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Trauma

Loosely defined, trauma is a psychological wound rooted in an experience of subjectivity-shattering violence.

“Trauma has become a keyword through which clinicians and scholars from many disciplines approach the experience of violence and its aftermath. The metaphor of trauma draws attention to the ways that extremes of violence break bodies and minds, leaving indelible marks even after healing and recovery. But the notion of trauma has been extended to cover a vast array of situations of extremity and equally varied individual and collective responses. Trauma can be seen at once as a sociopoliticalevent, a psychophysiological process, a physical and emotional experience, and a narrative theme in explanations of individual and social suffering.”

– Laurence J. Kirmayer, Robert Lemelson,and Mark Barad (Understanding Trauma 1).

Stills from Apocalypse Now…

Trauma has become central to discussions of subjectivity in postmodern society. Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is one of many clinically recognisable responses to trauma which clusters together a group of symptoms ranging from the psychic storms of an intrusive past, where the sufferer is forced to relive the trauma through nightmares and flashbacks; hyper-arousal, a state of perpetually heightened anxiety; and constriction, where the sufferer splits from the pain of the past through repression, suppression, or dissociation.

“There’s nothing so black as the inferno of the human mind.”– Danielewski House of Leaves, 637.

The term gained currency throughout the twentieth century with the recognition of the haunting nature of modern war experiences and the disturbing prevalence of childhood abuse and its long lasting, often devastating, psychological ramifications. For its sufferers, the wounds of the past do not pass by.

“…the symptoms of PTSD may be identifiable across disparate cultures and contexts, [but] the diagnostic construct captures only part of the experience and concerns of sufferers and survivors. This does not mean that constructs like PTSD have no clinical or scientific utility, but rather that they represent only one strand in a complex reality with biological, personal, social, and political dimensions.”

– Laurence J. Kirmayer, Robert Lemelson,and Mark Barad (Understanding Trauma 4).

Trauma is bigger than its psychiatric signifiers…

Works Cited

Apocalypse Now. Dir. Francis Ford Coppola. Perf. Martin Sheen. United Artists, 1979. Film.

Danielewski, Mark Z. House of Leaves. London: Doubleday, 2001. Print.

Kirmayer, Laurence J., Robert Lemelson, and Mark Barad. Understanding Trauma: Integrating Biological, Clinical, and Cultural Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2007. Print.