trauma

our question is: what does this social recognition change, for the men and women of today (whether victims or not), in their vision of the world and its history, and in their relationships with others and with themselves?

The history of the invention of post-traumatic stress in the late nineteenth century and of its rediscovery in the late twentieth century, thus allows us to trace a dual genealogy

While Fassin and Rechtman continuously assert that their paper is not attempting to normatively evaluate the genealogy they document, it is made clear that trauma has become a regime of truth

This was interesting as I find myself guilty of cultural biases when it comes to victimhood. When hearing about tragic accidents, such as the severity or numbers of casualties, the pain/stress I feel is usually (not always!) worse when it is about fellow Cambodians.

This critique primarily addresses the concepts and tools with which the men and women of today think and transform the world—concepts and tools that are often invisible, and therefore unrecognized, by those who use them.

First, trauma obliterates experiences. It operates as a screen between the event and its context on the one hand, and the subject and the meaning he or she gives to the situation on the other. By reducing, whether in clinical terminology or in common language, the link between what happened and what was experienced to a set of symptoms, or even of... See more

Rather than a clinical reality, trauma today is a moral judgement

Our goal is rather to understand how we have moved from a realm in which the symptoms of the wounded soldier or the injured worker were deemed of doubtful legitimacy to one in which their suffering, no longer contested, testifies to an experience that excites sympathy and merits compensation. The point is to grasp the shift that has resulted in... See more

In other words, there appeared to be a sort of background level of trauma that was not greatly altered by the attacks. However, the proportion was higher among those who had had prolonged exposure to television coverage of the attacks on the Twin Towers.