therapists and the structure of therapy. It complements other articles in this edition that focus on direct victims and survivors. It introduces the idea that beneficiaries and bystanders may be affected by exposure to contexts of CTS, but makes it clear that these effects cannot be conflated with the effects on the victim. In the light of article in this edition, the present article addresses the question of the place of CTS in the field of traumatic stress. It stresses the meaning of CTS as context specific, and, as such, conceptualizes CTS as an overarching concept that can encompass a number of the complicated trauma conditions described in the literature.

Nineteen abused children between 5 and 10 years of age were compared to 19 nonabused children on measures of aggression, emotional maladjustment, and empathy. The abused children and the controls were equated in terms of age, sex, socioeconomic states, developmental age, IQ, language, and race. The abused children were found to be significantly different from the controls on the measures of empathy and emotional maladjustment. They did not differ on the aggression measures. Possible explanations of these findings are advanced and their implications explored.Requests for reprints should be sent to R.

This article presents the findings of a series of studies that examine the perceptions of black South African youth about township life and the civil conflict and violence it encompasses. The studies were conducted with comparable samples of 58-82 youth at 3 points in South Africa's history, all characterized by high levels of violence but differing in terms of their political contexts. These contexts were overt State-community conflict, covert opposition and political repression, and intracommunity violence. The data revealed that in all 3 contexts youth reported a high exposure to violence, but only when violence occurred in the context of intracommunity conflict was it subjectively construed to be the most problematic. Reasons for this may include the real increase in more extreme forms of violence, including deaths, that occurs in intracommunity violence and the blurring of the distinction between political and criminal violence in this context.