ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on post-traumatic stress disorder. It also focuses on societal responses, which can be divided into two categories. First, the modification or initiation of societal/political processes that reflect shared psychological responses to massive disaster. Second, transgenerational transmission, or the transmission of certain psychological tasks by members of the affected group to the following generations, even to those who were not yet born when the catastrophe occurred, keeping the influence of the original trauma "alive" through generations. The chapter describes how large groups adopt or alter aspects of their society in response to massive trauma. The methodology of diagnosing and understanding similar societal/political processes after wars or war-like situations was put to work more systematically in post-invasion Kuwait, and later this methodology was applied to other traumatized societies. All types of massive disasters share certain characteristics: for example, all types of catastrophes threaten affected individuals' sense of "basic trust", and this, in turn, creates shared anxiety and societal regression.
