Research Issues and Language Program Direction. Issues in Language Program Direction Book

Young's discussions of Ribot, Charcot, Janet, Rivers, and Freud's emerging and contrasting ideas of trauma are very interesting, as is the historical background on which Young's argument is based. Similarly, the discussion of political history the institutionalization of PTSD in DSM is fascinating. I am less convinced by his argument that contemporary trauma diagnoses are committed to making "time flow in the right direction" from "the etiological event to the post-traumatic symptoms." My sense, in fact, is that he's trying to make time flow in the right direction for his own argument about the etiology of the PTSD diagnosis. But what lifts this book to above average status for me are really the transcripts from the VA PTSD treatment center, and his analysis, which completely demolishes the pretense to either science or rationalism in that unit. I read the transcripts somewhat differently than Young does, but his reading is also compelling.