Violence and Time: Traumatic Survivals

Author(s): Cathy Caruth

Source: Assemblage, No. 20, Violence, Space (Apr., 1993), pp. 24-25
Published by: MIT Press
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Violence and Time: Traumatic Survivals

In recent years psychiatry has shown an in-

emergence of a pathological condition-

creasing insistence on the direct effects of

the repetitive experience of nightmares

external violence in psychic disorder. This

and relivings of battlefield events-that is

trend has culminated in the study of

experienced like a neurotic pathology and

"post-traumatic stress disorder," which de-

yet whose symptoms reflect, in startling

scribes an overwhelming experience of

directness and simplicity, nothing but the

sudden, or catastrophic events, in which

unmediated occurrence of violent events.

the response to the event occurs in the of-

Freud thus compares it to the symptoms

ten delayed, and uncontrolled repetitive

of another long-problematic phenomenon,

occurrence of hallucinations, flashbacks

the accident neurosis. The reliving of the

and other intrusive phenomena. As it is

battle can be compared, he says, to the

generally understood today, traumatic dis-

nightmare of an accident:

risk to life" (18, 12). What Freud encoun-

ters in the traumatic neurosis is not the re-

action to any horrible event but, rather, the

peculiar, and perplexing experience of sur-

vival. If the dreams and flashbacks of the

traumatized thus engage Freud's interest it

is because they bear witness to a survival

that exceeds the very claims and conscious-

ness of the one who endures it. At the heart

of Freud's rethinking of history, in Beyond

the Pleasure Principle, I would thus pro-

pose, is the urgent and unsettling question:

orders reflect the direct imposition on the

What does it mean to survive?

Dreams occurring in traumatic neuroses

mind of the unavoidable reality of horrific

have the characteristic of repeatedly bringThe intricate relation between trauma and

events, the taking-over-psychically and

ing the patient back into the situation of

survival indeed arises in this text not, as

neurobiologically-of the mind by an

his accident, a situation from which he

one might expect, because of a seemingly

wakes up in another fright. This
event that it cannot control. As such it is

direct and unmediated relation between

astonisheds people far too little ... Anyone

understood as the most real, and also most

who accepts it as something self-evident

consciousness and life-threatening events,

destructive psychic experience. I will sug-

that dreams should put them back at night

but rather through the very paradoxical

gest briefly that the problem of trauma is

into the situation that caused them to fall
structure of indirectness in psychical

not simply a problem of destruction but

ill has misunderstood the nature of

trauma. Indeed, Freud begins his discus-

also, fundamentally, an enigma of survival.

dreams. (Standard Edition 18, p.13)

sion of trauma by noting the "bewildering"

It is only in recognizing traumatic experi-

The returning traumatic dream perplexes

fact that psychological trauma occurs not

ence as a paradoxical relation between de-

Freud because it cannot be understood in

in strict correspondence to the body's ex-

terms of any wish or unconscious meaning,

perience of a life-threat-through the

but is, purely and inexplicably, the literal re-

wounding of the body; a bodily injury,

structiveness and survival that we can also

recognize the legacy of incomprehensibil-

ity at the heart of catastrophic experience.

turn of the event against the will of the one

Freud notes, "works as a rule against the

The problem of trauma is raised most di-

it inhabits. Unlike the symptoms of a nor-

development of a neurosis" (18, 12, em-

rectly in one of the first major works on

mal neurosis, whose painful manifestations

phasis added). Indeed, survival for con-

trauma in this century, Freud's Beyond the

can be understood ultimately in terms of

sciousness does not seem to be a matter of

Pleasure Principle. This piece, written in the

the attempted avoidance of unpleasurable

known experience at all. For if the return

aftermath of World War I, has been called

conflict, the painful repetition of the flash-

of the traumatizing event appears in many

upon as showing a direct relation between

back can only be understood as the absolute

respects like a waking memory, it can

Freud's theory of trauma and historical vio-

inability to avoid an unpleasurable event

nonetheless only occur in the mode of a

lence, a directness presumably reflected in a

that has not been given psychic meaning in

symptom or a dream. Thus if a life-threat

theory of trauma he produces. I would pro-

any way. In trauma, that is, the outside has

to the body is experienced as the direct in-

pose that this work represents Freud's for-

gone inside without any mediation. Taking

fliction and the healing of a wound,

mulation of trauma as a theory of the

this literal return of the past as a model for

trauma is suffered in the psyche precisely,

peculiar incomprehensibility of human sur-

repetitive behavior in general, Freud ulti-

it would seem, because it is not directly

vival. It is only by reading the theory of indi-

mately argues, in Beyond the Pleasure Prin-

available to experience. The problem of

vidual trauma in Beyond the Pleasure

ciple, that it is traumatic repetition, rather

survival, in trauma, thus emerges

Principle in terms of its inherently temporal

than the meaningful distortions of neurosis,

specifially as the question: what does it

that defines the shape of individual lives.

mean for consciousness to survive?

structure-the structure of delayed experi-

ence that will ultimately link individual

Starting from the accident neurosis to ex-

Freud's speculations on the causes of rep-

trauma to the problem of historical trauma

plain the nature of individual histories, Be-

etition compulsion in relation to the origins

in Freud's later work-that we can under-

yond the Pleasure Principle can thus be said

of consciousness can indeed be understood

stand the full complexity of the problem of

to ask what it would mean for history to be

as attempting to grasp the paradoxical rela-

survival at the heart of human experience.

understood as the history of trauma.

tion between survival and consciousness.

Beyond the Pleasure Principle indeed opens

Freud's comparison of the war experience

Freud suggests that the development of the

with Freud's perplexed observation of a

to that of the accident introduces another

mind seems, at first, to be very much like

psychic disorder that appears to reflect the

element as well, however, which adds to the

the development of the body: consciousness

unavoidable and overwhelming imposition

significance of this question. For it is not

arises out of the need to protect "the little

of violent events on the psyche. Faced

just any event that creates a traumatic neu-

fragment of substance suspended in the

with the striking occurence of what were

rosis, Freud indicates, but specifically "se-

middle of an external world," which "would

vere mechanical concussions, railway

be killed by the stimulation emanating from

called the war neuroses in the wake of

World War I, Freud is startled by the

Cathy

disasters and other accidents involving a

these if it were not provided with a protec-

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tive shield against stimuli" (18, 27) Unlike

the body, however, which protects the or-

ganism by means of a spatial boundary be-

tween inside and outside, the barrier of

consciousness is a barrier of sensation and

because the mind cannot confront the

vival. If history is to be understood as the

possibility of its death directly that survival

history of trauma, it is a history that is ex-

becomes for the human being, paradoxi-

perienced as the endless attempt to as-

sume one's survival as one's own.

cally, an endless testimony to the impossi-

bility of living.

It is this incomprehensibility of survival, I

knowledge that protects by placing stimula-

would suggest, that is at the heart of

From this perspective, the survival of

tion within an ordered experience of time.

Freud's formulation of the death drive.

trauma is more than the fortunate passage

What causes trauma, then, is a shock that

past a violent event, a passage that is acci-

Freud compares the beginning of the his-

dentally interrupted by reminders of it, but

tory of the organism in the drive as the re-

the endless inherent necessity of repetition

sponse to an awakening not unlike that of

appears to work very much like a threat to

the body's spatial integrity, but is in fact a

break in the mind's experience of time:

the nightmare:

which ultimately may lead to destruction.

We may, I think, tentatively venture to re-

The postulation of a drive to death, which

The attributes of life were at some time
gard the common traumatic neurosis as an

Freud ultimately introduces in Beyond the

awoken in inanimate matter by the action
extensive breach being made in the protec-

Pleasure Principle, would seem only to real-

of a force of whose nature we can form no

tive shield against stimuli. This would

seem to reinstate the old naive theory of

conception ... The tension which then

ize the reality of the destructive force that

arose in what had hitherto been an inanishock ... [It] regards the essence of the

the violence of history imposes on the hu-

mate substance endeavored to cancel itself

shock as being the direct damage to the
man psyche, the formation of history as the

out. In this way the first drive came into

molecular structure ... of the nervous sys-

endless repetition of previous violence.

being; the drive to return to the inanimate

tem, whereas what we seek to understand

state. (18, 38)

are the effects produced on the organ of
If we attend closely, however, to Freud's de-

the mind. It is caused by lack of any prescription of the traumatic nightmare of the

At the beginning of the drive, Freud sug-

accident, we find a somewhat more complex

gests, is not the traumatic imposition of

paredness for anxiety. (18, 31)

The breach in the mind-the awareness of

notion of what is missed, and repeated, in

death, but the rather the traumatic "awak-

the threat to life-is not caused by a pure

the trauma. In the description of the acci-

ening" to life. Life itself, Freud suggests, is

quantitive amount of stimulus breaking

dent dream, indeed, Freud does not simply

an awakening out of death for which there

through the body, Freud suggests, but preattribute the traumatic fright to the dream

was no preparation. The origin of the drive

cisely by "fright," the lack of preparedness

itself, but to what happens upon waking up:

is thus precisely the experience of having

to take in a stimulus that comes too

passed beyond death without knowing it.
Dreams occurring in traumatic neuroses

quickly. It is not, simply, that is, the literal

have the characteristic of repeatedly bring-

threatening of bodily life, but the fact that

And it is in the attempt to master this

ing the patient back into the situation of

awakening to life that the drive ultimately

the threat is recognized as such by the

his accident, a situation from which he

defines its historical structure: failing to

wakes up in another fright.

mind one moment too late. The shock of
return to the moment of its own act of liv-

the mind's relation to the threat of death

is thus not the direct experience of the

If "fright" is the term by which Freud de-

ing, the drive precisely departs into the fu-

fines the traumatic effect of not having

ture of a human history.

threat, but precisely the missing of this exbeen prepared in time, then the trauma of

This history will be developed more fully in

perience, the fact that, not being experithe nightmare does not simply consist in

Freud's later work, Moses and Monotheism,

enced in time, it has not yet been fully
the experience within the dream, but in

which examines the delayed experience of

known. And it is this lack or direct experithe experience of waking from it. It is the

trauma in the history of an entire people.

ence that, paradoxically, becomes the basis

experience of waking into consciousness

What I would preliminarily suggest here is

of the repetition of the nightmare:
that, peculiarly, is identifed with the reliv-

that such a history-individual or collec-

These dreams are endeavouring to master

ing of the trauma. And as such it is not

tive-bears with it the weight of a paradox:

the stimulus retrospectively, by developing

only the dream that surprises conscious-

that external violence is felt most, not in its

the anxiety whose omission was the cause
ness but, indeed, the very waking itself

direct experience, but in the missing of this

of the traumatic neurosis. (18, 32)

that constitutes the surprise: the fact not

experience; that trauma is constituted not

The return of the traumatic experience in
only of the dream but of having passed be-

only by the destructive force of a violent

the dream is not the signal of the direct
yond it. What is enigmatically suggested,

event but by the very act of its survival. If

experience but, precisely, of the attempt
that is, is that the trauma consists not only

we are to register the impact of violence we

to overcome the fact that it was not direct,
in having confronted death, but in having

cannot, therefore, locate it only in the deto attempt to master what was never fully
survived, precisely, without knowing it.

structive moment of the past, but in an ongrasped in the first place. Not having truly

What one returns to, in the flashback, is

going survival that belongs to the future. It

known the threat of death in the past, the
not the incomprehensibility of the event

is because violence inhabits, incomprehensurvivor is forced, continually, to confront

of one's near death, but the very incom-

sibly, the very survival of those who have

it over and over again. For consciousness
prehensibility of one's own survival. Rep-

lived beyond it that it may be witnessed

then, the act of survival, as the experience
etition, in other words, is not the attempt

best in the future generations to whom this

of trauma, is the repeated confrontation
to grasp that one has almost died, but

survival is passed on.

with the necessity and impossibility of
more fundamentally and enigmatically,

grasping the threat to one's own life. It is

the very attempt to claim one's own sur-

25

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Caruth