TY - JOUR PY - 1985// TI - A sociological conceptualization of trauma JO - Social science and medicine (1982) A1 - Mestrovic, S. G. SP - 835 EP - 848 VL - 21 IS - 8 N2 - The epistemological difficulties with the model of 'stressful life events' are reviewed and contrasted with the epistemologies of the pioneers of stress research: Cannon, Selye, Durkheim, Freud, Bernard and Dubos. The paper focuses on the question 'What is an event?' as opposed to a fact and on the neo-Humean difficulties of relying upon explanations of events. It is demonstrated that the pioneers of stress research avoided event-explanations and relied instead (sometimes implicitly) on the notion of 'trauma'. A trauma is not just an event. The concept of trauma is linked to the ideas of arrangements and derangements of collective representations in the context of society conceived of as a cybernetic system.

Language: en

LA - en SN - 0277-9536 UR - http://dx.doi.org/ ID - ref1 ER -