Bearing Witness to the Witness

Bearing Witness to the Witness examines the different methods of testimony given by trauma victims and the ways in which these can enrich or undermine the ability of the reader to witness them. In doing so, the author demonstrates the importance of testimony in understanding the nature of trauma, and therefore how to respond to trauma more generally in a clinical psychoanalytic setting.

"Taking Dana Amir's approach as a model, a new line of inquiry, that of reconstructing the mental processes that led to the phenomena observed in the testimonies, will become evident, leading to a much deeper understanding of the experience of survival and of its aftermath. Her book is written in a prose that is almost poetry and in a language that is both strong as well as daring and imaginative."-**Professor Dori Laub,** Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, USA

Autorentext

Dana Amir is Faculty member at Haifa University, a clinical psychologist, training and supervising psychoanalyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, poetess and literature researcher. She is the author of six poetry books and two psychoanalytic books, and the winner of many national as well as four distinguished international prizes. Her papers have been published in many journals and presented in professional conferences all over the world.

Klappentext

Bearing Witness to the Witness examines the different methods of testimony given by trauma victims and the ways in which these can enrich or undermine the ability of the reader to witness them. In doing so, the author demonstrates the importance of testimony in understanding the nature of trauma, and therefore how to respond to trauma more generally in a clinical psychoanalytic setting.

Inhalt

Foreword by Dori Laub

Introduction

1. When Language Meets the Traumatic Lacuna: Four modes of Traumatic Testimony

2. Autobiographical Fiction or Fictional Autobiography? ***Georges Perec's W, or the Memory of Childhood*

3. The Post-Traumatic Dyad: Agota Kristof's The Notebook

4. The Center Mode as Opposed to the Marginal Mode: Yehiel Dinur (Ka-Tzetnick)'s House of Dolls

5. Transcending the Traumatic Real: Six Variations in Six Stories by Ida Fink

6. ****The Traumatic Lacuna as the Negative Possession of the Other: Aharon Appelfeld's "Bertha"

7. From the Collapse of Signifiers to the Reconstruction of Language: Robert Antelme's The Human Race

8. The Lacuna: Reading Children's Testimonies

9. Modes of Memory, Modes of Healing

10. Awakening the Narrator: Clinical Work with Modes of Testimony

11. Epilogue: Hiroshima Mon Amour and the Command of Boundary Violation