The Trauma Controversy

Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Dialogues

Edited by Kristen Brown Golden & Bettina G. Bergo

Subjects: Philosophy Of Psychology, Cultural Studies, Sociology, Mental Health
Series: SUNY series in the Philosophy of the Social Sciences
Paperback : 9781438428208, 290 pages, October 2009
Hardcover : 9781438428192, 290 pages, October 2009

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Table of contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
1. Introduction
Kristen Brown Golden and Bettina Bergo
PART 1. TRAUMA AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORKS: PSYCHOANALYSIS AND PHENOMENOLOGY
2. A Late Adventure of the Feelings: Loss, Trauma, and the Limits of Psychoanalysis
Gregg M. Horowitz
3. Overcoming the Confusion of Loss and Trauma: The Need of Thinking Historically
Sara Beardsworth

4.Trauma and Speech as Bodily Adaptation in Merleau-Ponty
Kristen Brown Golden

PART 2. TRAUMA AND BODILY MEMORY: POETICS AND NEUROSCIENCE
5. Trauma and the Impossibility of Experience
Idit Dobbs-Weinstein
6.Trauma’s Presentation
Charles E. Scott
PART 3. TRAUMA AND CLINICAL APPROACHES
7.Crime and Memory
Judith Lewis Herman, M.D.
8.An Elephant in the Room: The Impact ofTraumatic Stress on Individuals and Groups
Sandra L. Bloom, M.D.
PART 4. TRAUMA AND RECENT CULTURAL HISTORY
9.The Snake That Bites: The Albanian Experience of Collective Trauma as Reflected in an Evolving Landscape
Michael L. Galaty, Sharon R. Stocker, and Charles Watkinson
10.Traumatic Life: Violence, Pain, and Responsiveness in Heidegger
Eric Sean Nelson
11.Trauma and Hysteria: A Tale of Passions and Reversal
Bettina Bergo
PART 5. AFTERWORD

12.Terror’s Wake: Trauma and Its Subjects
Michael Lambek
List of Contributors
Index

Provides multiple and accessible perspectives on trauma both as a condition and as a cultural phenomenon.

Description

More than a psychiatric or spiritual condition, trauma is an experience that exceeds the capacity of language to fix and settle it. As trauma crosses the lives of individuals and erupts into cultural and historical collectivities, it invites comparison with psychological dilemmas. But how best to compare individual and social trauma? What is the relationship between physical trauma and psychic trauma? How do cultures recover from trauma? To address these and other questions, the essays in The Trauma Controversy plumb the significance of various notions of trauma from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. Adopting psychoanalytic, clinical, historical, anthropological, and philosophical frameworks as well as engaging the ideas of a diverse range of thinkers, including Merleau-Ponty, Freud, Foucault, Heidegger, and Kristeva, The Trauma Controversy takes a productive and important step in advancing our understanding of trauma.

Kristen Brown Golden is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Millsaps College and the author of Nietzsche and Embodiment: Discerning Bodies and Non-Dualism, also published by SUNY Press. Bettina G. Bergo is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Université de Montréal. She is author of Levinas between Ethics and Politics: For the Beauty that Adorns the Earth and coeditor (with Jill Stauffer) of Nietzsche and Levinas: "After the Death of a Certain God."

Reviews

"Undoubtedly, this volume of essays offers a very interesting and thought-provoking look at trauma research, revealing and discussing the ostensibly resolved problems, which are regarded here from different and unexpected points of view." — H-Net Reviews (H-Ideas)

"…a highly thought-provoking collection, with a broad scope, which is destined to become a classic … It will be required reading for those working in Holocaust and Trauma Studies." — The Year's Work in Critical and Cultural Theory

"The Trauma Controversy is a remarkable book in that it is not merely a collection of discrete and unrelated essays by significant individual players. Rather, the editors have taken care to cultivate a genuine conversation between various contributors in the volume." — John J. Thatamanil, author of The Immanent Divine: God, Creation, and the Human Predicament