Trauma, history and memory
Trauma, history and memory

In search of the lost past

According to Zachary Schiffman, ‘the past’ as we understand it is an invention of the Renaissance.1  This may seem a somewhat surprising assertion, and it may also beg the question regarding its relevance to psychoanalysis, and especially to the work of the psychoanalytic clinic.  After all, isn’t psychoanalysis all about …

Imaginary histories?

One of the problems with any form of history, be it personal, social, or political, is how the historical narrative, the story told by the historian, relates to ‘what really happened’.  As the quotation marks suggest, the status of this ‘what really happened’ is itself problematic.  In semiotic terms we …

In the shadow of the Bomb

Seventy years ago nuclear weapons were used for the first (and hopefully last) time in anger.  This event not only ushered in the nuclear age but also signalled the beginning of a new war, which some would argue continues until this day.  Of course, there’s a strong case for saying …

New e-book on trauma and history

I have just published a short e-book entitled The Traumatisation of History which you can purchase from here. In this book I explore the question of whether history itself can become subject to trauma. To illustrate this idea, I focus on three particular ‘subjects’ of trauma: The First World War, …

Time, history and the Holocaust

I’ve just been reading Lawrence Langer’s essay Memory’s Time: Chronology and Duration in Holocaust Testimonies  in which he makes a distinction between chronological and durational time.1  Chronological time presumes a ‘before, during and after’, whereas in durational time there is only now, and therefore there can be no sense of …

The Real at the heart of society

Most social theorists nowadays stress the discursive nature of society.  In other words, they point out that society is not simply a collection of individuals, i.e.  group psychology writ large, but rather is structured by a network of signifiers and signifieds.   This has often been interpreted by Marxist critics as …

Trauma and therapy

As I’ve suggested in a number of posts related to trauma, the aim of therapy in these cases is to help the subject make sense of their traumatic experiences, usually by some form of cognitive or symbolic processing.  So, for example, with cases of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) the individual’s …

Trauma without end……?

In my previous post1 I wrote about the importance of (and problems with) boundaries in relation to trauma – both on the individual and social levels.  I argued that without boundaries it becomes very difficult to define the scope of a traumatic experience.  It also becomes difficult, if not impossible, …

War without end?

Today (4 August 2014) marks the centenary of the beginning of the Great War – or does it?  Actually, it marks the centenary of Britain’s declaration of war with Germany – Germany having declared war on France a day earlier.  And in just over four years time we will (presumably) …