The Self in Pain: The Paradox of Memory. The Paradox of Testimony

Abstract

Using the 7-year psychotherapy of a Holocaust survivor, this paper explores the sometimes contradictory aspects of approaches to trauma. Conceptualizing a "self in pain" as an alternative to contemporary conceptualizations of the traumatized person as having a damaged, dissociated or collapsed self leads to a corresponding alternative clinical approach. The paradoxes of traumatic memory and testimony necessitate an adaptational emphasis and the emergence of a "doubled" in contrast to a dissociated self. The decision to respect this "doubled" self involves a privileging of "reality" over "psychic reality" which then, paradoxically enables this patient to develop a phantasy life.

Silence as the Voice of Trauma

“…Victims and survivors of wars as well as historians are painfully struggling to understand the profound traumata associated with war (Galdi, 2007), genocide (Danielian, 2010;Prince, 2010), and especially the Holocaust (Gilbert, 1985;Goldhagen, 1996;Laub and Auerhahn, 1989;Grünberg, 2007;Prince, 2009). Silence is the common denominator found among all victims, signifying a state of survival functioning where words fail and verbal recollections may have destroyed a fragile ego.…”