An edition of The harmony of illusions (1995)

The harmony of illusions

inventing post-traumatic stress disorder

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Last edited by MARC Bot
March 7, 2023 | History
An edition of The harmony of illusions (1995)

The harmony of illusions

inventing post-traumatic stress disorder

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.

Publish Date
Language
English
Pages
327

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Previews available in: English

Edition Availability
Cover of: The Harmony of Illusions
The Harmony of Illusions
October 27, 1997, Princeton University Press
Paperback in English - New Ed edition
Cover of: The harmony of illusions
The harmony of illusions: inventing post-traumatic stress disorder
1997, Princeton University Press, PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS
in English - 1st paperback printing.
Cover of: The harmony of illusions
The harmony of illusions: inventing post-traumatic stress disorder
1995, Princeton University Press
in English

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Book Details


Edition Notes

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

Published in
Princeton, N.J

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
616.85/21
Library of Congress
RC552.P67 Y68 1995, RC552.P67Y68 1995

The Physical Object

Pagination
x, 327 p. ;
Number of pages
327

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL784124M
Internet Archive
harmonyillusions00youn
ISBN 10
0691033528
LCCN
95016254
OCLC/WorldCat
32392650
Library Thing
1235771
Goodreads
1233843

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History

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March 7, 2023 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
December 7, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
March 17, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
November 20, 2020 Edited by MARC Bot import existing book
April 1, 2008 Created by an anonymous user Imported from Scriblio MARC record