Conspiracy of Silence

Trauma survivors and their offspring have been the topic of a large body of psychological research both clinical and empirical in nature. Those providing trauma care services are not always able to fully attend to the emotional impact of trauma on survivors. This may be driven by factors such as caregiver stress, motivation to minimize client displays of distress, or identification of complex traumatic disorders or factors related to organizational policies that lead to underrepresentation or misrepresentation of client care requirements. The conspiracy of silence, a construct first identified by Yael Danieli initially referring to Holocaust survivors, does a good job of explaining these clinician response factors. In this discussion, the conspiracy of silence could be more widely expressed as it relates to other populations.

However, because of the genesis of the construct we will focus this review primarily on the discussion as it relates to the Holocaust survivor literature where the original term found its use. Yet we also need to nod toward newer literature that recognizes the continued impact of the conspiracy of silence. One example being Uganda where interviews reveal thematic commentary such as “Talking can be dangerous and make you ill.” Marian Tankink concluded that this belief was then fostered by an environment where community, social, and cultural institutions have been destroyed, reinforcing that idea that silence keeps you safe.

After World War II, Holocaust survivors began to reconstruct their lives. Many survivors completed interviews with psychiatrists working with the German reparation boards. Some sought clinical therapeutic intervention to assist them with their posttrauma burden. The term conspiracy of silence sprang from the encounters of these survivors with mental health professionals and the therapeutic failures that arose during these interactions.

The conspiracy of silence is easily classified as a therapeutic failure among an early population of posttrauma care seekers. Some of the associated difficulties resulting from the conspiracy of silence include poor interpretation of the client's problems, inadequate client-therapist relationship, lack of emotional readiness on the therapist's part to work with trauma survivors, and nonclinical motivations on the part of the mental health providers. As mentioned above, Yael Danieli's work reflects on the conspiracy of silence with a specific focus on mental health providers providing services to Holocaust survivors. Although the term has its genesis in Holocaust survivor literature, more recent examples might include mental health workers with chronic complex caseloads that are overly challenging for their current skill level, clinicians struggling with the mandate of profit-driven organizations (e.g., insurance companies, criminal justice systems, workers compensation programs, time-limited employee assistance programs), and mental health professionals with personal trauma history that reignites with exposure to traumatized clients. It is also important to recognize that survivors themselves played a role in silencing as they themselves were at times highly motivated to undermine or suppress their trauma histories.

The Holocaust survivor's earliest contact with mental health professionals most often involved psychological assessments by German psychiatrists [Page 147]working for the German reparation boards who determined individual qualification for compensation. In Germany in particular, psychiatrists conveniently held a deterministic belief in the innateness of psychopathology. In 1990, Robert Krell highlighted the tendency of these mental health professionals to refuse to recognize the relationship between the massive trauma experienced during the Holocaust and subsequent psychopathology. He wrote that a diagnosing psychiatrist explained a Holocaust survivor's distress as hysteria demonstrated through inarticulate sounds. Krell used this as an example of a failure to reflect on the survivor's profound losses of family, children, and friends and her ability to function well prior to the Holocaust.

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