What Is Trauma?

Sketch of a phenomenological description (and the philosophy that comes with it)

Published in Oxford Public Philosophy’s Turn Three – Read it here.

 

This is what Trauma feels like: entering the now as if it were hell, wishing for the world to be real again (1). What is this hell? It is ‘living-missingly’ or ‘being livingly-troubled.’      This experience is about not being tuned correctly – harmoniously – with the real as much as with ourselves, and thinking (believing? No–     knowing)  what is going on is not right. Everything  changed. It has all changed somehow. The frames are not right, chairs are more crooked than before, floors seem to be leaning–     all of this despite all the science and rationality available (2). The now is not experienced as it had to be (3). Everything is unforgiving: our mind, other people, time, and the rawness of life’s appearance in general. What is      more unforgiving is forgiveness itself: it has lost its initial meaning, which is an ability to turn back on events  and cancel their non-factual consequences. Forgiving oneself for what happened does not reset every clock in the world no matter what. It happened: The bomb detonated     –     she died     –     he was in the crowd when bodies fell on the ground (4). Trauma is permanent and the only thing for which empathy from others becomes a Sisyphus who sightlessly generates a movement of social back-and-forth. It is a mental tattoo. No amount of emotional distance will make us go back in time and prevent the unforgiving. Though we may find comfort over time and attempt to re-serialize our memories (5) to tune ourselves harmoniously back with time and space – this now, this space, of the right now, – the off-putting feeling evinced by what is real remains continuously. The French have the word “fatalité” to beautifully describe the unforgiving characteristic of time, but Trauma knows no language. Trauma is  mental assault. It knows nothing but to assault our intellectual and physical capabilities     –     the tandem juxtaposition of the experience and the phenomenon that precedes Trauma goes above and beyond the agency of our self-consciousness (6). Oftentimes it shatters this agency by subduing it with a cognitive experience that our self-consciousness would never experience on its own, as well as by making it seem as though these experiences were the product of consciousness itself. Keep reading »