ABSTRACT
Post-traumatic stress disorder is a social disease. Its effects spread across and down the generations. The key to eliminating post-traumatic stress disorder is preventing trauma. The key to treating post-traumatic stress disorder is other people. Now that we have seen what happens to people who are traumatized, how the normal adaptation to danger turns into disorder, we must begin to develop some premises for how to reverse that order. To do that, we have to have a better idea of the powerful effect human beings have on each other. The social aspects of being a human being are as innately wired as our need to eat, drink, and sleep and every bit as important to our survival. As Felicity de Zulueta notes in her book on trauma, attachment, and violence, "We matter deeply to one another for our very well-being. It is not just that we need each other to satisfy our hunger or our sexual needs as Freud saw it; it is not only that we need to feel good with one another to feel good about ourselves. What is becoming clearer is that our social interactions play an important role in the everyday regulation of our internal biological systems throughout our lives, such an important role that we cannot do without significant 'others* and remain in health" (de Zulueta 1993).
