Is This A Culture Of Trauma

This book investigates the September 11, 2001 attacks as a case study of cultural trauma, as well as how the use of widely-distributed, easily-accessible forms of popular culture can similarly focalize evaluation of other moments of acute and profoundly troubling historical change. The attacks confounded the traditionally dominant narrative of the American Dream, which has persistently and pervasively featured optimism and belief in a just world that affirms and rewards self-determination. This shattering of a worldview fundamental to mainstream experience and cultural understanding in the United States has manifested as a cultural trauma throughout popular culture in the first decade of the twenty-first century. Popular press oral histories, literary fiction, television, and film are among the multiple, ubiquitous sites evidencing preoccupations with existential crisis, vulnerability, and moral ambivalence, with fate, no-win scenarios, and anti-heroes now pervading commonly-told and readily-accessible stories. Christine Muller examines how popular culture affords sites for culturally-traumatic events to manifest and how readers, viewers, and other audiences negotiate their fallout.

This book examines the social contexts in which trauma is created by those who study it, whether considering the way in which trauma afflicts groups, cultures, and nations, or the way in which trauma is transmitted down the generations. As Alford argues, ours has been called an age of trauma. Yet, neither trauma nor post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are scientific concepts. Trauma has been around forever, even if it was not called that. PTSD is the creation of a group of Vietnam veterans and psychiatrists, designed to help explain the veterans' suffering. This does not detract from the value of PTSD, but sets its historical and social context. The author also confronts the attempt to study trauma scientifically, exploring the use of technologies such as magnetic resonance imagining (MRI). Alford concludes that the scientific study of trauma often reflects a willed ignorance of traumatic experience. In the end, trauma is about suffering.

This collection brings together case studies from the social sciences, such as clinical psychology and psychotherapy, as well as articles from the humanities that examine the aesthetics of trauma as represented in film, fiction, poetry, and the graphic novel.

This lofty volume analyzes a circular cultural relationship: not only how trauma is reflected in cultural processes and products, but also how trauma itself acts as a critical shaper of literature, the visual and performing arts, architecture, and religion and mythmaking. The political power of trauma is seen through US, Israeli, and Japanese art forms as they reflect varied roles of perpetrator, victim, and witness. Traumatic complexities are traced from spirituality to movement, philosophy to trauma theory. And essays on authors such as Kafka, Plath, and Cormac McCarthy examine how narrative can blur the boundaries of personal and collective experience. Among the topics covered: Television: a traumatic culture. From Hiroshima to Fukushima: comics and animation as subversive agents of memory in Japan. The death of the witness in the era of testimony: Primo Levi and Georges Perec. Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and the possibility of writing a traumatic history of religion. Placing collective trauma within its social context: the case of the 9/11 attacks. Killing the killer: rampage and gun rights as a syndrome. This volume appeals to multiple readerships including researchers and clinicians, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and media researchers.

Culture and PTSD examines the applicability of PTSD to cultural contexts beyond Europe and North America and details local responses to trauma and how they vary from PTSD as defined by the American Psychiatric Association.

This work is a vital set of insights and guidelines that will contribute to more aware and meaningful practice for mental health professionals. Focusing equally on theoretical concepts, culturally valid assessment methods, and cultural adaptation in trauma and resilience, an array of experts present the cutting edge of research and strategies. Extended case studies illustrate an informative range of symptom profiles, comorbid conditions, and coping skills, as well as secondary traumas that can occur in asylum seekers.

Wars, violence, and natural disasters often require mental health interventions with people from a multitude of ethnic groups, religions, and nationalities. Within the United States, those who care for the victims of trauma often assist individuals from a variety of immigrant cultures. Moreover, many aspiring mental health professionals from other countries seek training in the United States, creating an additional need for a broad cultural awareness within educational institutions. Honoring Differences deals with the treatment of trauma and loss while recognizing and understanding the cultural context in which the mental health professional provides assistance. Training in the cultural beliefs that may interact with traumatic reactions is essential, both to assess traumatic response accurately and to prevent harm in the process of assessing and treating trauma. Various cultures within the United States and several international communities are featured in the book. Each culturally-specific chapter aims to help the caregiver honor the valued traditions, main qualities, and held beliefs of the culture described and prepare to enter the community well-informed and well-equipped to intervene or consult effectively. Further more, the book provides information about issues, traditions, and characteristics of the culture, which are essential in moving through the phases of post-trauma or other mental health intervention. Mental health professionals, trauma specialists, missionaries, and organizations that send consultants to other nations, will find Honoring Differences essential reading. It will also be a resource to those who are interested in cultural differences and in honoring the belief systems of other cultures and nations.

This volume argues that there are serious problems inherent in current conceptualisations of how people react to trauma, and consequently in many of the therapeutic responses that have been developed.