The harmony of illusions : inventing post-traumatic stress disorder / Allan Young.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Young, Allan, 1938-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Post-traumatic stress disorder--Philosophy.

Post-traumatic stress disorder.

Social epistemology.

Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic.

Philosophy, Medical.

Medical Subjects:

Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic.

Philosophy, Medical.

Physical Description:

x, 327 pages ; 25 cm

Edition:

First paperback printing.

Place of Publication:

Princeton, N.J. : Princeton University Press, 1997.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

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.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [299]-319) and index.

ISBN:

0691017239

OCLC:

39884616