1. {
EWRT 1C Class 38
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short
watch
In each of these puzzles, a list of words is given. To solve the
puzzle, think of a single word that goes with each to form a
compound word (or word pair that functions as a compound
word). For example, if the given words are volley, field, and
bearing, then the answer would be ball, because the word ball can
be added to each of the other words to form volleyball, ball field,
and ball bearing.
blue
cake
cottage
stool
powder
ball
3. Trauma Theory: the last
100 years.
Trauma has attracted the
attention of many disciplines.
The reason is easy to
understand for those of us
today, who have the historical
knowledge of violence of the
twentieth century and the
experience of the ominous
start of twenty-first century.
4. A Century of
Traumas
The new millennium awakened to bloodshed
of an unprecedented scale on 9/11; two
subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq
and the enormous loss of life and property
in Libya and Syria threw the world into
turmoil.
Shoshana Felman, Emory University
Professor specializing in 19th and 20th
literature and psychoanalysis, trauma and
testimony, literature and philosophy, law
and literature, calls the legacy of violence
we inherited from the twentieth century “a
century of traumas.”
This condition of the world has posed new
existential and epistemological questions
to human civilization, questions that
trauma theory is trying to make sense of
and answer
Felman, Shoshana. The Juridical Unconscious: Trials and Traumas in the
Twentieth Century. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002.
5. Freudian Beginnings
Freudian Dreams
Freud referred to dreams as“the
royal road to a knowledge of the
unconscious activities of the
mind.” Dreaming, which,
according to Freud’s first theories,
happened distortedly or
symbolically, gives an outlet to the
dark desires repressed in the
unconscious or Id, so that sleep is
not disturbed by primitive sexual
and aggressive impulses (Freud’s
Interpretation of Dreams).
6. Traumatic dreams vs. Freudian dreams
The World War I veterans
plagued with PTSD
puzzled Freud because
the literal images they
encountered in dreams
could not be explained in
terms of the dream theory
he devised earlier in The
Interpretation of Dreams.
.
7. The term trauma theory
and PTSD:
What Freud once called
“traumatic neurosis,” the
American Psychiatric
Association in 1980 officially
acknowledged and termed as
“Post-Traumatic Stress
Disorder” (PTSD), a concept
significant to trauma theory.
The term “trauma theory” first
appears in Cathy Caruth’s
Unclaimed Experience (1996).
The theory stems from her
interpretation and elaboration
of Freud’s reflections on
traumatic experiences in Beyond
the Pleasure Principle and Moses
and Monotheism.
8. Cathy Caruth defines PTSD as “a
response, sometimes delayed, to an
overwhelming event or events, which
takes the form of repeated, intrusive
hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or
behaviors stemming from the event [. .
.] [T]he event is not assimilated or
experienced fully at the time, but only
belatedly [. . .] To be traumatized is
precisely to be possessed by an
image or event.” (Caruth 3-5)
Cathy Caruth is a Cornell
Professor of English and German
Romanticism. She specializes in
trauma theory; psychoanalytic
theory. Unclaimed Experience:
Trauma, Narrative and History;
Empirical Truths and Critical
Fictions: Locke Wordsworth, Kant,
Freud.
From Cathy Caruth (ed.) (1995) 'Trauma
And Experience: Introduction’, Trauma:
Explorations in Memory.” Baltimore,
MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
9. {
Why is literature so important in trauma
theory?
Truth for anyone is a very complex
thing. For a writer, what you leave out
says as much as those things you
include. What lies beyond the margin
of the text? ...When we tell a story we
exercise control, but in such a way as
to leave a gap, an opening. It is a
version, but never the final one. And
perhaps we hope that the silences will
be heard by someone else, and the
story can continue, can be retold.
When we write we offer the silence as
much as the story. Words are the part
of silence that can be spoken. …Do
you remember the story of Philomel
who is raped and then has her tongue
ripped out by the rapist so that she
can never tell? I believe in fiction and
the power of stories because that way
we speak in tongues.
Jeanette Winterson,
Why Be Happy When You Could Be
Normal?
Trauma theorists deem
literature important because
of its ability to accommodate
both the comprehensible and
the incomprehensible.
Literary language
simultaneously defies as well
as claims understanding, and
all the pioneer trauma
theorists—beginning with
Freud and including Cathy
Caruth and Shoshana
Felman—turned to literature
for theoretical support.
10. Literature accommodates the known and the
unknown:
`Kurtz got the tribe to follow him,
did he?' I suggested. He fidgeted
a little. `They adored him,' he
said. The tone of these words
was so extraordinary that I
looked at him searchingly. It was
curious to see his mingled
eagerness and reluctance to
speak of Kurtz.
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Literature can contain
knowing and not knowing,
the known and unknown, the
knowable and unknowable
all at once in language, a
medium that itself oscillates
between the expressible and
inexpressible, the possible
and impossible.
Psychoanalysis, in its
extension to trauma theory,
makes use of this strange
nature of literature and its
medium.
12. 1. The Fight-or-Flight
2. Learned Helplessness
3. Loss of “Volume Control”
4. Thinking Under Stress—Action Not Thought
5. Remembering Under Stress
6. Emotions and Trauma—Dissociation
7. Endorphins and Stress—Addiction to Trauma
8. Trauma Reenactment
9. Trauma and the Body
10. Victim to Victimizer
Effects of Trauma
13. Q: Is trauma a way that children learn to cope
and understand the world around them?
Q: Is it possible for people to analyze personal
traumas to help themselves?
Q: Can one undergo enough therapy to forget a
traumatic incident rather than repress it?
Q: How is Bloom’s description of “emotional
memory” beneficial to trauma as a fight or
flight response?
QHQ: Bloom
14. “Trauma, in my analysis, refers to a person's emotional
response to an overwhelming event that disrupts previous
ideas of an individual's sense of self and the standards by
which one evaluates society. The term "trauma novel"
refers to a work of fiction that conveys profound loss or
intense fear on individual or collective levels. A defining
feature of the trauma novel is the transformation of the self
ignited by an external, often terrifying experience, which
illuminates the process of coming to terms with the
dynamics of memory that inform the new perceptions of
the self and world.”
From Balaev
15. The trauma novel conveys a diversity of extreme emotional
states through an assortment of narrative innovations, such
as landscape imagery, temporal fissures, silence, or narrative
omission--the withholding of graphic, visceral traumatic
detail. Authors employ a nonlinear plot or disruptive
temporal sequences to emphasize mental confusion, chaos,
or contemplation as a response to the experience. The
narrative strategy of silence may create a "gap" in time or
feeling that allows the reader to imagine what might or
could have happened to the protagonist, thereby
broadening the meaning and effects of the experience.
From Balaev
16. Q: Why is trauma significant in in literature according
to Balev?
Q: What characterizes the basic differences in Bloom
and Balaev’s viewpoints in the discussion of trauma?
Q: How does the meaning of the trauma change as a
person recounts it to/ processes it with different
individuals?
Q: In psychology there is a concept of a cycle of a abuse,
would this be considered intergenerational trauma as
well?
Q: Is trauma developed through culture or through the
individual?
QHQ: Balaev