Much as hysteria was during Freud’s days, so posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has become the diagnosis du jour of our days. Still stigmatizing in some circles, PTSD has become a way of talking about the psychic pain inflicted by modern life. I say “modern life” because PTSD seems to be absent in traditional societies, a major topic of Chap. 2. This is not to say that trauma is absent in traditional societies, only that it does not look like PTSD.
Along the way I will argue that, while it is not much of a scientific diagnosis, PTSD is a pretty good political diagnosis. PTSD reveals something about the emptiness of modern life, at least in Western industrial societies. PTSD is a diagnosis that fits someone who is cut off from traditional sources of support that people have relied on for millennia, including religion and close-knit communities. In some ways, our culture prepares people to suffer from PTSD.
Another reason PTSD is a good diagnosis is because it generates a critique of power. The more we make PTSD important, the more we say that the suffering of individuals counts for something in this world. The more we make PTSD important, the more we may be inclined to ask where this suffering comes from. Some research suggests that people are more traumatized by violent acts of individuals and groups than they are by natural disasters. More generally, PTSD is a good diagnosis because it reveals the sheer vulnerability of individuals to events beyond their control, something many of us would rather not think about. The psychic pain and suffering of average people counts when we talk about PTSD.
The diagnosis of PTSD did not come about as the result of psychological research, or at least, that was not the main reason. The diagnosis of PTSD was the result of pressure by Vietnam veterans, and a few psychiatrists who supported them, to explain the torment so many young men experienced after serving a tour of duty in Vietnam. Chap. 2 tells this story. In a word, PTSD is a political diagnosis, but a good one, for it says that anyone can suffer the symptoms of severe psychic pain when placed in a hostile environment for a long enough time. More recently, chronic PTSD (C-PTSD) has become a recognized category, opening the diagnosis to children, as well as victims of less obvious violence.
Group trauma is the topic of Chap. 3. It is actually a more problematic category than it might at first appear to be. PTSD is a diagnostic category that applies only to individuals. A group cannot have PTSD, just like it cannot have brown hair, or appendicitis; only individuals can. Group trauma, I argue, happens when the dominant group in society makes it difficult or impossible for individuals in other groups to make use of the cultural resources a society provides its members to ward off trauma.
These resources include everything from the conditions of decent childrearing and education to the cultural resources of religion, philosophy, music, art, and, above all, a coherent community. In this chapter, perhaps more than any other, we see the way in which trauma is the result of a political act (whether or not it is intentional): in a world of scarce resources, the meaning of life turns out to be one of the scarcest resources of them all. It need not be that way. There is enough meaning to go around. But groups frequently hoard that meaning. How that might occur is discussed in Chap. 3. In the end, trauma is the loss of meaning to life.
Chap. 4 addresses the puzzling phenomenon of intergenerational trauma, as it is called. Intergenerational trauma happens when one generation inflicts its experiences on the next generation. This is more likely when the older generation is unable to speak its trauma, or when the way it speaks and the way it acts are at odds.
Children of Holocaust survivors are my leading examples. My argument is that intergenerational trauma occurs in families, and the process is much like the way that parents inflict neuroses or other emotional problems on their children. Once again, I try to stick to the principle that only individuals can be traumatized, and so it is to the family that we must turn, even as that family is situated in a larger society, which must be taken into account. Chap. 4 concludes with a study of the “comic strip” Maus, by Art Spiegelman, in which the Jews are mice, the Germans are cats, and Americans are dogs. It is, I argue, a profound inquiry into the intergenerational transmission of trauma.
Chap. 5 considers the role of neuroscience in the study of trauma. It includes a fairly lengthy explanation of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a remarkably over-hyped tool for studying trauma. Using the term “somatic society,” borrowed from Bryan Turner (1996), I argue that the neuroscientific study of trauma tells us almost nothing about the experience of trauma, and it is about the experience that we should want to know.
Traumatized people can teach us something about the inequality and fragility of the world, as well as the vulnerability of the human mind and body. In the end, this is the most important lesson that trauma has to teach us. Finally, the neuroscientific approach to trauma depoliticizes trauma, making it a matter between an individual and his or her brain. Trauma is a political relationship between individual, group, and society.
Chap. 6, the conclusion, outlines the theory of trauma that has been implicitly developed throughout this book. Psychic trauma results when one is no longer able to talk to oneself about what one is going through. The ability to talk with oneself is made easier when we can talk with others, but no one can take the place of the “inner other,” which represents most of what we value in the external world. The inner other is not inborn, but emerges from our need for others. It is so precious that we send it into hiding in order to protect it when it is threatened by massive trauma. Protected from others, the inner other becomes unavailable to the self as well. This accounts for most of the symptoms of PTSD, as well as suggesting a therapeutic strategy to reunite the self with its inner other.
While this book is hardly an “introduction to trauma,” it is written with the hope that it will be useful to those unfamiliar with the academic study of trauma. For those familiar with the academic study of trauma, I hope that my book will be useful, and occasionally provocative.
Reference
Turner, B. (1996). The body and society (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.