Hysterical Girls: Combat Trauma as a Feminist Issue

The cluster of symptoms now called post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) had its beginning in "hysteria," a syndrome that affected only women. This paper explores the way that the perniciously essentialist beginnings of trauma research have bled into our understanding and treatment of trauma today. I use the work of Sandra Lee Bartky, who argues that psychological fragmentation forms the basis of the oppression of women, to show the way that the psychological landscape has been shaped in parallel ways for the traumatized veteran. Understanding trauma in nongendered ways illustrates that the trauma response is an adaptive mechanism born of resilience.