Exiting the Extraordinary: Returning to the Ordinary World After War, Prison, and Other Extraordinary Experiences

This book is an exploratory study, in sociological perspective, of the process of returning to the ordinary world after extraordinary experiences. Some people have transformative experiences in life that are so extraordinary that they cannot be at all adequately explained to those who have not had such experiences. Experiences of this sort include: being in military combat; participating in great social movements, revolutions or terrorist activities; being incarcerated in concentration camps, the Gulag, and prisons; surviving collective disasters such as floods or hurricanes; serving in intelligence agencies and undercover roles; being a member of unusual religious groups; working as a journalist in war zones; carrying out aid work in impoverished or war-torn regions; and enduring slavery. The book discusses the commonalities among extraordinary experiences; why people are so profoundly changed by them; the typical challenges faced by returnees; and some typical strategies returnees have followed in order to deal with these challenges. A central theme of the book is that returnees are challenged not simply by experiencing extreme events, but by a great cultural divide between the extraordinary and the ordinary worlds. The struggles of returnees need to be seen as a social issue, rather than simply the private troubles of individuals. The book is based on personal accounts by returnees, interviews, and secondary sources, and contains many lively examples, both historical and contemporary, of the struggles and triumphs of those who go through extraordinary experiences and return to life in the ordinary world.

Table of Contents:
Introduction Part I: Extraordinary Experiences Chapter 1: Some Extraordinary Experiences Chapter 2: Why People are Transformed by Extraordinary Experiences Part II: Returning to the Ordinary World Chapter 3: Contexts of Return Chapter 4: Challenges of Returning to the Ordinary World Chapter 5: Strategies for Returning to the Ordinary World Chapter 6: Conclusion: Implications for Public Policy Methodological Appendix Theoretical Appendix

About the Author :
Frances V. Moulder has been a lecturer in urban and community studies and sociology at the University of Connecticut in Torrington since her retirement as associate professor of sociology from Three Rivers Community College.

Review :
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 ‘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. 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 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. 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. 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.