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The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Paperback – October 27, 1997
| Allan Young (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
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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.
- Print length328 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPrinceton University Press
- Publication dateOctober 27, 1997
- Dimensions6 x 0.85 x 9 inches
- ISBN-100691017239
- ISBN-13978-0691017235
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"Allan Young. . . would disagree with the notion that [PTSD] has always been with us, arguing that the traumatic memory is a man-made object. . . . His book is a lucid case-study of the way medicine and society have managed to build up this man-made disorder over the past century and a half."---Gerald Weissmann, The London Review of Books
"Allan Young has written a splendid and much needed book. . . . Young's book is an invaluable contribution to an emerging and exciting area of scholarship. Intellectually bold, analytically rigorous, and rhetorically compelling, The Harmony of Illusions will both delight and provoke--perhaps even infuriate--friends and foes of the PTSD diagnosis."---Eric Caplan, American Journal of Sociology
"The well-researched description of the development of the construct of PTSD within American psychiatric circles makes for fascinating reading as the personalities of the players are presented along with their ideas."---William Yule, The Times Higher Education Supplement
"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."---Philip Jenkins, American Historical Review
"A stringent critique of the diagnosis of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), which came into vogue after the Vietnam war. . . . Young's work is scientific in the best sense, i.e., clear, precise, and free of jargon and polemics." ― Kirkus Reviews
"Young has produced a fascinating book. It is also very timely given current debates, both within and beyond psychotherapy, about trauma, abuse and its recovery."---Janet Sayers, British Journal of Psychotherapy
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From the Back Cover
"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
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Product details
- Publisher : Princeton University Press; 1st edition (October 27, 1997)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 328 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0691017239
- ISBN-13 : 978-0691017235
- Item Weight : 1.06 pounds
- Dimensions : 6 x 0.85 x 9 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,316,587 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #875 in Medical Mental Illness
- #1,857 in Medical Psychology Pathologies
- #2,054 in Post-traumatic Stress Disorder
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Young's work was based on time spent in a U.S. VA hospital observing PTSD treatment and the interaction between doctors and patients, as well as the feedback loop created by patient interaction. Young questions the theories and technologies used to bind the PTSD concept together, and as he shows very well, PTSD is simply the most current concept given to trauma symptoms, and is not a "universal" disorder.
Young's book is important because it caused both clinicians, researchers, and historians/sociologists etc. to question the validity of PTSD as a concept to encapsulate the many ways in which trauma occurs and is experienced. Twenty years on from its original publication date, when PTSD is diagnosed after almost every car accident, regardless of the severity, and has been heavily utilized by unscrupulous lawyers and individuals seeking personal gain, PTSD seems increasingly unable to capture the reality of trauma and whether or not "PTSD" from rape is the same as "PTSD" from war or other causes.
This book started a cascade of research that now looks into the socio-cultural elements underpinning both the medical profession and the everyday experience of trauma. It is increasingly possible that PTSD as a concept will be replaced as research goes on, and when it does, Young's book will prove even more prescient. His work is a reminder that even medical science is not infallible, and that we must question the purpose and validity of attempting to capture human experience through neatly divided categories. It is also a reminder that we must question the ways that we use theories and technology to attempt to solidify what may in fact be something different. Trauma exists, few doubt that, but whether or not "PTSD" is a valid way to diagnose and treat it is another matter entirely.
If you're interested in learning about the history of trauma and how PTSD went from being viewed as an American, Vietnam-specific diagnosis to a "universal" way of diagnosing trauma, give this book a read. It can be challenging at times, but it has much to say and will give you pause the next time you read about the newest psychiatric terms, many of which often fall away like sandcastles with the passage of time.








