A comprehensive history of PTSD.
Post-traumatic stress disorder--and its predecessor diagnoses, including
soldier's heart, railroad spine, and shell shock--was recognized as a
psychiatric disorder in the latter part of the nineteenth century. The
psychic impacts of train crashes, wars, and sexual shocks among children
first drew psychiatric attention. Later, enormous numbers of soldiers
suffering from battlefield traumas returned from the world wars. It was
not until the 1980s that PTSD became a formal diagnosis, in part to
recognize the intense psychic suffering of Vietnam War veterans and
women with trauma-related personality disorders. PTSD now occupies a
dominant place in not only the mental health professions but also major
social institutions and mainstream culture, making it the signature
mental disorder of the early twenty-first century.
In PTSD, Allan V. Horwitz traces the fluctuations in definitions of
and responses to traumatic psychic conditions. Arguing that PTSD,
perhaps more than any other diagnostic category, is a lens for showing
major historical changes in conceptions of mental illness, he surveys
the conditions most likely to produce traumas, the results of those
traumas, and how to evaluate the claims of trauma victims.
Illuminating a number of central issues about psychic disturbances more
generally--including the relative importance of external stressors and
internal vulnerabilities in causing mental illness, the benefits and
costs of mental illness labels, and the influence of gender on
expressions of mental disturbance--PTSD is a compact yet comprehensive
survey. The book will appeal to diverse audiences, including the
educated public, students across the psychological and social sciences,
and trauma victims who are interested in socio-historical approaches to
their condition.
Praise for Allan V. Horwitz's Anxiety: A Short History
"The definitive overview of the history of anxiety."--Bulletin of the
History of Medicine
"A lucid, erudite and brisk intellectual history driven by a clear and
persuasive central argument."--Social History of Medicine
"An enlightening tour of anxiety, set at a sensible pace, with an
exceptional scholar and writer leading the way."--Library Journal
