Harmony of illusions: Inventing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder

By Alan Young

Abstract

If you look up Post Traumatic Stress Disorder on the internet you will find that PTSD is a real disorder, a real illness (like a physical illness) that needs real treatment.

This book runs counter to the tendency to construe mental disorders as real physical illnesses. The author does this by revealing the historical context in which the notion of posttraumatic stress first arose. He claims that PTSD is a "condition" whose popularity has grown out of proportion to the limited evidence for its validity as a clinical entity. Furthermore, he also claims that PTSD fits a profession's need for a "serious" mental disorder that requires psychotherapy as its primary mode of treatment, at a time when medications have come to be seen as the primary treatment from most Axis I psychiatric disorders.