Nuclear Minds

“Within the vast scholarship on the atomic bombs the book stands out for its highly original depiction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as ‘ground zero’ for the articulation of the concept of trauma, which is applied so widely today. Historians of Japan, medicine and science and technology studies are likely to find it an enlightening and even moving read.” * British Journal for the History of Science * “This book presents an insightful and persuasive analysis of Japanese psychiatry and the troubled experiences of atom bomb survivors. . . . Zwigenberg provides important evidence to understand why so many people, who had endured unimaginable suffering, were neglected in the post-war period.” * The Psychologist * “Nuclear Minds is a penetrating investigation into how the postwar Japanese psychological and psychiatric establishment encountered the psychic effects of nuclear trauma, exposing a long journey toward an understanding of how political trauma and war deeply effect individuals within their collective society—here, Zwigenberg offers a necessary reflection and examination extremely resonant with current events today.” * History: Reviews of New Books * “After Hiroshima in 1945, the psychological effect of the bomb was, astonishingly, explained away as if caused by anything but the bomb. Science’s obsession with objectivity and universality, compounded by the Cold War realignment of geopolitical powers, made individual suffering of hibakusha utterly invisible. In a clear and compelling analysis, and with appealingly open prose, Zwigenberg strikingly juxtaposes and makes tangible a global web of psychological knowledge, science politics, and survivor activism before the advent of post-traumatic stress disorder.” -- Naoko Wake, Michigan State University “A profound and illuminating journey into the psychological subjectivism experienced by the hibakusha under the Cold War psychiatric gaze. Zwigenberg shows how analyses of surviving nuclear attacks in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were embedded into existing psychological frameworks of militarized emotional harm and yet disrupted them. We see the hibakusha abandoned as suffering individuals even as their wounds were being collectively codified to prepare the world for a dystopic future.” -- Robert A. Jacobs, Hiroshima Peace Institute and Hiroshima City University