When Language Meets Traumatic Lacuna: The Metaphoric, the Metonymic, and the Psychotic Modes of Testimony

ABSTRACT

This article traces four modes of traumatic testimony that are distinguished from one another in the degree of the psychic motility they succeed to form in relation to traumatic memories: the metaphoric, the metonymic, the excessive-psychotic, and the Muselmann-psychotic modes of testimony. While the metaphoric mode is characterized by the simultaneous holding of the position of the victim (the experiencing I) and the position of the witness (the narrating I), the other three modes are gradually declining in their capacity to hold the traumatic memories in mind in a way that allows for transformation and healing. These four modes are illustrated through a close reading of various testimonies suggesting that the core of the psychoanalytic treatment of trauma lies in the attempt to enable the crucial shift from the metonymic, the excessive, and the Muselmann modes of testimony to the metaphoric one, which is the only force that can turn the traumatic lacuna into a creative force.

Notes

¹ I draw on Astrid Erll (2011b, see also 2011a in this context) for whom there is a difference between pre-narrative experience on the one hand, and, on the other, narrative memory which creates meaning retrospectively.

² Muselmann (pl. Muselmänner, from the German, meaning Muslim) was a derogatory term used among captives of World War II Nazi concentration camps to refer to those suffering from a combination of starvation (known also as hunger disease) and exhaustion and who were resigned to their impending death. The Muselmann prisoners exhibited severe emaciation and physical weakness, an apathetic listlessness regarding their own fate, and unresponsiveness to their surroundings.

³ These testimonies were taken from Ray D. Wolf Centre for Study of Psychological Stress, University of Haifa, Israel.

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Notes on contributors

Dana Amir

Dr. Dana Amir is a clinical psychologist, supervising and training analyst at the Israel Psychoanalytic Society, poetess and literature researcher. She is the author of five poetry books and two psychoanalytic nonfiction books. She is the winner of many national and international prizes: The Adler National Poetry Prize (1993); The Bahat Prize for Academic Original Book (2006); The Frances Tustin International Memorial Prize (2011); The Prime-Minister Prize for Hebrew Writers (2012); The IPA (International Psychoanalytic Association) Sacerdoti Prize (2013); Nathan Alterman poetry price (2013); Distinguished Psychoanalytic Educators Award (IFPE). Her book Cleft Tongue was published by Karnac (2014), and another book entitled On the Lyricism of the Mind, was recently published by Routledge (2016). She is a faculty member of the Department of Human Counseling and Development, Haifa University, and practices psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.