Understanding trauma: A discussion of one analysis

The article discusses the potential of the philosophical approach carried out by the English researcher Patrick J. Bracken to the study of the trauma, namely the concept of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The author of the article believes that his work, namely "Trauma: Culture, Meaning and Philosophy", can be considered as a good example of the using of a philosophical approach to a specific research problem. Bracken argues that the dominant research approaches to the study of trauma are unsatisfactory. It is about the boundaries and possibilities of cognitive psychology. As the author writes, its aim is to restore meanings by therapies that focus on the intrapsy-chic worlds of individual people. Cognitivists insist on its scientific character; independence from one or another philosophical reason. The author claims that this approach is based on certain philosophical assumptions. He connects these philosophical assumptions with the domination of the heritage of Cartesianism, Enlightenment and positivism. Bracken argues that there are two important consequences from psychiatry's adoption of the positivist position in both its medical and non-medical forms: first, the conclusion that psychological problems have the same basic form cross-culturally and, second, that the history of psychiatry can be seen as a progressive identification of the true nature of mental illness. Opponents criticized this position for, first, identifying the symptoms of PTSD, and, second, the ways of working out the trauma. But philosophy, as Bracken's book amply illustrates, also offers a positive agenda for change. The author connects this role of philosophy with the sort of hermeneutic phenomenology developed by Heidegger. Heidegger's phenomenology, as Bracken supposes, provides the theoretical framework for an alternative approach to trauma management, one which, in being interpersonal rather than intrapsychic, and social rather than individual in orientation, is better suited to the needs of very many victims of trauma, particularly those in the non-Western world. Bracken argues that Heidegger's philosophy opens up opportunities for using a context-centered approach. If the trauma leads to a loss of meaning, then from a context-centered approach a loss of meaning occurs in a broken world, not in a broken mind. Bracken also indicates that from a phenomenological point of view anxiety should be interpreted not only as a symptom of PTSD, but also as a consequence of the general state of modern society. As Bracken says, in a society in which the background of metaphysics does not function to create a strong sense of life's coherence and continuity, a severe trauma or loss can more easily lead to a sort of post-traumatic anxiety. In the final of his discussions, the author links productive methodological approaches with postpsychiatry. It incorporates evidence, individual therapy, impersonal diagnostic categories, tools of traditional medical psychiatry. But postpsychiatry, as Bracken argues, de-centres these tools and instead foregrounds questions of values, social contexts and, perhaps most important of all, personal meanings.

Keywords

Authors

References