Chapter one – Understanding Psychological Trauma and Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)

Publisher Summary This chapter provides a survey of the history and current state of scientific knowledge and popular conceptions of psychological trauma, from the earliest writings several thousand years ago to modern definitions and diagnoses. Controversies are highlighted, such as whether infants can experience traumatic stress and if they remember psychological traumas, whether military personnel can be protected from PTSD and if their lives (and those of civilian victims) are ever the same after experiencing the horrors of war, whether PTSD is a psychiatric disorder or a “normal response to abnormal events,” whether trauma survivors must return to the past and confront terrifying or horrifying memories in order to recover from PTSD and whether psychological trauma can lead to growth. The chapter begins with a real-life case example and evidence-based facts. This and several subsequent case examples are based on the lives of several real people, to preserve the privacy of each individual while illustrating how psychological trauma and PTSD affects people from every walk of life.