Abstract
Unfortunately, mental health professionals and others have contributed to the pathologizing of what are actually reactions to trauma that should not be considered forms of mental illness. Along with this has come the masking of the many political and social causes of trauma, because casting responses to trauma as mental illnesses implies that the problem is intrapsychic, individual in origin. Furthermore, there is an increasing tendency to send trauma victims/survivors behind the closed doors of psychotherapists to deal with their emotions, thus privatizing trauma and its effects still more. This is particularly alarming, and unhealthy for victims/survivors and for society as a whole, when the sources of trauma are wars and other forms of violence. What are sorely needed are the depathologizing and deprivatizing of responses to trauma and a renewed emphasis on social and political action aimed at eliminating such sources of trauma.