Chapter 1: Wound on the Battle Front, Alibi on the Home Front: Post
Traumatic Stress Disorder in Medical and Legal Guise.
Chapter 2: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder: The Coming Home Story
for a New Generation of Veterans.
Chapter 3: What Did You do in the War? Combat in the American
Imagination
Chapter 4: The Legacy of Salpetrière: Art in the Science of War
Trauma
Chapter 5: Flashbacks: War Trauma Refashioned for PTSD
Chapter 6: Traumatic Brain Injury: Making a “Signature Wound”
Chapter 7: Mr. Rushmore: Ready for War’s New Face?
Chapter 8: Embrace the Horror
Jerry Lembcke is associate professor emeritus of sociology at Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts. His authored books include: The Splitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, and Hanoi Jane: War, Sex and Fantasies of Betrayal.
Arguing that 'the reality of PTSD is far greater than that given it
by medical sciences,' Lembcke sets about separating the diagnostic
wheat from the cultural, economic, and political chaff. He
illustrates the influence of film, theater, television, and news
coverage on the tangled story of war trauma. Headlining the
compelling victim-veteran role that US society expects of returning
combat veterans, Lembcke covers a variety of interesting
sociological topics–for example, 'wannabe vets' and how PTSD is
used as an alibi for homicide, failed marriages, and other personal
problems. The author challenges the status quo by chronicling the
social construction of PTSD and traumatic brain injury–that is,
circumstances in which empirical reality or critical thinking is
often not the umpire. What sets this book apart is the author's
take on how media representations have hijacked the diagnosis of
war trauma. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty,
clinicians, and patients.
*CHOICE*
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) has become a virtual
catch-all basket into which all sorts of mental and physical
ailments experienced by returning veterans are being tossed. By
carefully teasing out the medical issues from the cultural
representations, Jerry Lembcke acknowledges the gendered trauma
that is always attendant upon warfare, but separates the diagnostic
wheat from the cultural chaff, and thus returns to those wounded
warriors the specificity of their experience.
*Michael Kimmel, SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and
Gender Studies, Stony Brook University*
Jerry Lembcke adds considerably to our understanding of the
emergence and acceptance of PTSD in the United States. His analysis
of the cultural and visual depictions of the disorder is
particularly innovative and revealing.
*Peter Conrad, Brandeis University*
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