Series editor's foreword

Abstract

At this writing, workers continue to recover the bodies of those who died at the World Trade Center in New York on September 11,2001. It has now been more than six months since America and the world in general began to seem more dangerous, and understanding trauma and loss has, as a result of the events of September 11, become that much more important. We are still at the beginning of a collective struggle to comprehend the implications of 'such an enormous trauma, one that has taken away many Americans' feelings of security and freedom. At this time there could not be a more fitting topic to explore than that examined in this book-the loss of assumptive world values. This book is about the destruction and rebuilding of life assumptions, and I can verifY that my life assumptions, as well as those of many other people in this country, were destroyed on September 11, 2001. My colleagues and I responded to the attack and the needs of traumatized New Yorkers under the banner of the Green Cross Projects. Green Cross volunteers facilitated 76 group defusing/educational sessions ranging from 1 to 1 and a half hours; 2 sessions even ran for 4 hours. Total attendance for group sessions was 635 people. Also, Green Cross volunteers facilitated individual defusing/ crisis interventions spanning 20 minutes to 1 hour and, at times, even longer. There were 2,159 individual defusing/ crisis interventions. In all, Green Cross volunteers came into contact with 2,794 survivors of the World Trade Center attacks. Over and over, the theme that emerged from discussions with those who survived-particularly those who knew victims killed in the attack-was an extraordinary shift in worldviews. Never-before-experienced concerns about the welfare of a loved one became doubtful after September 11th. Never-before-experienced fears of working in tall buildings, as well as in New York City and in America in general, have now been replaced with new fears. This extraordinary sea of change in basic life assumptions is among the artifacts of this terrorist attack. Although Americans are now experiencing what most of the world has experienced for years, the threat of terrorism in our own hometowns, the shock of the 9/11 attacks may be greater for us. We have been lulled into a sense of complacency by our sense of invulnerability. Though we have fought many wars, none have been fought on United States soil for centuries. …