Unmaking of a torturer

There I saw a tube does not work as well as a Pick n Pay bag. A tube works well, but a plastic bag is better, because he listens to you talking to him the whole time, and he talks less and less. A tube cuts off his oxygen immediately, but with a plastic bag he still gets . . . he can breathe, he can breathe, up to a point. Then he can't. It is slower, but it works better.

We began to specialise. When using a tube I knew that when he shits or wet himself, then you must stop because then he is at his . . . Three policemen tell the horrifying stories of what they had done during the apartheid years - how, where and whom they had tortured. They don't try to negate their part in the events and in fact have taken a great risk in telling their stories. One day, all of a sudden, they find themselves disempowered. They are hurting,
suffer enormous guilt, feel angry, experience deep remorse and exhibit serious posttraumatic stress disorders. In this book they walk the road to healing with their psychologist.

The book offers insightful reading to the psychologist as well as to those who have been there and are still not healed! The book is based on the doctoral thesis of the author and contains information that has never been published before.

The author

Elaine Bing worked as a counselling psychologist after qualifying in 1989. In 1992, she started a private practice with a colleague. Her entire professional life, she has worked with people who have experienced trauma. In working with traumatised patients, she was exposed to people who had harmed others, and eventually allowed that exposure to develop into an academic interest reflected in the doctorate on which this book is based.