necessary background knowledge:

a) the word trauma was first used to refer to psychological wounding in. . .

Sense of "psychic wound, unpleasant experience which causes abnormal stress" is implied in traumatic, in psychological jargon 1889. Traumatize in the psychological sense is attested from 1949.

"trauma." Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. 01 May. 2007. .

If we are to look for trauma in earlier centuries, then, we cannot look merely for the term; we must identify its analogues, its symptoms, its manifestations; we must proceed on the basis of a clear-cut definition and read backwards.

Several possible approaches suggest themselves:

1) Some events are by nature traumatic. (Does anyone famous say this?) For instance, the experience of mutilation is probably traumatic by definition. Physical violation is traumatic.

Can we use the definition of the DSM-IV? or whatever it's called?

I like the definition cited earlier--i.e., that it must be shocking.

What does Freud say? that is relevant to *adult* trauma?

In any case, it seems like only an asshole would deny that rape is traumatic. . . if we are going to accept the notion of trauma at all. This is hardly an academic argument, but any meaningful basic notion of trauma--however we define it--is going to include Lucretia, especially considering her subsequent suicide. That is the important point: even given the absence of agreement about trauma, no matter who you believe, Lucretia clearly counts.

This totally circumstantial, external definition, however, is not really that important. We need to look beyond the event for a certain constellation of events or accrual of concepts with more historical resonance, that will enable us to read backwards.

One such understanding is the sublime.

Another is the impossibility of consolation.

The hell with all of this if you don't understand why.

I don't really know, or care, how this semester's theorists would define trauma backwards. (That's terrible. It's my failing, not a failing of the course.) Nonetheless. That's probably not even true, it's just that I can't remember.

The dilemma of speechlessness; the inability to tell the story; the problem of consolation (and the unconsolable).


Maybe it's smarter to just start with Lucretia and the event that surrounds her and forfingget about connecting it to DeCapra's theory of trauma.

It's not that I disagree with DeCapra et al. It's that I find many of these later theories to be too specific, i.e. related strictly to major 20th century atrocity, and I think there should be a better bridge from Freud (which is extremely universal and, in a sense, presumes that a certain degree of trauma inheres in human existence) and DeCapra (which assumes that trauma is an extreme anomaly on which only a few have license to speak.