Chapter 1

An Overview of Psychoanalytic and Trauma Theories

As Lauriel .K. Hamilton says, “There were wounds that never showed on the body

that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.”. Internal trauma imprints long

term impression on human mind. The study of this trauma within human psyche has led to a

drastic development in the branch of psychology. The theory of trauma emerged during

1960s following areas of social concerns such as recognition of prevalence of violence

against women and children, identification of the phenomenon of post-traumatic stress

disorder in war veterans and awareness of the psychic scars inflicted by torture and genocide,

especially in regard to the holocaust.

Even long times back, the historians and writers have identified that, people may

develop long term emotional and psychological responses following their vulnerability to

acute stress and trauma. However, this view took quite a long time to become deep-rooted in

psychiatry and it was as late as nineteenth century that we could find a few psychiatrists who

accepted this notion of taking fear and horror to be sufficient to cause a psychological

disorder. The incident that brought this notion to light was the experiences in dealing with the

dead and injured in the First World War. It is evident from the accounts of human responses

to war, murder, rape, and other personal catastrophe in literature that we find how people

responded and provided scope for the study of nature of human responses.

The word ‘trauma’ is actually a Greek word that stands for the meaning

wound. Initially, this word stood for physical injuries before it came to be used for

psychological ‘injury’ during the 19th century. As by definition, trauma is a psychological

‘wound’ whereas a traumatic event is a major stress which suddenly overpowers a person and
that torment his or her self-esteem or life itself. This major stress triggers the capacity of

individuals to understand the situation and cope with it. It is from stress, the response to an

unpleasant stimulus that all of the psychological traumas originate. The word trauma in

everyday language means, a highly stressful event. Though this stress is a very natural event

in humans, it’s extremity overwhelms a person’s ability to struggle through. Even now, there

is no clear distinction between pain, trauma and adaptation. Various meanings exist for

various experts in this field. Psychological trauma is a unique experience of the victim. It

overwhelms the capacity of individuals to cope and it leaves the person in fear of death,

annihilation and mutilation.

Psychological trauma can leave upsetting emotions, memories, and anxiety that

might not get away. It creates the numb feeling and makes us disconnected and unable to

trust people. When atrocious things happen, it can take a short time to urge over the pain and

feel secure once again. Psychological trauma is that which results from the extraordinary

stressful events that shatter the sense of security and that creates helplessness. Any kind of

traumatic event that happened to occur during childhood such as losing beloved ones,

encountering war, or being abused or met with an accident, all leads to further fostering this

trauma in future. Almost everyone will have a stressful event in his or her life. If this event is

followed by a lot of stress, then, it is known as a traumatic event. Traumatic events are the

most obvious sources of stress. After a traumatic event, it is common among people that they

experience a specific series of psychological reactions. The initial stages usually found after a

traumatic event are characterised by initial shock and bewilderedness where, the survivors are

unaware of their injuries or danger. They may also wander around in a disoriented manner,

perhaps placing themselves at the risk of further injury. Responses towards a traumatic event

varies from person to person. These responses may include the feelings of fear, grief, and

depression. Traumatic experiences often entangle a threat to life and safety. But, any
situation that leaves the sensation overwhelmed and isolated are often traumatic, even if it

does not involve any physical harm. It is not the objective facts that decide whether the

incident is traumatic, but the subjective emotional experience of that event. The more

frightened and helpless you are, the more likely you are to be traumatized.

As we talk about the theory of trauma, Sigmund Freud was the

pioneer in the theory of trauma. But eventually, he abandoned it. Even during the early days

of his career, he supposed that a history of sexual seduction in childhood was responsible for

the neurotic symptoms that he observed in his patients. But, in order to embrace a more

nuanced paradigm of both the conscious or the unconscious functioning, he moved away

from a one-to-one formulation of the relationship of the external to the internal world. Thus,

he focused on the role of delusions in neurotic conflicts and inhibitions. This transformation

from inter-subjective to intra-psychic realm had powerful implications for the future of

psychoanalysis as a discipline. Although Freud never discarded the reality of oedipal love in

the stories he had heard of his early female patients, he adopted to occupy his thoughts on the

drama of internal warfare. Likewise, the psychic clashes and adversities of the great war

compelled Freud to consider one kind of pathology administered by the experience of war.

Still, this attachment towards the grand narratives led him away from investigating how

traumatic experiences act on individuals in the dimension of Universal Theory, culminating

in his establishment of the instinct of death.

Feminists have played a major role in the study of trauma theory

by giving prominence to problems that distinctively affect women and children. Genital

mutilation, physical or sexual abuse, body shaming, are some of the problems faced by them.

It is evident in the light of the studies related to cognitive neuroscience that, there are
memories related to overwhelming experiences that are stored in specific parts of the brain.

These memories are inaccessible to the conscious recall and hence, they contribute into the

individual’s ongoing life history. Thus, we can see that, cognitive neuroscience support most

of the assumptions in trauma theory.

In accordance with the 'ethical turn' in criticism, there was a sense that the

radical scepticism associated with post-structuralist or postmodernist theory compromised

becoming effortlessly blown up as nihilistic. This were during the year when the ironic

apocalypse of the postmodern world, glorified throughout the 1980s by Jean Baudillard as

hyperreal reached its delirious idolization in his brief controversial 'The Gulf War Will Not

Happen' in 1991. This persuaded Christopher Norris to insist that 'the export of ideas from

the realm of avant garde literary theory two adjacent disciplines... has had the effort of

promoting an extreme anti-cognitivist and relativist position', an attitude which he has ever

since invaded as capricious and apolitical. A further attentive critic on postmodernist

culture, Steven Connor, turned to arguments for the significance of cultural value and

ethical criticism, as did Simon Critchley in ethics and deconstruction. Both were part of a

larger trend for the 'ethics of the infinite' introduced by the Jewish philosopher Emmanuel

Levinas. Yet, whilst part of this general 'ethical Turn' in literary criticism in the early 1990s,

trauma theory also dispatched much bounteous urgent and appropriate position of crisis.

It was unveiled in 1987 that as a young man, De Man had devoted review

articles to a newspaper under the Nazi occupiers of Belgium in 1941 and 1942. Particularly,

'The Jews in Contemporary Literature' used the language of anti-Semitism—this in a country

where a large portion of the Jewish population was to be shipped out to concentration camps

in the East. To those who thought that deconstruction contradict any chance of mention or

definable meaning, this hidden secret quickly gave a new drive to de Man's suspicious

scepticism about history or referential truth. Simply like the belated recognition of a

traumatic event in the past, de Man's carrier was retrospectively drafted as strong willed by

this secret. Those related to deconstruction at Yale were also compelled to go over De Man's

career, even as they safeguarded his work from the simplistic discount that it was

'collaborationist'. It would certainly be remissive to suggest that the focus on the subject of

trauma by Yale critics was purely a response to the de Man affair. Rather, what trauma theory

did was to resume the Yale school project with a more specific sense of ethical obligation and

a new interest in rephrasing the knots of representation to the referential world, however

paradoxical that might prove to be. Feldman's essay on Shoah came in a special issue of Yale

French Studies called 'Literature and Ethical Question'. Caruth's Unclaimed Experience also

springs from this context: she offers trauma beyond any doubt in return to the argument that

'the epistemological problems raised by the poststructuralist criticism necessarily lead to

political and ethical paralysis'.

This is one reason, but it centres on a frustratingly slender field of critical discourse. The

second line of research would be less prejudiced and would see this variation within critical

theory as part of a wider cultural privileging of the category of trauma in recent times. We

might not is trauma theory, in other words, as symptomatic rather than diagnostic. This would

need a much more extensive reading in psychiatric, legal, journalistic and sociological

discourse as well as popular culture- a multidisciplinary approach.

Revenge and Trauma:

 The following passage is taken from an original research article of reserchers

at The Emil Sagol Creative Arts Therapies Research Center, University of Haifa, Israel:

Experience of humiliation, feeling injustice, hurt caused by another,

or anger can elicit revenge and fantasies of revenge. Revenge is defined as “an action in

response to some perceived harm or wrongdoing by another party that is determined to inflict

damage, injury, discomfort, or punishment to the party judged responsible.” (Aquino et.al.,

2001, pp. 53) Revenge is considered to have a biological, evolutionary, and instinctive basis

that is its roots stem from people’s basic animal fighting instincts. (Haen and Weber, 2009;

Fatfouta and Merkl, 2014). Modern western thought considers revenge taboo and encourages

forgiveness instead (Grobbink et al., 2010). Moreover, researchers have suggested that

forgiveness maybe conditioned by culture, religiosity, and spiritual beliefs. (Sndage et al.,

2003; Schultz et al., 2010) but the finders are mixed.

Revenge has the potential to fill several goals. It is an innate

strategy of human beings to re-equilibrate the losses caused by an assault. If an individual

finds himself severely harmed, either physically or mentally, by another person who is held

responsible for this harm to the individual’s ego, the victim develops a motivation for

vengeance. This comes from the strong intention that the perpetrator should never gain from

their wrongdoings and that they should be punished. This desire for revenge allows the victim

to regain a sense of control over his or her circumstances. This is very important because the

basic nature of any human being is power and control –the perception of one’s ability to

influence others.
 The desire for revenge does not cease until they cause the

perpetrator to suffer. The nature of revenge depends mostly on the nature and extent of the

harm caused to them. The greater the harm and transgression caused to the victim, and the

more the victim perceives the perpetrator’s responsibility for the harm, the greater will be the

desire for revenge. Children as young as nine are capable of retaliatory decision-making.

They have the power to consider factors such as if the harm was purposeful, the type of

retaliation desired, and the age difference between the perpetrator and the victim. However,

the urge to retaliate for wrongs persists throughout adulthood.

No matter what emotional connection the victim has to the perpetrator, the

desire for revenge depends on the severity of trauma caused to them. This desire for revenge,

obviously impacts the behaviour of the victim towards the perpetrator and the hurt. However,

if the victim has an emotional attachment with the perpetrator, the level of revenge is thought

to be contingent upon the desire to preserve the relationship with the perpetrator and feelings

towards him or her. The greater the desire to preserve the relationship, the greater the

tendency to either deny the hurt or forgive the perpetrator. (Watson et al., 2016)

Victims who suffer from feelings of powerlessness and humiliation

sometimes comfort themselves with the pseudo power of revenge fantasies. Revenge

fantasies exist at all ages: children use revenge fantasies to disavow their inability to mourn

and disguise their feelings of shame (Haen and Weber, 2009). Literature, as a whole suggests

that the desire for revenge and revenge fantasies serve as a form of narcissistic repair after

experiences of harm and transgression while enabling acceptance and redefinition,

encouraging progression, and reinforcing ego stability (McCelland, 2010; Seebauer et

al.,2014; van Denderen et al., 2014; Watson et al., 2016). Excessive revenge can makes one a

psychopath.

Symptoms of a psychopath:

Psychopathy is a personality disorder. As it is wrongly interpreted that symptoms

of diseases are same for men and women , the same is also the case with psychopathic

symptoms. As such, it is classified as a mental illness, but it manifests differently in men and

women. As we need only the female psychopathic symptoms, we are going to analyse some

of these traits.

They have the power to mirror and love-bomb people in order to get

information. On the outside, she will be friendly and inviting. But within, she would be

cunning enough to ‘zoom in’ you to collect as much information as possible. In the

beginning, it will appear to the person as if they both have so much in common. Pretending to

have similar life experiences as that of the intended person whom she mingles with, she will

play to their sympathy. They make use of this cold and calculating gesture to find out as

much as possible about their strengths and weaknesses so that she can exploit both to her

advantage. Once we have sufficiently invested to her false mask, exploiting your sympathy

and love, she has no sweat using them and their resources against her.

Much like a male sociopath, a female sociopath’s projected kindness rarely

meets her eyes. She is reptilian in her demeanor and you might notice a flash of her envy,

anger or greed from time to time when the mask slips. Otherwise, she is eerily calm and lacks
a startle response even in situations that warrant fear or anxiety. As a society, we are

conditioned to see females as the “gentler sex”, incapable of violence. She could probably use

this as a greater advantage to cloak herself from suspicion.

Much of female sociopath’s manipulation is imposed through relational

aggression, which involves damaging someone’s social reputation to destroy one’s sense of

self. The female sociopath poses a sense of entitlement to anything and everything. They are

especially threatened by other women who possess what they cannot. Female narcissists and

sociopaths despise other women getting ahead or posing a threat to their grandiose ego. This

condition is known as internalized misogyny. Female sociopaths are mostly sadistic and enjoy

inflicting pain.

Literature has a greater influence on human beings. The capacity of this

empowered language system helps to reveal the inner world of man. Nowadays, it is the

movies that influence human mind as they provide space for memories, meditations,

introspection, retrospection and foreshadow. However, the fact that different characters in

these movies respond to each of the situations differently makes it quite interesting for

analysis. This is because, our life could be compared with the movies through characters and

situations in it. Thus, analysing the character Amy Dunne through the theory of trauma is like

analysing a living personality. As we are occupied with the tool of trauma theory, we could

now examine Amy and find out the reasons for her psychopathic character. We could further

use them to analyse the play of trauma in the movie Gone Girl.