Freud And The Scene Of Trauma

“This book will reward scholars across a number of disciplines: literary studies, trauma studies, psychoanalysis and psychology, and philosophy.” —Choice This book argues that Freud’s mapping of trauma as a scene is central to both his clinical interpretation of his patients’ symptoms and his construction of successive theoretical models and concepts to explain the power of such scenes in his patients’ lives. This attention to the scenic form of trauma and its power in determining symptoms leads to Freud’s break from the neurological model of trauma he inherited from Charcot. It also helps to explain the affinity that Freud, and many since him, have felt between psychoanalysis and literature—and artistic production more generally—and the privileged role of literature at certain turning points in the development of his thought. It is Freud’s scenography of trauma and fantasy that speaks to the student of literature and painting.

This book argues that Freud’s mapping of trauma as a scene is central to both his clinical interpretation of his patients’ symptoms and his construction of successive theoretical models and concepts to explain the power of such scenes in his patients’ lives. This attention to the scenic form of trauma and its power in determining symptoms leads to Freud’s break from the neurological model of trauma he inherited from Charcot. It also helps to explain the affinity that Freud and many since him have felt between psychoanalysis and literature (and artistic production more generally), and the privileged role of literature at certain turning points in the development of his thought. It is Freud’s scenography of trauma and fantasy that speaks to the student of literature and painting. Overall, the book develops the thesis of Jean Laplanche that in Freud’s shift from a traumatic to a developmental model, along with the undoubted gains embodied in the theory of infantile sexuality, there were crucial losses: specifically, the recognition of the role of the adult other and the traumatic encounter with adult sexuality that is entailed in the ordinary nurture and formation of the infantile subject.

Through theoretical discussions, presentations of literary works, cultural artefacts and artistic performances, as well as descriptions of novel therapeutic approaches, Topography of Trauma engages in rethinking and re-examining trauma to address the transformed self and empowering post-traumatic developments.

Psychic trauma is one of the most frequently invoked ideas in the behavioral sciences and the humanities today. Yet bitter disputes have marked the discussion of trauma ever since it first became an issue in the 1870s, growing even more heated in recent years following official recognition of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In a book that is bound to ignite controversy, Ruth Leys investigates the history of the concept of trauma. She explores the emergence of multiple personality disorder, Freud's approaches to trauma, medical responses to shellshock and combat fatigue, Sándor Ferenczi's revisions of psychoanalysis, and the mutually reinforcing, often problematic work of certain contemporary neurobiological and postmodernist theorists. Leys argues that the concept of trauma has always been fundamentally unstable, oscillating uncontrollably between two competing models, each of which tends at its limit to collapse into the other. A powerfully argued work of intellectual history, Trauma will rewrite the terms of future discussion of its subject.

Publisher description

This book produces an original argument about the emergence of ‘trauma’ in the nineteenth-century through new readings of Dickens, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Collins, Gaskell and Elliot. Madeleine Wood argues that the mid-Victorian novels present their protagonists in a state of damage, provoked and defined by the conditions of the mid-century family: the cross-generational relationship is presented as formative and traumatising. By presenting family relationships as decisive for our psychological state as well as our social identity, the Victorian authors pushed beyond the contemporary scientific models available to them. Madeleine Wood analyses the literary and historical conditions of the mid-century period that led to this new literary emphasis, and which paved the way for the emergence of psychoanalysis in Vienna at the fin de siècle. Analysing a series of theoretical texts, Madeleine Wood shows that psychoanalysis shares the mid-Victorian concern with the unequal relationship between adult and child, focusing her reading through Freud’s early writings and Jean Laplanche’s ‘general theory of seduction’.

Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title In The Freudian Reading, Lis Møller examines the premises, procedures, and objectives of psychoanalytic reading in order to question the kind of knowledge such readings produce. But above all, she questions the role of Freud as master explicator. Although Freud has been seen as a great synthesizer, Møller contends that his significance as a reader lies elsewhere. For Møller, this significance lies in the way Freud presses his inquiry to the point where he encounters something he cannot explain or that he can only explain at the risk of overthrowing previous conclusions. Such "moments of crisis" occur repeatedly in Freud's work, causing him to swerve from his original train of thought, or even to call into question the theoretical foundation of his interpretation. The dominant line of argument, therefore, is frequently punctuated with problems and questions. If we concentrate on these, Møller argues, we are forced to reconsider the traditional conception of a "Freudian reading" and to reassess our perceived notions of just what kind of reader Freud was. While The Freudian Reading is based on a wide range of Freud's writings, it concentrates on four central texts: Delusions and Dreams in Jensen's "Gradiva", From the History of an Infantile Neurosis, "The Uncanny," and "Constructions in Analysis." The discussion does not progress chronologically. Rather, it explores the ways in which these texts interact: how they reflect, comment on, and contradict one another. The Freudian Reading is a concentrated, subtle analysis of Freud's interpretive practice, with special reference to his interpretations of literary texts. It will be of interest to scholars and students of literary theory and criticism as well as to readers in the field of psychoanalysis.