Traumatheory.com combines reviews of books about trauma with thoughts on just about everything having to do with trauma. One post reviews a recent book on racism and caste from the perspective of trauma; others focus on more technical questions, such as the status of PTSD in DSM 5 to whether the diagnosis of PTSD even makes sense.
Because half of those who suffer from PTSD also suffer from major depressive disorder (MDD), I will from time to time post on depression. For example, a recent post is on Freud’s “Mourning and Melancholia.” Melancholia is an old fashioned word for depression.
Trauma has become a popular category from which to analyze everything from literature to history. One recent work discovers PTSD in Psalm 137, another in the Epic of Gilgamesh. While trauma is no doubt real, its expression is a social and political construction. All categories are that. But it means we need to take a critical look at the category of trauma. That’s what my blog posts do. The replies are especially valuable.
My name is C. Fred Alford, and I’ve been a professor at the University of Maryland, College Park since 1979. I am currently Professor Emeritus. All posts but one are my own.
I have published lots of books and professional articles on trauma. If you want to learn more about me, this link will take you to my university web page, https://gvpt.umd.edu/
You can contact me at calford@umd.edu. You can also find me on Google. I’d be glad to hear from you, and even more interested in your comments on my posts. I also curate www.godblog.org.
fred
the power of what you write derives from its simplicity. it’s a rare thing.
CF, can you possibly enable a “follow” option on your blog? It would make it easier to, well, follow it. Tx.
Hi Fred – excited to read more about your trauma/trauma theory work.
Is it possible to get a copy of your paper Affect theory and Trauma theory
Thanks Helen
Good morning, sir
after my life as a medical doctor of torture survivors in the Berlin Centre I found the opportunity to think about whatI did as a professional. So I published many articles on my website from 2010 and found that our scepticism ran on parallel ways. I was inspired by your articles and quoted you in some texts. In a way I am something like a fossile, not recommended by the majority of trauma therapists. I hope that the people will back my thought after the hype on Trauma.
I posted a document titled Surveillance Fantasy on scribd.com: a collection of thoughts about the psychological roots and real world vicissitudes of being a whistleblower, an idealist, and a moral narcissist, as well as a survivor of an adverse (or traumatic) childhood: topics substantially clarified by Professor Alford.
https://www.scribd.com/document/543053413/Surveillance-Fantasy