On the Social Denial of Trauma and the Problem of Knowing the Past

  • Alexander C. McFarlane
Chapter
Part of the Springer Series on Stress and Coping book series (SSSO)

Abstract

This catastrophic conflict occurred only 21 years after the war that was supposed to end all wars. It is as though the evocation of John of Salisbury in 1159 that “Who is more contemptible than he who scorns knowledge of himself?” might as well never have been uttered. How is it that our ability to hold on to the past is so fragile when there seems to be some agreement that history can teach worthwhile lessons, if only a willingness to doubt, learn and contemplate existence? Psychiatry and psychology are disciplines that supposedly understand the value of history in understanding human behavior. Taking a history is one of the basic skills of a clinician. Whether clinicians like it or not, they are students of the discipline. However history is a bewildering affair, and the value of historical scholarship is easy to ignore, as Auden has indicated. It is a discipline in its own right with a methodology and tradition. The trouble is that even if we value history, establishing and understanding the past is never straightforward and always involves interpretation. As Salman Rushdie, the novelist who is haunted by condemnation to death by Iranian clerics has said: History is always an ambiguous affair. Facts are hard to establish, and capable of being given many meanings. Reality is built on our own prejudices, gullibility, and ignorance, as well as on knowledge and analysis. (Salman Rushdie, “ ‘Errata’: Unreliable Narration, ” Midnight’s Children (1981, pp. 99-100))

Keywords

Traumatic Stress Traumatic Memory Standard Edition Dissociative Disorder Pleasure Principle 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Springer Science+Business Media New York 2000

Authors and Affiliations

  • Alexander C. McFarlane
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of PsychiatryThe Queen Elizabeth Hospital, University of AdelaideWoodvilleAustralia

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