Abstract

This paper offers a phenomenologically informed critique of the post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) model of trauma in cross-cultural contexts. Using the case of the Iranian political lifeworld, where the psychiatric discourse of trauma in delineations of various heterogenous experiences of distress is dominant, I demonstrate how trauma can be conceptualized and experienced as temporally extended and collectively shared—contrary to the paradigmatic understanding. First, the PTSD model of trauma as seen in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) is examined, where I highlight how the model fails to recognize the importance of sociocultural environments in bringing about states of psychological (ill)health. Second, using first-person accounts by Iranians, I examine how trauma finds meaning and significance within a particular sociocultural setting. Third, by revisiting the notion of continuous traumatic stress (CTS) as a feature of the social environment, I show how a re-coupling of environments and individuals within them can offer a more complete understanding of trauma and the distressing and/or pathological states it may give rise to. Highlighting the common threads with growing interest in enactive and extended approaches in philosophy of psychiatry, I therefore argue for the recognition of the socioculturally constructed conceptions of trauma in shaping experiences and responses to it.