Trauma as a metaphor: the politics of psychotherapy after September 11

Abstract

This paper explores the links between mental health practice and politics by examining the implications of turning persons harmed by an act of mass violence into patients with psychiatric disorders, and of prescribing psychotherapy to treat reactions to terrorism. It first considers the interpretative aspects of diagnosis, the social and political implications of particular diagnostic categories, the history of PTSD, and the phenomenon of medicalization. It then looks at the ways psychotherapists privatize social and political experience by emphasizing the personal consequences of community catastrophes, and by helping individuals transform collective history into personal narratives. In closing, it asks whether mental health discourses depoliticize experience, thereby discouraging political engagement and the development of political consciousness.