Post-traumatic Culture

The author argues that the concept of trauma has shaped some of the central narratives of the 1990s - from the war stories of Vietnam veterans to the video farewells of Heaven's Gate cult members. He explores the uses of trauma as both enabling fiction and explanatory tool during times of cultural change. Farrell's investigation begins in late-Victorian England, when physicians invented the clinical concept of "traumatic neurosis" for an era that routinely categorized modern life as sick, degenerate and stressful. He sees similar developments at the end of the 20th century as the Vietnam war and feminism returned the concept to prominence as "post-traumatic stress syndrome". Seeking to understand the psychological dislocation associated with these two periods, Farrell analyzes conflicts produced by dramatic social and economic changes and suddenly expanded horizons. He locates parallels between the cultural fantasies of the 1890s in novels and stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Rider Haggard, H.G. Wells, Bram Stoker and Oscar Wilde, and novels and films of the 1990s that explore such issues as child sexual abuse, domestic violence, unemployment, racism and apocalyptic rage.