1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910459626303321

Autore

Leys Ruth

Titolo

Trauma [[electronic resource] ] : a genealogy / / Ruth Leys

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, 2000

ISBN

1-283-05838-3

9786613058386

0-226-47754-1

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (329 p.)

Disciplina

616.85/21

Soggetti

Psychic trauma

Traumatic neuroses

Electronic books.

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- CONTENTS -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- INTRODUCTION -- I. Freud and Trauma -- II. The Real Miss Beauchamp: An Early Case of Traumatic Dissociation -- III. Traumatic Cures: Shell Shock, Janet, and the Question of Memory -- IV. Imitation Magic: Sandor Ferenczi and Abram Kardiner on Psychic Trauma -- V. The Hysterical Lie: Ferenczi and the Problem of Simulation -- VI. Splinting the Mind: William Sargant and Catharsis in World War II -- VII. The Science of the Literal: The Neurobiology of Trauma -- VIII. The Pathos of the Literal: Trauma and the Crisis of Representation -- Conclusion -- INDEX

Sommario/riassunto

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 1870's, 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.