Introduction: Trauma and its Histories in Australia

Abstract

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 1 Mark S. Micale, “Toward a Global History of Trauma”, in Psychological Trauma and the Legacies of the First World War, edited by Jason Crouthamel and Peter Leese (New York: Palgrave, 2017). 2 Ibid., 289. 3 Didier Fassin and Richard Rechtman, The Empire of Trauma: An Inquiry into the Condition of Victimhood, translated by Rachel Gomme (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 284. 4 For a useful overview see Michael Robertson, Edwina Light, Wendy Lipworth, and Garry Walter, “The Contemporary Significance of the Holocaust for Australian Psychiatry”, Health and History 18, no. 2 (2016): 109–111. 5 Allan Young, The Harmony of Illusions: Inventing Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995), 89–107. 6 Fassin and Rechtmann, 94–5. 7 Young, 111. 8 See for example Bruce Boman, “The Vietnam Veteran Ten Years On”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 16 , no.3 (1982): 107–27; Wayne Hall and Donald McPhee, “Do Vietnam Veterans Suffer from Toxic Neurasthenia?”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 19, no. 1 (1985): 19–29; Jan Westerink and Leah Giarratano, “The Impact of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder on Partners and Children of Australian Vietnam Veterans”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 33, no. 6 (1999): 841–7. 9 See Beverley Raphael, “Editorial Comment: Psychiatric Consultancy in Major Disaster”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 18 (1984): 303–06; Beverley Raphael , “Psychosocial Aspects of Disaster: Some Australian Studies, and the Ash Wednesday Bushfires”, Medical Journal of Australia, 141, no. 5 (1984): 268–9. See also Alexander C. McFarlane, “The Ash Wednesday Bushfires in South Australia: Implications for Planning for Future Post-Disaster Services” The Medical Journal of Australia 141(5) (1984): 286–291 and Paul Valent, “The Ash Wednesday bushfires in Victoria”, Medical Journal of Australia 141, no. 5 (1984) : 291–9. The conclusions drawn from these experiences were applied in the aftermath of the Bali bombings and the Black Saturday bush fires. See Garry J. Stevens, Julie C. Dunsmore , Kingsley E. Agho, Melanie R. Taylor, Alison L. Jones, and Beverley Raphael, “Coping Support Factors among Australians Affected by Terrorism: 2002 Bali Bombings Survivors Speak”, Medical Journal of Australia 199, no. 11 (2013): 772–5; and Richard A. Byrant, Elizabeth Waters, Lisa Gibbs, et al., “Psychological Outcomes Following the Victorian Black Saturday Bushfires”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 48, no. 7 (2014): 634–43. 10 Bruce S. Singh, “The Long-term Psychological Consequences of Disaster”, Medical Journal of Australia 145 (1986): 555–6. 11 On World War II veterans see Malcolm A. Kidson, John C. Douglas, and Brendan J. Holwill, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Australian World War II Veterans Attending a Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic”, Medical Journal of Australia 158, no. 8 (1993): 563–6. For examples of renewed medical attention to POWs see D.C. Hinden, “Prisoners of War: Long-term Effects”, Medical Journal of Australia 11, no. 1 (1981): 565–6; Ian L. Duncan, “Life in a Japanese Prisoner -of-War Camp”, Medical Journal of Australia 7, no. 1 (1982): 302–06; Kerry L. Goulston, Owen F. Dent, Pierre H. Chapuis, et al., “Gastrointestinal Morbidity among World War II Pris- 9 oners of War: 40 Years on”, Medical Journal of Australia 143, no. 1 (1985): 6–10; Christopher Tennant, Kerry Goulston, and Owen Dent, “Australian Prisoners of War of the Japanese: Postwar Psychiatric Hospitalisation and Psychological Morbidity”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 20, no. 3 (1986): 334–40; Ian P. Burges Watson, “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in Australian Prisoners of the Japanese: A Clinical Study”, Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 27, no. 1 (1993): 20–9. 12 Christina Twomey, The Battle Within: POWs in postwar Australia (Sydney: NewSouth, 2018), 213–40; Christina Twomey, “Trauma and the Reinvigoration of Anzac”, History Australia 10, no. 3 (2013): 85–108. 13 See Elizabeth D. Paratz and Benny Katz, “Ageing Holocaust Survivors in Australia”, Medical Journal of Austrlaia 194, no. 4 (2011): 194–7; Paul Valent, “Holocaust Traumatology in Australia ”, Holocaust Studies: A Journal of Culture and History 16, no. 3 (2010): 95–111. Valent argues that this may be because ‘Australian Jewry...