Meanwhile, the authors' antidote to the American sicknessa quest for democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditionshas contributed to a vigorous scholarly and popular debate. Attention has been focused on forms of social organization, be it civil society, democratic communitarianism, or associative democracy, that can humanize the market and the administrative state. In their new Introduction the authors relate the argument of their book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy.\

Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life

Moses and Monotheism

This paper examines the impact of three types of victimization in childhood--sexual abuse, physical abuse, and neglect--on lifetime measures of mental health among adults. In contrast to research that relies on retrospective recall of childhood victimization, this work uses a prospective sample gathered from records of documented court cases of childhood abuse and neglect in a midwestern city around 1970. These subjects were interviewed about twenty years later. In addition, this research compares outcomes of the 641 members of the abuse and neglect group with a matched control group of 510 persons who did not have documented cases of abuse or neglect. The results indicate that men who were abused and neglected as children have more dysthymia and antisocial personality disorder as adults than matched controls, but they did not have more alcohol problems. Abused and neglected women report more symptoms of dysthymia, antisocial personality disorder, and alcohol problems than controls. After controlling for stressful life events, however, childhood victimization had little direct impact on any lifetime mental health outcome. This research indicates the importance of adopting an approach that places childhood victimization in the context of other life stressors and of prospective changes over the life course.

The impact of childhood abuse and neglect on adult mental health: a prospective study

c ovom broju Diskrepancije predstavljamo jednog od najutjecajnijih americkih drustvenih teoreticara druge polovice dvadesetog stoljeca. Jeffrey C. Alexander jos od svog cetverotomnog djela “Teorijska logika u sociologiji” razvija originalnu i utjecajnu teorijskoistraživacku tradiciju. Od uspostavljanja neofunkcionalizma kao teorijskog pravca do trenutnog rada na strogom programu u kulturnoj sociologiji, njegov je utjecaj bio sve snažniji, međutim, rijetko prelazivsi nacionalne granice Sjedinjenih Americkih Država. U knjizi “Znacenja drustvenog života” , njegovom glavnom djelu iz podrucja kulturne sociologije, sakupljeni su reprezentativni radovi koje je objavljivao posljednjih nekoliko godina u razlicitim strucnim casopisima. Cilj mu je bio demonstrirati mogucnosti strogog istraživackog programa u kulturnoj sociologiji, uzevsi u obzir lingvisticki obrat u filozofiji, novo otkrivanje hermeneutike, strukturalisticku revoluciju u humanistici, simbolicku revoluciju u antropologiji i kulturni obrat u americkoj historiografiji. Teme kojima se bavi protežu se od Holokausta, preko informacijske tehnologije i civilnog drustva, do sociologije zla. U ovom cemo prikazu ukratko navesti osnovne nalaze njegovih teorijskih i empirijskih studija predstavljenih u osam poglavlja, izostavivsi, međutim, programatsko prvo poglavlje prevedeno u sklopu temata “Strogi program u kulturnoj teoriji” . U drugom se, najduljem, poglavlju u knjizi (O socijalnoj konstrukciji moralnih univerzalija: “Holokaust” od ratnog zlocina do traume drame) Alexander bavi Holokaustom. Bez obzira sto je Holokaust jedna od najucestalijih tema u drustvenim znanostima nakon Drugog svjetskog rata, Alexander iz jedne nove, strogoprogramske kulturne perspektive, pokusava prikazati kako je teklo diskurzivno uspostavljanje “specificnog i situiranog historijskog događaja...koji je pretvoren u poopceni simbol ljudske patnje i moralnog zla” . Ta je kulturna transformacija, tvrdi Alexander, postigla takav status jer je izvorni historijski događaj, traumatican samo za određenu grupu (Židove), tijekom posljednjih pedeset godina bio redefiniran kao traumatican događaj za cjelokupno covjecanstvo. Polazeci od teorije nužno kulturno konstruirane kolektivne traume, kojom se posebno bavi u trecem poglavlju, preko pracenja razvitka progresivnog narativa koji se odvijao u americkom drustvu neposredno nakon rata, uokvirivanja masovnih ubojstava putem identifikacije sa žrtvama i prociscenja americkog drustva koje se kroz njega odvijalo, Alexander pokazuje kako je Holokaust zadobio svoju svjetsko-povijesnu univerzalnost kroz simbolicki generiranu, emocionalno nabijenu participaciju nežrtava u traumi-drami masovnog ubojstva Židova. Detaljnom je analizom masovnih medija i mnogobrojne relevantne literature uspio naslikati uvjerljiv portret trajektorija jednog “apsolutno zlog” događaja, smjestivsi u srediste analize kulturne strukture koje su bile kljucne u njegovoj konstrukciji. Trece je poglavlje, naslovljeno “Kulturna trauma i kolektivni identitet” , Valerio Bacak

The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology

As far back as we know, there have been individuals inca-pacitated by memories that have filled them with sadness and remorse, fright and horror, or a sense of irreparable loss. Only recently, however, have people tormented with such recollections been diagnosed as suffering from "post-traumatic stress disorder". Here Allan Young traces this malady, particularly as it is suffered by Vietnam veterans, to its beginnings in the emergence of ideas about the unconscious mind and to earlier manifestations of traumatic memory like shell shock or traumatic hysteria. In Young's view PTSD is not a timeless or universal phenomemon newly discovered. Rather, it is a "harmony of illusions, a cultural product gradually put together by the practices, technologies, and narratives with which it is diagnosed, studied, and treated and by the various interests, institutions, and moral arguments mobilising these efforts. This book is part history and part ethnography, and it includes a detailed account of everyday life in a psychiatric unit specialising in the treatment of Vietnam veterans with PTSD. To illustrate his points, Young presents a number of fascinating transcripts of the group therapy and diagnostic sessions that he observed firsthand over a period of two years. Through his comments and the tran-scripts themselves, the reader becomes familiar with the individual hospital personnel and clients and their struggle to make sense of life after a tragic war. One observes that everyone on the unit is heavily invested in the PTSD diagnosis: boundaries between therapist and patient are as unclear as were the distinctions between victim and victimizer in the jungles of Southeast Asia.

The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.@@@Rewriting the Soul: Multiple Personality and the Sciences of Memory.

American political culture and the shifting meaning of race

Vamik Volkan's career as a psychoanalyst has been an extraordinary one. Promoting peace, mediation and reconciliation around the world, he has been an important figure in helping various interested...

Enemies on the Couch: A Psychopolitical Journey through War and Peace

The concept of trauma has migrated over time. A term first employed to describe a form of bodily or physical harm became a description of an overwhelming psychological experience suffered by an individual. Trauma now can also describe events of a nation's past where prior experiences jeopardize current social solidarity and interfere with members' ability to function freely in the collectivity. The identification of social trauma often serves as a prelude to development of policies of healing, forgiveness, or reconciliation. The following is the first part of a two-part essay that critically reviews the concept of social trauma. I argue that the concept of social trauma fails to distinguish between various types of collectively shared traumatic experiences, where each type yields a distinctive form of socially induced harm. The argument builds upon D.W. Winnicott's and Axel Honneth's intersubjective description of the features of a non-traumatized self that is characterized by the individual's capacity through illusionary experience to feel recognized. This essay posits, in contrast, distinct social settings for trauma when individual recognition is denied and illusion is shattered. Part II will detail a typology of social traumas distinguished by their varied impact upon individuals and that should produce different strategies for social repair depending on the type of trauma experienced.

https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/american_imago/v068/68.3.prager.pdf

Danger and Deformation: A Social Theory of Trauma Part I: Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Contemporary Social Theory, and Healthy Selves

Psychoanalysts assert that when wrongs have been done to others the impulse to apologize and forgive is natural, although in reality efforts toward interpersonal and social repair are often frustrated. This chapter assesses current debates on reparations for African Americans, applying psychoanalytic ideas to account for American resistance to engage in a process of reconciliation. Contemporary authors claim that racial repair requires a moral and ethical acknowledgment of and responsibility for harms committed to African Americans. This chapter demonstrates, in addition, reparations as a psychological necessity. Racism, however, emphasizing the reality of racial difference, continues, as always, to serve as a powerful defense thwarting the reparative impulse. The result has been the securing of physical separation between Whites and Blacks and the persistence of psychic enmeshment. Absent the implementation of a politics of reparations, African Americans will never achieve externality, or independence, from the White mind.

Jeffrey Prager

Papers

American political culture and the shifting meaning of race

Enemies on the Couch: A Psychopolitical Journey through War and Peace

Danger and Deformation: A Social Theory of Trauma Part I: Contemporary Psychoanalysis, Contemporary Social Theory, and Healthy Selves

Do Black Lives Matter? A Psychoanalytic Exploration of Racism and American Resistance to Reparations

Melancholic Identities: Post-Traumatic Loss, Memory and Identity Formation