The Harmony of Illusions : Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

"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. Book jacket."--Jacket Western ideas about traumatic memory have changed profoundly over the last century. Allan Young argues that the transformation is connected to two other historical changes: the emergence of new conceptions of human nature and consciousness, and the evolution of psychiatry as an autonomous clinical specialty and branch of medical science. Young traces the psychiatric history of traumatic memory from its beginnings - in railway spine, traumatic hysteria, shell-shock, double consciousness, and mental parasites - to its contemporary manifestation, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In Young's view, PTSD is not a timeless or universal phenomenon, nor is it a discovery. Rather, it is a cultural product: a reality that is glued together by diagnostic technologies, styles of scientific and clinical reasoning, and modes of self-narration and confession. Nor is PTSD simply a psychiatric phenomenon; it is also a moral development: a diagnosis that transgresses the boundary dividing victims from victimizers, and a contagion that crosses the line separating patients from therapists. This book is part history and part ethnography, and it includes a detailed account of everyday life in a psychiatric unit specializing in the diagnosis and treatment of Vietnam War veterans with PTSD. Young argues that PTSD cannot be separated from the routines, technologies, and patterns of thinking through which it is encountered. At the same time, he allows the people in his book - these veterans and their therapists - to speak in their own words, and he vividly evokes the disorder's reality in their lives, as they struggle to make sense of their disturbing memories of a tragic war.

"Young offers a brilliant acount of how post-traumatic stress disorder came into being. His detailed analysis of sessions with Vietnam Vetrens at Vetrens Administration hospitals is one of the finest pieces of up-to-date medical anthropology in existence."—Ian Hacking, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto

Philip Jenkins - American Historical Review

An ambitious and richly informative account of the growth and progress of modern psychiatry itself and particularly of the intimate relationship between that discipline and its broader social and political context. As a model study of the construction of mental illness, this book represents a significant contribution to the history of science and medicine.

I am a clinical social worker who suffered in the past from debilitating PTSD. Due to great strides by my colleagues in psycho-therapeutic work and EMDR, I can testify that PTSD is very real and not an illusion. If you have any cluster of symptoms close to PTSD, don't waste your money on this book. Go find a certified EMDR therapist who can really help you heal. 000_FrontMatter......Page 1 001_Chapter 1......Page 11 002_Chapter 2......Page 53 003_Chapter 3......Page 97 004_Chapter 4......Page 128 005_Chapter 5......Page 153 006_Chapter 6......Page 186 007_Chapter 7......Page 234 008_Chapter 8......Page 274 009_BackMatter......Page 297