In the morning of Aug. 3rd 2018, Prof. Zahava Solomon fromSchool of Social Work in Tel Aviv University in Israel was invited to give a speech entitled “In the shadow of terror: Can good things also come out of bad experiences?” in Room 204 of our department.

Prof. Zahava is an eminent researcher in trauma psychology, and isnow the director of I-CORE Research Center for Mass Trauma in Tel Aviv University. Her studies oncombat veterans, Holocaust survivors, and survivors of ongoing terror,as well asthe survivors’spouses and children are innovative, creative, and highly valuable. Until now, she published about four hundred articles on influential journals such as JAMA, World Psychiatry, American Journal of Psychiatry, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, etc. She is one of the most famous trauma psychologists in the world.

Her current speech critically examined the goals and means used by modern terrorism and its long term effects.

At the beginningof her speech, Prof. Zahava introduced several types of trauma events and emphasized the commonality of trauma in daily life. Then, she focused on terror in Israel and talked about the effects of terror on society and individuals, according to theoretical and empirical studies. She emphasized that terror as a mass trauma event brought both negative outcomes and positive changes, and pathogenic and salutogenic perspectives were evaluated in the field of trauma psychology. Besides,she talked about the implications of individual (e.g., fear and courage), social (e.g., network), institutionalized (e.g., media), and cultural (e.g., gender roles) factors in attenuating the negative effects of terror events. Finally, ideas for conflict resolution were alsodiscussed.

After speech, Prof. Zahava had a heated discussion withthe audience on theories and intervention of psychological trauma, and the speech was concluded in a happy atmosphere. For detailed information about Prof. Zahava, please visit http://www.icore-masstrauma.org/members.