Features of Trauma
Dori Laub recounts four features of the historical trauma. These, to my mind, are essential, because Laub specifically points to the social significance when he talks about the effects of crossing generation boundaries as being one of the characteristics of traumas. Werner Bohleber is also convinced that collective traumatisation causes specific generation conflicts and types of identification in following generations.1See Bohleber 1998, p. 256.
As already explained, trauma means the destruction of form and psychological structure. This is manifest in ‘not knowing’ about the trauma, an obstinate refusal to remember their dissociative experience. It is therefore the traumatisation itself that rules out knowing about the trauma.
The psychological trauma also displays a vague, non-historical presence. In this way there are no boundaries of location, space or time. Due to there being no beginning and no end to the trauma, it tends to extend to several generations.
Traumas thus form the collective inner representation of reality of several generations. The traumatised person passes on the unconscious structure principle to the next generation, who then assimilates it.
Those who are involved in historical trauma are also affected. Not only the trauma victims, but also perpetrators and witnesses are affected by the historical event or period, albeit in a different manner.2See Laub 2000, p. 866 f.; Laub 1999, p. 263.
Laub considers that the core of the trauma is based on a total failure of human empathy. By experiencing a ‘Self’ that is not responsible for the primary needs of others, the intra-psychological system of values for oneself and the other person, disappears. The disjointed communication that follows such an experience, diminishes the victims’ ability to keep their integrity and their ability for selfreflection.3Laub 1999, p. 263.
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