Michael Patrick MacDonald’s memoir All Souls, details countless cases of traumatic experiences of the author, his family, and his community. For this paper, I am going to focus on the eldest of the nine MacDonald children whose name was Davey. Like many people in the memoir, Davey, met a tragic end when he committed suicide by jumping off of his roof. In the following paragraphs I am going to come up with a treatment plan for Davey that could have been implemented when he first started showing signs of serious trouble. Thus, my treatment would be for Davey when he was 14 years old and after he first came back home after running away to become a petty thief in California when he was supposed to be attending the prestigious Boston Latin School. I will use Judith Herman’s approach in her book Trauma and Recovery  as a framework for a possible treatment for Davey when he was fourteen.

            The first aspect in helping Davey deal with the numerous traumas that he had experienced would be establishing a sense of safety for him. The safety would have to include both feeling safe while in counseling sessions and in his life in general. Due, to the chaos and crime that surrounded Davey’s life this would be extremely difficult to do. The first step I would take would be to empower Davey by having him pick a place where he feels safe and comfortable in order to have our meetings. A traditional meeting place such as a school guidance counselor or office would most likely not feel safe for Davey because of the lack of trust he most likely has for government institutions because of his families experiences with them and from the general anti-government philosophy of where he grew up.

            Once we have established a safe place to have our meetings and hopefully began to build up some rapport and trust, the next step going along with the Herman model is to name the problem. That is easier said then done. Davey suffered many traumatic experiences in his life such as finding the dead body of a younger sibling, being beaten up by kids in the neighborhood, and as the oldest child bearing the brunt of the abuse of his father. Later, on in the book, Davey is diagnosed with schizophrenia; however, at the age of 14 when I am doing my theoretical treatment, he has exhibited violent behavior and ran away, but he does not seem to have and obvious signs of schizophrenia. Thus, the diagnoses I would initially give Davey are some form of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

            If things go well with the initial steps of recovery, Davey might be ready to begin the task of remembrance and morning. In a case like Davey where there would be obvious trust issues and feeling of loss of power due to all the problems beyond his control that have hurt his life, I think it would be important for Davey to have control of how he remembered and mourned about the trauma in his life. Davey, is described in the book as someone who is sensitive and also extremely intelligent. Therefore, instead of talking about his experiences, I might encourage him to write a journal, or story, or do an art or music project that in some way helps him talk about and represent the trauma that he has experienced in his life. Furthermore, I would let him know that whatever he writes would be his to look at only unless he choose to share them with me or members of his family/friends.

            Hopefully this process would allow Davey to trust me enough to start talking about both the trauma that he had experienced and the positive and negative relationships or experiences in his life. Then I can start asking more detailed questions in order to truly bring all the traumatic experiences to light.

            After the remembrance and mourning have occurred, it will be important to begin the process of reconnection. The reconnection must be done in an honest manner. This might have to lead to confrontations with important people in Davey’s life such as his family. In a controlled manner, Davey will need to eventually disclose to him mom trauma such as the beating that he took from his father. Before this is done, we must go through some aspects of the making disclosures more effective that Herman details. Davey must first understand that his the actual result of him disclosing his trauma to a family member such as his mom and the desired result are two different things. Hence, I would prepare him with the fact that his family may not react well to his disclosures and that is normal and he has to try to accept whatever the outcome of his disclosure is.

            As a final component of Davey’s recovery, I would try to help him find a survivor mission. Like everything else, I would let Davey take the lead in trying to determine what this should be in order to empower him. At the most I might offer suggestions such as volunteering at places that help younger children deal with problems, helping out his own younger siblings, and or doing some sort of work that helps his community as a whole.

            I admit that my treatment plan is most likely not extensive enough to have truly helped Davey. Furthermore, any treatment plan would have been completely useless if Davey has to stay in the same family and neighborhood environment where there was always new traumatic situations surrounding everyone. I do believe that the treatments outlined above going along with Herman’s model could have been branching out points to help Davey when he was a teen and hopefully have avoided his tragic fate.