Harvey D. Strassman

Who is Harvey D. Strassman?

Harvey D. Strassman was a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, medical educator, and clinical researcher. He is the father of ventriloquist David Strassman.

Strassman, a veteran of World War II and the Korean War, is best known for his documentation of a syndrome that eventually became known as posttraumatic stress disorder, a result of insights gained from interviews with prisoners of war who had been held in North Korea. He described the condition in the paper "A Prisoner of War Syndrome: Apathy as a Reaction to Severe Stress", published with two colleagues in June 1956 in the American Journal of Psychiatry.

Strassman conducted the interviews over several months aboard a hospital ship. He concluded that the prisoners had not been “brainwashed,” as some people had alleged. Rather, they withdrew as a defensive adjustment to the stress of being a prisoner of war. The withdrawal and suppressed emotional responses, he noted, could become so severe and complete that it could lead to a “maladaptive state of dependency in which he ceases to take care of himself even to the point of death.” He labeled the syndrome “apathy” and distinguished it from a catatonic stupor, or depression.