The Trauma Controversy: Philosophical and Interdisciplinary Dialogues

More than a psychiatric or spiritual condition, trauma is an experience that exceeds the capacity of language to fix and settle it. As trauma crosses the lives of individuals and erupts into cultural and historical collectivities, it invites comparison with psychological dilemmas. But how best to compare individual and social trauma? What is the relationship between physical trauma and psychic trauma? How do cultures recover from trauma? To address these and other questions, the essays in The Trauma Controversy plumb the significance of various notions of trauma from a variety of perspectives and disciplines. Adopting psychoanalytic, clinical, historical, anthropological, and philosophical frameworks as well as engaging the ideas of a diverse range of thinkers, including Merleau-Ponty, Freud, Foucault, Heidegger, and Kristeva, The Trauma Controversy takes a productive and important step in advancing our understanding of trauma.