Some thoughts about the history of trauma culture and trauma studies

Notes from research and writing

I’m re-reading Judith Herman’s Trauma and Recovery and the thing that is remarkable about this book is actually how Freudian Lite it is and how riven it is with contradictions that did not prevent it from being a best seller for Basic Books and the bible of trauma and recovery culture.

It is also the book that pioneers the whole idea of the “survivor” as an identity category that has been “silenced” and must now be acknowledged and recognized. In this book, gendered survival is mapped across victims of sexual assault (women) and Vietnam War veterans (men). She talks about how sexual assault and serving in a war happen mostly to young people, women and men and this makes these two kinds of victims fungible, interchangeable, equivalent.

I feel like the vagueness of the trauma discourse is very much related to the suppression of class contradiction and can be explained by what Adolph Reed Jr and Walter Benn Michaels talk about in terms of “anti-racism” campaigns. Trauma culture never talks about workplace exploitation or its rel

As far as conceptual contradictions go? Herman supports talk therapy AND Bessel Van der Kolk, who believes in “imprinting” of memories on the brain that make them visible to brain scans, but inaccessible through language.

Don’t want to give the book away, but this is what is on my mind these days. Consider this a teaser.