PTSD, Allan V. Horwitz
PTSD, Allan V. Horwitz
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PTSD
A Short History

Author: Allan V. Horwitz

Narrator: Kyle Tait

Unabridged: 7 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 01/03/2019


Synopsis

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.

About Allan V. Horwitz

Allan V. Horwitz is the Board of Governors and Distinguished Professor Emeritus in the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Health, Health Care Policy, and Aging Research at Rutgers University. He is the author of DSM: A History of Psychiatry's Bible, PTSD: A Short History, Anxiety: A Short History, and Creating Mental Illness.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Julian on December 18, 2020

In many ways I like this book. It's well researched. It covers off the major historical moments in the history of PTSD as an illness. It is readable. It is informative about the history. I enjoyed it. Furthermore, I would read other books by the author. A book on the history of PTSD is probably the......more

Goodreads review by Alex on August 17, 2023

I'll preface my review by stating that I was already familiar with the historical background of trauma (and the pseudoscience surrounding it) before reading this book, so my opinions about it might to some extent be colored by my not having gotten anything new/useful out of it. In any case, based on......more

Goodreads review by Anna on April 30, 2019

hopefully i finish my paper lmao......more

Goodreads review by Hilary on September 10, 2024

Audiobook......more