Generally, scientific and literary writing about trauma has focused on single, devastating events; take, for instance, the extensive studies of Holocaust survivors, combat veterans, or victims of rape and incest. Perhaps this is because our contemporary PTSD diagnosis derives from such catastrophes. When PTSD first appeared in the DSM-III (1980), it was informed by experiences of Vietnam veterans and the domestic violence brought to light by second-wave feminism (p. 24). The original PTSD diagnosis foregrounded an “aggressor/victim dichotomy” that was useful for discussing traumas resulting from warfare and intentional violence (p. 29). But it was less illuminating for cases where “psychic trauma…accrues gradually” or accidentally due to multiple stressors (p. 29).
Gretchen Braun’s Narrating Trauma: Victorian Novels and Modern Stress Disorders examines post-traumatic stress with diffuse or ambiguous origins and argues for a broader definition of trauma more generally. This is in keeping with changing modern understandings of PTSD and...
University of California Press