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ANDCONTEMPORARY
HERMAN
JUDITH THEORY
TRAUMA
SUSAN SULEIMAN
RUBIN
ory. The importance of Judith Herman's work is that she is one of the
subject "splits" off part of itself from the experience, producing "multi
ple personalities" in the process. The diagnosis of MPD (multiple person
was once very rare, but became common for a while
ality disorder) quite
WSQ:
[ Women's Studies Quarterly 36: 1& 2 (Spring/Summer 2008)]
? 2008
by Susan Rubin Suleiman. All rights reserved.
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RUBINSULEIMAN 277
ways to Freud. Members of the first camp, which includes clinicians such
as Herman as well as researchers, them Bessel van der
Judith among
ing majority being girls) enters into therapy as an adult; at that point, the
may initially deny such a history, even with careful, direct ques
. . . If the
tioning. therapist believes the patient is suffering from
a traumatic she should share this information
syndrome, fully
with the is power. The traumatized person
patient. Knowledge
is often relieved to learn the true name of her condition.
simply
her she the process of mastery.
By ascertaining diagnosis, begins
. . . She discovers that she is not others have suffered in
alone;
history provides
a useful basis for formation of a therapeutic
alliance. This framework both recognizes the harmful nature of
the abuse and a reasonable the
provides explanation for patient's persis
tent difficulties. (1992-1997, 157-58; my emphasis)
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278 JUDITH ANDCONTEMPORARY
HERMAN TRAUMA
THEORY
believes"). While this may provide a kind of relief, since the patient's
are a causal and the into rela
problems given explanation bring patient
tion with others who have suffered in similar ways ("she is not alone"), it
can also wreak havoc in real life, as members are viewed
family suddenly
as of horrific abuse. Herman herself manifests a cer
perpetrators Judith
tain vacillation in the passage, between the trauma
preceding proposing
as a heuristic a "framework that a reason
diagnosis paradigm, provides
able for what ails the and that the
explanation" patient, assuming
framework describes an actual state of events?"the trau
explanatory
matic But it seems to me crucial to maintain the difference
history."
between those two views. If a can find relief a
patient by constructing
of childhood trauma that she does not recall, or that she
story actually
recalls after much "direct the that is one
only questioning" by therapist,
here.)
nitely Freudian, and Freud never abandoned it;what he did abandon was
the idea that such memories to actual events, rather
always correspond
than the desires and fantasies. As is well known, in
representing patient's
the late 1890s he abandoned the "seduction
theory" that he had advanced
in several essays published a few years earlier, which carried with it the
concept of unconscious memories of childhood trauma. Herman
Judith
and others part company with him there, him for abandoning
blaming
the seduction theory and not believing his patients.
At this we encounter the second of trauma
point, camp theory,
which has proceeded along two paths?in both, what is contested is the
concept of memory. First, some theorists have back to
repressed gone
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RUBINSULEIMAN 279
Freud's original papers from the 1890s (in particular his 1893 paper "The
Aetiology of Hysteria") that deal with the seduction theory; they discov
ered that he too tended to his own constructions on his
impose patients?
in other words, say, it was not that he gave up believing his
they patients'
memories of childhood abuse, but that he stopped trying to force his own
theory of "repressed" sexual abuse in childhood down his patients'
throats. Instead, these theorists, Freud started a new
say forcing theory
on his centered on the Mikel
patients, Oedipus complex. Borch-Jacobsen
and Ian Hacking (both are philosophers, not psychologists) are among
the leaders of this branch of the "anti-Freud" camp. They not only blame
Freud for imposing his own unjustified constructions on his early hysteric
patients, but also then blame him for wanting to "cover up" his "crime"
and inventing the Oedipus complex in the process! Borch-Jacobsen has
written a number of quite violent books against Freud and has also edited
a collective volume titled Le livre noir de lapsychanalyse, whose title echoes
those of earlier "black books" detailing the crimes of Nazism and com
munism. However, even if Freud was indeed often guilty of imposing his
own constructions on his that does not mean that all his theories
patients,
about the human are less, criminal.
psyche wrong?much
The other branch of the camp is repre
"anti-repressed memory"
sented clinicians and researchers, foremost among them
by psychological
Elizabeth Loftus and Richard McNally. The theorists in this group could
be called hard-nosed empiricists: to test the hypothesis of repressed trau
matic and recovered on thousands of
memory memory, they rely empir
ical experiments that have been done on both animals and live subjects.
Loftus has shown that many are to false memories
people prone having
in not false memories of trauma, because it
"implanted" them?though
would be unethical to try to prove that empirically; asMcNally points
out, cannot that were traumatized as children
you persuade people they
for the sake of an But who "remember"
experiment. people vividly
a
being by aliens are
abducted good nonexperimental example of delu
sion functioning as firmly held memory.
makes some based on his exhaus
McNally very strong arguments,
tive review of the literature as well as on his own research. Memories of
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280 HERMAN
JUDITH ANDCONTEMPORARY
TRAUMA
THEORY
vivor, Lifton writes, is "one who has encountered death but remained
images of death, guilt about having survived while others died, psychic
numbing, lack of trust in the world, and struggle for meaning. Lifton
out that all these themes can have or conse
points positive negative
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RUBINSULEIMAN 281
1990); Risking Who One Is: Encounters with Contemporary Art and Literature
(Harvard University Press, 1994); and the memoir Budapest Diary: In
Search of theMotherbook (University of Nebraska Press, 1996).
WORKS
CITED
Herman, 1992-1997. Trauma and Recovery. With a new afterword. New York:
Judith.
Basic Books.
In Survivors,
Lifton, Robert Jay. 1980. "The Concept of the Survivor." Victims, Perpe
trators: Essays on theNazi Holocaust, edited by Joel Dinsdale. Washington: Hemi
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