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Trauma : A Genealogy
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 1870s, 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.
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.
336 pages, Paperback
First published June 8, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
August 22, 2020
Good tackling and challenging of Caruth.
June 26, 2026
This is a difficult book to review, because it was a difficult book! Leys writes as an intellectual historian in the field of psychology studies, but also appears to do so from something of a feminist, psychoanalytic, deconstructionist framework. The result of Foucalt and Freud, channeled through a feminist academic, is a book overflowing with opaque prose and tortuous academic jargon, filled with sentences like “On the contrary, such an appraisal underscores the fictive-fantasmatic-suggestive dimension of the traumatico-mimetic repetition” (275).
And yet for all of that, behind the work is a very keen analytical mind that occasionally emerges with clarity. Leys’ fundamental argument is that there are two intellectual “poles” in trauma theory, which she calls the “mimetic” and “anti-mimetic” impulses. As best as I can understand her, the key question resolves around the relationship between the traumatic event and the psyche of the person affected: is the trauma so overwhelming that one is doomed to repeat (or “mimic”) it in some way? This pole tends to see the corresponding cure as some form of understanding, reintegration, etc. of the traumatic event, and Leys clearly shows that this has historically been accomplished by hypnosis or drugs. Under some such influence, a therapist guides the patient into recovering memory of the event in a way that frees them endless neuroses or pathological repetitions.
The other pole tends to see the traumatic event as something observed by a stable, autonomous subject who witnesses to the truthfulness of the event (“This happened to me/us”). But both poles, in Leys' reading, tend to slide back and forth even within a given thinker, because both confront insoluble practical and theoretical difficulties. On the first pole, how can one be sure that the overwhelming event actually happened, if one can only arrive at knowledge of it through hypnosis or drug influence? What if the therapist suggests interpretations of the past that are false or incomplete? Does it matter? If the theory says that trauma is traumatic because it is inherently overwhelming, then much larger questions of epistemology (how can you know an unknowable event?) and therapy emerge (is the goal to remember the forgotten unknowable, or to forget the unforgettable?)
The other pole’s problems can be summarized with this question: if an autonomous self is witness to the traumatic event and must always be trusted, what makes it traumatic? Basel Van der Kolk and contemporary “literalists” (Leys’ accurate phrase) distinguish between normal narrative memory and traumatic memory, and suggest that the traumatic event is such that it cannot be incorporated into narrative memory. Hence the goal of therapy is to recondition the biological system of memory so that the event can be incorporated into normal, narrative memory. But Leys is clear that the “scientific” basis for such a theory is shallow. She also points out an even more troubling flaw in this scheme: if there is a biological, causative link between traumatic event and trauma symptoms….is there any difference between the victim and the perpetrator? If “trauma” is a biological response like inflammation to a joint injury (an illustration Leys repeatedly points out), then shouldn’t the same response (and therefore the same treatment) be needed for both victim and perpetrator? After all, both are biological organisms who reacted to the same “event.”
The biological, literalist model is a reaction against a genuine problem in the other pole, the problem of truthfulness and denial. If our theory says trauma is inherently unknowable, then does it matter if the historical trauma actually occurred? But if you question the veracity of the witness, aren’t you then making room for cover-up and abuse? But then the other problem emerges: if you assume the inherent truthfulness of the victim, how do you explain the problem of trauma? What makes it traumatic, and not merely “one darn thing after another”? But press this reaction to its extreme (especially with a biological reductionism), and now the moral distinction between victim and perpetrator is unclear.
As a Christian pastor, all of this points to the inherent problem I see in trauma studies (and indeed all secular psychological literature): by removing God from the discussion, they fundamentally misunderstand human beings. With God as the moral Judge who knows every human heart perfectly, the distinction between victim and perpetrator is crystal clear, and likewise the problem of truthfulness is no longer a problem. God knows what happened. God will judge. But remove God from the picture, and the theories inherently lurch from one inadequate pole to another. For all her academic jargon, Leys has done good service by highlighting that oscillation. Christians obsessed with “trauma” lingo would do well to heed her warning: the current secular theories are inherently unstable.
And yet for all of that, behind the work is a very keen analytical mind that occasionally emerges with clarity. Leys’ fundamental argument is that there are two intellectual “poles” in trauma theory, which she calls the “mimetic” and “anti-mimetic” impulses. As best as I can understand her, the key question resolves around the relationship between the traumatic event and the psyche of the person affected: is the trauma so overwhelming that one is doomed to repeat (or “mimic”) it in some way? This pole tends to see the corresponding cure as some form of understanding, reintegration, etc. of the traumatic event, and Leys clearly shows that this has historically been accomplished by hypnosis or drugs. Under some such influence, a therapist guides the patient into recovering memory of the event in a way that frees them endless neuroses or pathological repetitions.
The other pole tends to see the traumatic event as something observed by a stable, autonomous subject who witnesses to the truthfulness of the event (“This happened to me/us”). But both poles, in Leys' reading, tend to slide back and forth even within a given thinker, because both confront insoluble practical and theoretical difficulties. On the first pole, how can one be sure that the overwhelming event actually happened, if one can only arrive at knowledge of it through hypnosis or drug influence? What if the therapist suggests interpretations of the past that are false or incomplete? Does it matter? If the theory says that trauma is traumatic because it is inherently overwhelming, then much larger questions of epistemology (how can you know an unknowable event?) and therapy emerge (is the goal to remember the forgotten unknowable, or to forget the unforgettable?)
The other pole’s problems can be summarized with this question: if an autonomous self is witness to the traumatic event and must always be trusted, what makes it traumatic? Basel Van der Kolk and contemporary “literalists” (Leys’ accurate phrase) distinguish between normal narrative memory and traumatic memory, and suggest that the traumatic event is such that it cannot be incorporated into narrative memory. Hence the goal of therapy is to recondition the biological system of memory so that the event can be incorporated into normal, narrative memory. But Leys is clear that the “scientific” basis for such a theory is shallow. She also points out an even more troubling flaw in this scheme: if there is a biological, causative link between traumatic event and trauma symptoms….is there any difference between the victim and the perpetrator? If “trauma” is a biological response like inflammation to a joint injury (an illustration Leys repeatedly points out), then shouldn’t the same response (and therefore the same treatment) be needed for both victim and perpetrator? After all, both are biological organisms who reacted to the same “event.”
The biological, literalist model is a reaction against a genuine problem in the other pole, the problem of truthfulness and denial. If our theory says trauma is inherently unknowable, then does it matter if the historical trauma actually occurred? But if you question the veracity of the witness, aren’t you then making room for cover-up and abuse? But then the other problem emerges: if you assume the inherent truthfulness of the victim, how do you explain the problem of trauma? What makes it traumatic, and not merely “one darn thing after another”? But press this reaction to its extreme (especially with a biological reductionism), and now the moral distinction between victim and perpetrator is unclear.
As a Christian pastor, all of this points to the inherent problem I see in trauma studies (and indeed all secular psychological literature): by removing God from the discussion, they fundamentally misunderstand human beings. With God as the moral Judge who knows every human heart perfectly, the distinction between victim and perpetrator is crystal clear, and likewise the problem of truthfulness is no longer a problem. God knows what happened. God will judge. But remove God from the picture, and the theories inherently lurch from one inadequate pole to another. For all her academic jargon, Leys has done good service by highlighting that oscillation. Christians obsessed with “trauma” lingo would do well to heed her warning: the current secular theories are inherently unstable.
May 12, 2022
There are lots of insights in this book, and it’s certainly worth reading for anyone interested in the subject. I didn’t find a big payoff from the central framing, but I got a lot out of some of the specific readings.
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August 15, 2016A detailed genealogy of the concept of trauma in modern thought, largely structured around the dichotomy the author perceives between "mimetic" and "anti-mimetic" approaches to trauma. The last 1.5 chapters an extended, usually apt, critique of Caruth for misreadings of Freud, logical inconsistencies, and alarming ethics. Doesn't bear much at all on collective memory, except perhaps for the critique of Caruth.
February 22, 2013
Interesting, and a landmark in trauma studies. However, Leys seems content to tell us what everyone has done wrong with trauma theory, from Freud to Caruth---with not really indicating what is "right," either.
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December 17, 2010For school...
May 24, 2015
Spectacular footnotes.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews