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Article

Oklahoma City Ten Years Later: Positive Psychology, Transactional Analysis, and the Transformation of Trauma from a Terrorist Attack

Pages 120-133
Published online: 28 Dec 2017
 
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The literature on terrorism and disaster has generally emphasized immediate response. After awhile, however, the people who come to help go home, and savings, insurance, and favors are used up. This article addresses this later period, the long-term effects of trauma, and the roles of outreach and other interventions, at least as they have been experienced in Oklahoma City since the terrorist bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in April 1995. It emphasizes the roles of permission and protection, the co-creation of meanings, individual and cultural scripts, and the transcendence of drama triangle roles and their relatives. The article also addresses the possibility of posttraumatic growth as people grieve for a lost sense of personhood and construct a new one. Finally, it considers the concepts of increasingly complex psychosocial and neurological integration (neuroconstructivism).

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Author information

James R. Allen

James R. Allen, M.D., FRCP(C), M.P.H., Teaching and Supervising Transactional Analyst, is professor of psychiatry and behavioral science and Rainbolt Chair of Child Psychiatry, University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, U.S.A. He is also the current president of the International Transactional Analysis Association. Dr. Allen can be reached at the Department of Psychiatry, Room 3 WP-3070, 920 Stanton L. Young Blvd., Oklahoma City, OK 73104, USA, or by e-mail at .