Death Work: Police, Trauma, and the Psychology of Survival

by Vincent E. Henry, Robert Jay Lifton (Foreword)

In this fascinating new book, Vincent Henry (a 21-year veteran of the NYPD who recently retired to become a university professor) explores the psychological transformations and adaptations that result from police officers' encounters with death. Police can encounter death frequently in the course of their duties, and these encounters may range from casual contacts with the deaths of others to the most profound and personally consequential confrontations with their own mortality. Using the 'survivor psychology' model as its theoretical base, this insightful and provocative research ventures into a previously unexplored area of police psychology to illuminate and explore the new modes of adaptation, thought, and feeling that result from various types of death encounters in police work.

The psychology of survival asserts that the psychological world of the survivor--one who has come in close physical or psychic contact with death but nevertheless managed to live--is characterized by five themes: psychic numbing, death guilt, the death imprint, suspicion of counterfeit nurturance, and the struggle to make meaning. These themes become manifest in the survivor's behavior, permeating his or her lifestyle and worldview.

Drawing on extensive interviews with police officers in five nominal categories--rookie officers, patrol sergeants, crime scene technicians, homicide detectives, and officers who survived a mortal combat situation in which an assailant or another officer died--Henry identifies the impact such death encounters have upon the individual, the police organization, and the occupational culture of policing. He has produced a comprehensive and highly textured interpretation of police psychology and police behavior, bolstered by the unique insights that come from his personal experience as an officer, his intimate familiarity with the subtleties and nuances of the police culture's value and belief systems, and his meticulous research and rigorous method. Death Work provides a unique prism through which to view the individual, organizational, and social dynamics of contemporary urban policing. With a foreword by Robert Jay Lifton and a chapter devoted to the local police response to the World
Trade Center attacks, Death Work will be of interest to psychologists and criminal justice experts, as well as police officers eager to gain insight into their unique relationship to death.

416 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2004

Reviews

[K. R. B. Moum · Rating 3 out of 5]

An academic piece covering psychological and some sociological features of experiencing an event of death and being a survivor as a law enforcement officer from the 'psychology of survival' perspective following a formative-symbolic paradigm - that's what it is.

p.s. a decent work of thought on the mentioned issue, undoubtedly

[Lou Florio · Rating 4 out of 5]

This text is among the most complete, well documented studies I have read on police encounters with death and the psychology of survival. It speaks true to my personal law enforcement experience and many situations I observed in the urban agency where I served. This study seeks to address multiple variables affecting the responses of police officers working at death scenes or experiencing lethal force or near death experiences themselves. These variables include duty/task assignments, previous experience, interaction with others at the scene, duration of exposure, gruesomeness of the death and condition of the corpse, physical proximity to the corpse, and the extent to which the officer identifies or has a relationship with the deceased. In addition, the author also explores death and near-death events where the individual plays an instrumental role. These can be particularly traumatic. Primarily using the formative-symbolic paradigm of Robert Jay Lifton, the author explores such issues as psychic numbing (partial professional numbing to do one's job better through unhealthy psychic cut-off from events and people), the cynical and suspicious tendencies of police, and depression/suicide risks. Sharing his own experience with the 9-11 attacks, he reveals how the horror of such modern crises can become significantly more traumatic because even experienced and healthy officers have trouble integrating such events into a new understanding of life. Events like 9-11 and mass shootings can prove beyond anything officers have previously imagined or encountered. Both individuals and systems can thus break down. I recommend this book to any law enforcement chaplain, but especially to those who have never served on the street as an officer. This book will help you better understand police culture and the significant challenges officers face each day. For those with law enforcement experience, it will likely provide insight into your own history and how such events might impact your encounters with death (and life) today. Vincent E. Henry, Ph.D. is a retired 21 year veteran of the New York Police Department, and currently serves as associate professor and director of Long Island University's Homeland Security Management Institute.