Given her background as a sociologist and social worker, Moulder is particularly well-suited to attempt this novel and excellent account of the commonalities among extraordinary experiences and the process of returning from them. The author categorizes her case studies and ethnographic interviews with people leaving war, natural disaster, and intense exposure to political or social justice activism using Max Weber's ... Read more`ideal types.' She does not discriminate between voluntary or non-voluntary human action. A vast literature on post-traumatic stress disorder and the anthropology of war more generally exists, but her focus on commonalities is unique. In the book's second section, she analyzes nine individual strategies for returning to the ordinary world (repression, silence and secrecy, nostalgia, renewal, psychotherapy, personal healing practices, support from other returnees, political action, and recognition of continuity), followed by a cross-cultural evaluation of each and the implications for public policy.... Summing Up: Highly recommended. All levels/libraries.
CHOICE
Moulder's compact and meticulously organized work is geared mainly toward academic readers and students in the social sciences, social service and medical providers, policymakers, and of course, those who themselves have exited an extraordinary life experience and their families. Be assured that it is far from a highly technical read, but rather a gentle, enlightening piece of work accessible for all interested in this topic.
The Veteran
The oral history material cited by Moulder illustrates how radically identities can change or be adopted or discarded. The parts about surviving concentration camp life and about undercover agents and veterans were especially compelling. There were early fragments of the book that I wanted to immediately assign to my students, believing that the vivid accounts would fascinate them, too... Like many of my colleagues, I spend a lot of time trying to show my students that much of what they believe to be ``natural'' or ``normal'' about human identity is actually the result of historically contingent and fluctuating social and cultural processes. Significant parts of Moulder's book illustrate this point powerfully through her subjects' accounts of their experiences and adaptive strategies.
Contemporary Sociology
Using a rather audacious conceptualization, Frances Moulder has created an unusually insightful and valuable study of the problematic effects on people returning to ordinary life after life-changing extraordinary experience. Moulder shows that such widely different experiences as military combat, incarceration, disasters, slavery, revolution, and even reporting on or giving aid to people in horrendous conditions have surprisingly similar consequences for the individuals and for the society to which these returnees -as she aptly names them-come back. The value of this intriguing study is greatly enhanced by its specific proposals for restoring health to both the individuals and the society to which they are returning.
H. Bruce Franklin, the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies, Rutgers University Drawing on compelling interviews with military veterans, holocaust survivors and others who have had extra-ordinary experiences, Frances Moulder's moving book sheds light on a longstanding sociological blind spot. Specifically, the failure to study the experiences of extraordinary individuals. This intellectual void is quickly filled by romanticized heroic tales that soon give way to culturally debilitating stories of traumatized or pathologized individuals. By contrast, Moulder's interviewees reveal how exiting is a profoundly social experience. A work of far ranging insight, Exiting the Extraordinary is an important contribution to the vital role the sociological imagination can play in countering the fatalistic commonsense of tragedy and pathology with a renewed commitment to community outreach and policy reforms that embrace empathy.
Benjamin Fleury-Steiner, University of Delaware Show Less