This seminar will focus on therapeutic practices for post-traumatic disorders that have been developed from the late 19th century to today. It will analyze their scientific conceptualization and explore how the psychiatric science of traumatic memory and therapy is embedded in broader cultural and historical processes.

We will discuss psychoanalytic approaches to trauma, exposure and flooding, cognitive-behavioral therapies, Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR), biofeedback, narrative therapies as well as interventions designed to treat moral injury. We will explore how the various approaches conceive of post-traumatic disorders, especially how they conceptualize the pathogenic role of traumatic memory. We will examine how they explain the possibility of curing such disorders by interpersonal practices and how they conceive of the restoration of mental health. In addition, we will consider how the various therapeutic approaches relate to processes in the brain what happens in post-traumatic disorders and in therapeutic setting. Finally we will trace social and cultural settings from which the various therapeutic approaches originate and study their popular images and representations in the press, in cinema, TV, and the social media.