The World Trade Center Disaster and the Apocalyptic

A discussion of the apocalyptic dimensions of the World Trade Center disaster, this paper considers some first-hand reports of the towers burning and collapsing, as well as the author's own experience that day watching events unfold and discussing these horrors with his patients. Several conceptual ideas are developed, including the varied ways people experienced the disaster in terms of “zones of sadness”; the organic nature of the way the disaster unfolded; the language of the victims in terms of underlying rhetorical structures of response; and psycho-historical considerations that suggest, in part, why the disaster was such a collective trauma.