Young The Harmony of Illusions

Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
Course Book
ISBN: 978-1-4008-2193-8
Verlag: De Gruyter
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 328 Seiten

As far back as we know, there have been individuals incapacitated by memories that have filled them with sadness and remorse, fright and horror, or a sense of irreparable loss. Only recently, however, have people tormented with such recollections been diagnosed as suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder." Here Allan Young traces this malady, particularly as it is suffered by Vietnam veterans, to its beginnings in the emergence of ideas about the unconscious mind and to earlier manifestations of traumatic memory like shell shock or traumatic hysteria. In Young's view, PTSD is not a timeless or universal phenomenon newly discovered. Rather, it is a "harmony of illusions," a cultural product gradually put together by the practices, technologies, and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, and treated and by the various interests, institutions, and moral arguments mobilizing these efforts.

This book is part history and part ethnography, and it includes a detailed account of everyday life in the treatment of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. To illustrate his points, Young presents a number of fascinating transcripts of the group therapy and diagnostic sessions that he observed firsthand over a period of two years. Through his comments and the transcripts themselves, the reader becomes familiar with the individual hospital personnel and clients and their struggle to make sense of life after a tragic war. One observes that everyone on the unit is heavily invested in the PTSD diagnosis: boundaries between therapist and patient are as unclear as were the distinctions between victim and victimizer in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Young, Allan

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologie / Allgemeines & Theorie Psychologische Theorie, Psychoanalyse
• Interdisziplinäres Wissenschaften Wissenschaften Interdisziplinär Naturwissenschaften, Technik, Medizin

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Introduction 3

Pt. I The Origins of Traumatic Memory

1 Making Traumatic Memory 13

2 World War I 43

Pt. II The Transformation of Traumatic Memory

3 The DSM-III Revolution 89

4 The Architecture of Traumatic Time 118

Pt. III Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Practice

5 The Technology of Diagnosis 145

6 Everyday Life in a Psychiatric Unit 176

7 Talking about PTSD 224

8 The Biology of Traumatic Memory 264

Conclusion 287

Notes 291

Works Cited 299

Index 321

Über Autor(innen)

Allan Young is Professor of Anthropology at McGill University, in the Departments of Social Studies of Medicine, Anthropology, and Psychiatry.