Studies on Trauma Psychology and Memory in Literature

Abstract

Trauma is a modern topic.With physical and psychological traumas after wars and holocausts,modern literature meditates on the connection between trauma and consciousness,trauma and identity,or existence,and also represents the disturbed psychology of traumatic characters.Trauma results in a rupture on the shelter of consciousness and on the symbolic system.It repetitiously and literally invades the victims with nightmares and flashbacks,and causes them experience pain,loss,and even death again.Traumatic features like belatedness,latency,timelessness and repetition decide that trauma is a lonely emotional experience.Traumatic memory is different from ordinary memory,in which the traumatic characters reproduce traumatic scenes with duplication of behavior.Trauma is also a kind of social behavior.When a society or community suffers from historical traumas,individual testimony and witness will become a connection in the traumatic collective tie.Through oral telling,listening,and words,traumatic memory participates in a reconstruction of the past,and is a special way of cultural memory.