（通訳） はい。１問目の質問ですが、日本語で紹介させていただきます。PTSD というのは社会起因で感染による流行病だと新しい視点を先生はご披露くださいましたが、この感染による流行病に対する治療法はどのような方法があるのでしょうかというのが１問目です。２問、３問とありますが、まず１問目からお答えいただきたいと思います。Please answer the first question.
（ヤング） So, three questions were selected, the marvelous questions whatthey asked and also perhaps accidentally or not accidentally, they reallyfit together in a way so that when I answer number one I will come tonumber two and number two will bring me to number three as if it wereone long question with three parts.
I will read each one and then do it and then move to the next. So Iwill read in English and then you will read and I am beginning with thisone. I want to begin here, this is my number one.
（通訳） 先生は、今の質問を１問目にするのではなく、２番目の質問に最初に答えたいとおっしゃっていますので、２番目の質問からご紹介いたします。PTSD を数多く発見したいという要求、あるいは要請が、アメリカ現在社会にあるのではないでしょうかという、ヒストリカル・コンテクストについて教えてくださいというご質問です。
（ヤング） For the first one the person who has given this, I am going togive a short answer, it deserves a long answer, but I am going to give more of that answer when I get to question two and so the questionnaireis about, is there a possibility that contemporary American societydemands or desires to discover a massive number of epidemic of PTSD inthe United States and I have been asked this question in the United Statesalso and in Canada, in France, and elsewhere where I have discussed thistopic. And very often I think most often there is an assumption that thereis underlying this virtual epidemic, a political subtext of some sort andthat is somehow connected with the Bush administration and AmericanForeign Policy and so on and certainly that is a possible, that is the firstthing that comes to my mind; however, it is not the answer. The answeris quite different and much more challenging and I will be quite franknow, blunt.
The responsibility for the epidemic lies with the researchers, withthe PTSD researchers, not a blanket, I am talking about specifically theresearchers, who are involved, that in a way when we talk about theideology, I am going to use a very ugly word, but I think it is a wordthat is appropriate in this case. If we look at PTSD within the researchcommunity or at least the conventional PTSD, many of the researchersare the equivalent in 2007 of what apparatchiks in the Soviet Union. People who do their job, who have an ideology that they pursue, some selfinterestthat they pursue and this is what drives them, that is certainlyhistorically what has happened with this epidemic.
It has been the work of a substantial number of researchers, whohave research grants, very often opportunistically move to 9/11 to, in asense, continue research that they were doing elsewhere. They havethe methodology. Why not use this methodology, turn it from teenagesmoking, which is exactly what happened in one case, a very complicatedmethodology involving a marketing firm that they had arranged antelevision, computer terminals, in 60,000 families all around the United States, 9/11 happened and it came to mind why instead of asking aboutteenage smoking, let us ask about 9/11, and that is exactly what they did.So this epidemic has been driven by my colleagues, by your colleagues aswell and I mean members of the same professional class.
Often I am asked a question, well, what was the responsibility of theAmerican government, specifically what was the responsibility of GeorgeBush and Dick Cheney and the characters that I think most of us do notlike very much. The answer to that question is very disappointing formany people and the answer is zero, no contribution at all. This has beenthe impetus has come from a very, very different direction. In fact, one ofthe characteristics I think of the Bush administration has been is generallack of interest in psychiatry all together, so let me stop with this.
（ヤング） If there is an epidemic of PTSD, what can we do to treat it inthis regard and I have a very simple answer and I suppose that is thehigher wisdom of medicine when confronted with the epidemics and that is perhaps the question is not how should we treat it, but how should weprevent it, and I think in this case, it is the prevention, the preventionthrough scholarly debate in controversy with regards to this.
Now the researchers, the post-9/11 research that we see had madethe point over and over and I gave you some quotations in my talk thatthe war on terror represents a public health crisis in the United States,that we do not know what the proportions are, we do not how to preparefor it. There is a danger to public health. I do not believe that is thedanger at all. The danger is a danger of the debasement of normality ofwhat it is to be normal. Most of the reactions of the people who spokeeven if they were in fact a response to PTSD, I sometimes had dreams ofthe towers collapsing and so on. This is not pathology. This is normality.How should the sensible or morally-concerned individual block outmemories of that sort?
Distress is not necessarily pathology, certainly not distress withoutimpairment. I do not think this is a complicated idea as I am going tomake a point just in a moment. I am not the only one who feels thisway, so it is the debasement of normality that I am describing, but thiswas just the beginning. Remember I told you what I was reporting onwas a two-part study that I have been doing, but that I could not havetime to talk about the second part, but let me say something about whatthe second part is and what the second part seems to me to be the finaldebasement of normality and that is the commodification of normality.The transformation of normality into a commodity through the inventionof something called resilience.
Now resilience is an old English word. It is also a term that has beenaround in clinical psychology at least since the 1980s, but it has taken ona new meaning post 9/11 and the question of how to treat and how toprevent within the PTSD community has come to focus on this notion of resilience, but as one reads about resilience and reads about the plansfor enhancing resilience through the use of drugs, through the use ofeducation; some people might say of ideology..
It represents nothing less than the commodification of normality ormoving that line between what we can expect from an adult in a society interms of dealing with reality and living in the world that was exemplifiedin the two papers that were presented today of people living in conditionsof great duress, of moving that line of, of what normality is and it is notonly a debasement of normality, it is likewise a debasement of morality.
If, in fact, we can lump together all the sorts of trivial events that arebeing reported in this literature, “Hello, who are you? I have a questionto ask you six months after 9/11, I am going to read a list to you. Youtell me if you have any of these affects, difficulty sleeping, difficultyconcentrating and so on and so forth. How many times did you watchthis on TV?” “Seven times.” “Thank you.” To take this person, lump thisperson together with the truly traumatized individuals of whom there aremillions in this world, again represents not only a debasement of normality,but a debasement of morality as well.
And you say, well, that is fine for you to say it is a medicalanthropologist, because you are there all the way up in the balcony, allthe actions taking place down here amongst the psychiatrists and theresearchers, so you can say whatever you want. Well, I am not in thebalcony, I am down also. I am pleased to say that a number of very,very distinguished psychiatrists in Great Britain, Simon Wesley; in Israel,Arieh Shalev ; in the United States, Richard McNally and my close friend,Naomi Breslau and epidemiologists have made precisely the same point.In fact, this is an area of great controversy in the PTSD discourse andit is extremely interesting to see how it is being handled by the PTSDmainstream in terms of name calling, in terms of accusing critics of blaming patients, in terms of accusing critics of undermining patient’srights and so on and so forth.
（ヤング） As all the question is very thoughtful and I want to focus onjust two parts of the question. In the first part, the questioner suggeststhat we must not simply take for granted the psychiatric reports at theend of World War II in Germany that there were no traumatized Germansafterwards. That one has got the same source of reports in Japan andgood reasons to believe that they should not be taken for granted. I agreeabsolutely entirely when I made the point that there were two questionshere. Why did the epidemic occur in the United States under very trivialconditions, why did it not occur in Germany under horrendous conditionsand I made the point that both have got to be explained, that is our job asanthropologists, as historians, as sociologists to be able, these are empiricalquestions and need to be answered.
I have tried my best, so far at least, to answer the question for theGerman case and all I can tell you is that it gets more puzzling as it goeson. One explanation for the absence of PTS, the posttraumatic disordersin Germany after the war had to do with Holocaust shame, the argumentsthat there was no way that Germans and German psychiatry or Germanculture could claim victim status for Germans after The Holocaust, so that there was cultural repression of the sufferings of Germans. When I beganto go through the literature and some very interesting work by Germansscholars recently, it is simply untrue. Germans were claiming victimstatus from 1945 on, it is a much more complicated story and waits to befully investigated.
I make only one other comment and then a final comment.
The person, who has asked this question, has raised the issue oftransgenerational memory as is passed from one generation to the nextand this must be true for many, many people living in Japan, particularlypeople somewhere between your generation and my generation, and Ihave to say that the issue of transgenerational memory is an importantsubject within the various discourses on trauma, but as I made thearguments in beginning of my talk, we must always be very careful oftalking about cultures of trauma, it has got no place in the culture oftrauma post Vietnam, it has got no place in 9/11; however, in Holocausttrauma one of the four that I mentioned, it is enormously important.There is a very interesting, very provocative research literature, onexactly this subject that in a sense is waiting to be compared perhapswith research yet to be done in Japan and making that. So let me justend with one final comment.
I want to thank my colleagues, commentators. There is not enoughtime to reply in details, but I have the detailed comments exceptwith regards to one comment and that was comparing my book with“Neuromancer”, it is a great compliment, I thank you very much for this.
I am particularly connecting my own perspective with science fictionand again you are absolutely right and I invite you to read the morecomplete manuscript and another paper that I published in 2004 on thecreation of the collective person, and I apologized in the beginning in bothcases and saying I know dear a reader, you are going to read this and think that I drifted from anthropology into science fiction, but this is noscience fiction, fiction it may be, but science it is, so in a way you can talkabout, but in the sense different.
I may have not done a very good job in describing the idea of theconstruction of the collective person today, I had not so much time to do it,but I beseech you to take this idea very seriously. It is a very importantidea, spelled it out again in detail elsewhere and it is a subject that isbegging for someone in philosophy of science and anthropology, sociologyof science to write a history of the collective person that would beginwith the very birth of statistical science, at least in the 19th century withAdolph Quetelet and the discovery of what we call the Gaussian curve, the“normal distribution.” It all begins there and it all is rather like sciencefiction, but it is our science fiction.
（佐藤） I know all of you have many questions for discussion but I am sorryto say that we have to conclude now. We don’t have much time, so let uscut off this our discussion at this point for the time being. Finally, ProfessorMatsubara would like to give the conclude address.
今日は長い間どうもありがとうございました。まだまだ議論しなければいけないことはあるのですが、この辺でお開きとさせていただきたいと思います。最後に本学先端総合学術研究科教授の松原洋子先生からあいさつをいただきたいと思います。今回の企画のアドミニストレーターとして本当にわれわれのチームを引っ張ってくれた先生です。よろしくお願いします。