It may be said that every trauma is two traumas or ten thousand-depending on the number of people involved. How one experiences and reacts to an event is unique and depends largely on one's direct or indirect positioning, personal psychic history, and individual memories. But equally important to the experience of trauma are the broader political and cultural contexts within which a catastrophe takes place and how it is "managed" by institutional forces, including the media. In Trauma Culture, E. Ann Kaplan explores the relationship between the impact of trauma on individuals and on entire cultures and nations. Arguing that humans possess a compelling need to draw meaning from personal experience and to communicate what happens to others, she examines the artistic, literary, and cinematic forms that are often used to bridge the individual and collective experience. A number of case studies, including Sigmund Freud's Moses and Monotheism, Marguerite Duras' La Douleur, Sarah Kofman's Rue Ordener, Rue Labat, Alfred Hitchcock's Spellbound, and Tracey Moffatt's Night Cries, reveal how empathy can be fostered without the sensationalistic element that typifies the media. From World War II to 9/11, this passionate study eloquently navigates the contentious debates surrounding trauma theory and persuasively advocates the responsible sharing and translating of catastrophe.

In Trauma, Culture, and Metaphor, John Wilson and Jacob Lindy explore the language of both individual and collective trauma in an era dominated by globalization and interconnectedness. Through lucid, careful discussion, this important book builds a bridge between the etymology of trauma-related terms commonly used in Western cultures and those of other cultures, such as the Burundi-Rwandan ihahamuka. It also provides the clinician with a framework for working with trauma survivors using a cross-cultural vocabulary—one often based in metaphor—to fully address the experienced trauma and to begin work on reconnection and self-reinvention.

E. Ann Kaplan explores the relationship between the impact of trauma on individuals and on entire cultures and nations. Arguing that humans possess a need to draw meaning from personal experience and to communicate what happens to others, she examines the forms that are used to bridge the experience.

This book examines the social contexts in which trauma is created by those who study it, whether considering the way in which trauma afflicts groups, cultures, and nations, or the way in which trauma is transmitted down the generations. As Alford argues, ours has been called an age of trauma. Yet, neither trauma nor post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are scientific concepts. Trauma has been around forever, even if it was not called that. PTSD is the creation of a group of Vietnam veterans and psychiatrists, designed to help explain the veterans' suffering. This does not detract from the value of PTSD, but sets its historical and social context. The author also confronts the attempt to study trauma scientifically, exploring the use of technologies such as magnetic resonance imagining (MRI). Alford concludes that the scientific study of trauma often reflects a willed ignorance of traumatic experience. In the end, trauma is about suffering.

Migration Trauma, Culture, and Finding the Psychological Home Within is an in-depth study of Eastern European migration to the United States. In presenting the clinical case studies of Eastern European migrants seeking long term psychoanalytic treatment, Grace Conroy pays particular attention to pre-migration history, inner culture, and early psychological development. Conroy details what is happening in the psyche of migrants who are in the process of integrating into new cultures—ultimately exploring the details and nuances of psychological struggles and transformations of the migratory process.

This work is a vital set of insights and guidelines that will contribute to more aware and meaningful practice for mental health professionals. Focusing equally on theoretical concepts, culturally valid assessment methods, and cultural adaptation in trauma and resilience, an array of experts present the cutting edge of research and strategies. Extended case studies illustrate an informative range of symptom profiles, comorbid conditions, and coping skills, as well as secondary traumas that can occur in asylum seekers.

This lofty volume analyzes a circular cultural relationship: not only how trauma is reflected in cultural processes and products, but also how trauma itself acts as a critical shaper of literature, the visual and performing arts, architecture, and religion and mythmaking. The political power of trauma is seen through US, Israeli, and Japanese art forms as they reflect varied roles of perpetrator, victim, and witness. Traumatic complexities are traced from spirituality to movement, philosophy to trauma theory. And essays on authors such as Kafka, Plath, and Cormac McCarthy examine how narrative can blur the boundaries of personal and collective experience. Among the topics covered: Television: a traumatic culture. From Hiroshima to Fukushima: comics and animation as subversive agents of memory in Japan. The death of the witness in the era of testimony: Primo Levi and Georges Perec. Sigmund Freud’s Moses and Monotheism and the possibility of writing a traumatic history of religion. Placing collective trauma within its social context: the case of the 9/11 attacks. Killing the killer: rampage and gun rights as a syndrome. This volume appeals to multiple readerships including researchers and clinicians, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and media researchers.