Furthermore, it introduces a non-linear conception of time to make sense of the counterintuitive dynamics of trauma. The category of the real is thus at the center of the interconnections that proved so difficult to account for in the PTSD model of trauma.
The Biomedical Approach to Trauma and the Ethics of
Mental disorders as natural kinds
The mental disorders described in the DSM capture a reality that exists independently of the classification system itself. In other words: the idea of natural types allows for a generalization of the generated knowledge about etiology and treatment.
The universal subject and its vulnerability
Cognitive theory
In line with these theoretical premises, cognitive therapy for trauma attempts to facilitate the obstructed processing of the traumatic event (Foa & Rothbaum, 1998). A significant consequence of the adoption of a cognitive framework in connection with trauma treatment is therefore.
The validity of PTSD
A comprehensive review of research on each of the nodes in the theoretical network of PTSD therefore gathers into a systematic review of the construct validity of the diagnosis itself. An empirical investigation into the construct validity of PTSD therefore undermines the claims of universality and neutrality that underpin its many uses.
The history of trauma studies
This assumption was made explicit and anchored in the so-called 'stressor criterion' for the PTSD diagnosis (Criterion A), which, despite persistent and poignant criticism, has always been retained (albeit significantly modified) in subsequent editions of the psychiatric handbook ( Weathers & Keane, 2007). De Vos (2012) believes that the political significance of psychosocial help rests in the fact that (1) it imposes a series of limited, normative signifiers in which the other is alienated, and (2) it places the recipients of help in the specific. the student's role.
Psychologization means depoliticization
This connects the psychologizing and depoliticizing effects of the PTSD framework with a more general ethical crisis in the West, related to the PTSD problem. The second can be called the 'ethics of the other' and has its origins in the theses of Emmanuel Lévinas.
The a priori of trauma and human rights
In the absence of a collective, positive project, both the human rights discourse and the PTSD trauma model tend to focus on treating symptoms rather than causes. It is my hypothesis that the stubborn adherence to this idea, in the absence of real scientific arguments, is caused by moral factors.
Symptom versus cause
In human rights discourse, the emphasis on a set of a priori observable signs of harm potentially leads to forms of intervention that are limited to treating isolated problems at a superficial level, and such an approach fails to take into account both the context and the subjectivity of the issues. The involved. Trauma theory must enable interventions in the sociopolitical contexts themselves, which in turn implies a different form of ethics.
The universal subject/victim in the post-traditional vacuum of meaning
Clearly, greater sensitivity to the cultural background of the target group avoids a series of pitfalls that arise from a universalistic understanding of trauma. Nevertheless, I think it is wise to remain vigilant against the very real threat of falling back into an alienating practice.
The Dislocations of the Real
Lacan the psychoanalyst
This is further elaborated in Lacan's logic of signification': it is an unraveling chain of associations that retroactively produces the meaning of what came before (Figure 3.1). What cannot be represented, what falls between the cracks of the symbolic system, Lacan called real. Strange as it may sound, Lacanian psychoanalysis forces this confrontation, which includes the so-called destitution of the subject (Lacan, because only at this point does a break with the subject's previous ways of acting become possible.
The symbol is the murder of the thing
Therefore, each subject will have to create his own tentative responses to these aspects of life in an imaginary order: "fantasy is a defensive attempt to give meaning to a part of the real that resists the symbolic" (Verhaeghe, 2001). , p. 53). Fantasy tries to fill the gap that arises at certain points due to the incompatibility between the symbolic and the real. This will prove important when we discuss the real in its political dimension in Chapter 5.
The presymbolic real of the body
The Other of language is called upon to formulate a response to the movements of the unstructured drives. However, any answer given necessarily always falls short of completely releasing the tension of the drive. Freud's theory of anxiety neurosis states that the somatic tension of the drives turns into anxiety when it cannot be addressed through psychic (symbolic) representation (Freud, 1895b, 1926).
The mirror stage
When this increase in stimulus cannot be relieved through psychological elaboration, this can result in “permanent disturbances of the way in which the energy works” (Freud, 1917b, p. 275). The illusion of a prior harmony is already in itself an effect of the emergence of meaning. The idealized image of the self is the precipitation of the I or ego in a primordial form, to paraphrase Lacan (1949, p. 76).
The subject of the signifier
It is important to note that the material that represents this body for the subject comes from outside. The crux is that symbolic identification through the signifier, as an offered solution to the ambivalence one encounters in the imaginary, ultimately (re)produces a lack of being instead of 'filling' it with some decisive content. In the end, this structural lack of being, which continues in the 'division of the subject and the contradictory representations it consists of' (Vanheule, 2011a, p. 4), will be misrecognized and covered over the formation of a series of phantasies , which promises unity, coherence and stability (Lacan.
The return of the real
As we have discussed, the experience of the body as a unified totality is not something natural, but must arise in relation to the Other. In analogy with this quasi-neurological Freudian definition, Lacan (1949) argues that the very image of the body acts as a barrier against the real body. This obviously complicates any reading of the real as traumatic "in itself": the real is always traumatic only in relation to something else, for example, to the psychic structures that constitute the continuity of body image and ego.
The impasse of the real-in-itself
If the real is defined as the impossible to represent and therefore traumatic, then its status is not simply independent of the symbolic-imaginary order. The real cannot be thought of separately from the symbolic and the imaginary: the Lacanian trio must be understood as mutually constitutive. This revival of the same elements suggests that their emergence is not accidental, but driven.
Tuche and automaton
Therefore, it is a randomization device used in Lacan's graph to simulate the pure contingency of the real. Lacan's (1960) object of the unconscious is the subsequent effect of this march of the signifiers. The automaton's signifying chain both evades and designates the central place of the real.
The incalculability of the real
This means, for example, that repealed laws or rules that governed the pre-existing order of things cannot be relied upon to guide the way out of traumatic distress. Nevertheless, it is precisely this "block" or "obstacle" that gives impetus to the operation of the chain (Lacan, 1964, p. 54). The "real" cause of the whole domino process is something that sets off a particular sequence.
Traumatic rupture
As such, the real cannot simply be reduced to 'something unusual' that exceeds our expectations. This chapter offered a look at Lacan's difficult notion of reality in all its facets. Our starting point will be a description of the so-called ethics of reality.
The categorical imperative
In contrast to the utilitarian ethical position, right or wrong is determined here not by the result of an action, but by the motives of the person who performs them. When the personal assessment of the consequences becomes the driving force in one's character, this constitutes, according to Kant, a pathological motive and is therefore not the ethical as such. As we have seen, it has something to do with the driving force behind an action: the will should be determined solely by the 'form of the moral law'.
Demand the impossible
In contrast, Lacan asserted that the ethical act is not beyond the reach of the human being. Only in confronting the absence of the Other can the subject experience itself as a subject (Neill, 2011). As discussed in the previous chapter, it is precisely the absence of symbolic nature that allows the emergence of the subject.
The promise of jouissance
Joy, desire and fantasy are determining factors at the collective level as well. He does this by denying the structural nature of the real (that is, castration) and. The previous sections dealt with the crucial Lacanian idea that absence at the level of the subject is doubled by the absence of the Other.
The tissues of social life
In turn, these narratives reinforce the associated imagination as they constitute the 'context for the socialization of the members of the community' (ibid.). Apparently, the idea of social trauma is the effect of a further expansion of meaning, evoked by a new metaphor: that the 'tissue of social life' can be damaged in much the same way as the tissues of the mind and body. It achieves this by recognizing the bereaved as political agents and thinking interventions on the level of the Other (the symbolic field), for example focusing on forms of remembrance and remembrance.
The fabric of fantasy
Where we believe that we are free (in what we want, for example), we suddenly realize to what extent we are dependent on the Other. This recalls the dynamics described in the previous chapter: remember that the moment of the ethical precisely depends on the recognition of this unexpected determinism (the postulate of de-psychologisation). Moreover, the realization of our dependence on the Other is exacerbated by the simultaneous exposition of the arbitrary character of this Other, of its groundless and incomplete status.
Anchoring points
The entire framework that made sense of the world is displaced, leading to the 'suspension or invalidation of institutions, norms, principles, rules, plans and identities' (Andreescu, 2013, p. 213). In this sense, we begin to see how the disruption of the social order as a whole. A disruption of the social order often involves a betrayal of trust: the powers that we trusted to protect us from harm turn out to be unreliable.
Productive destruction?
Let us now turn to the definition of the political in relation to the real. In the moment of the political, the subject takes upon himself the responsibility of formulating an answer to the meaninglessness of the real. Trauma is what necessitates a reconfiguration of the subject in its relationship to the Other.
A moral conundrum
Is it possible to resist the attempt to glorify and depoliticize the moment of the political. Proponents of cultural trauma theory are often (explicitly) not interested in the therapeutic process as such. In other words: truth cannot be found in an effort to remain in the nothingness of the void.
Dealing with lack
The act is one of the key terms that re-emerges throughout Lacan's teachings. Second, the act is inherently linked to the register of the symbolic, albeit in a double-edged manner. This is related to the first characteristic feature discussed above: it is this shift in the symbolism that brings about the mutation of the subject.
Clinical illustration
The subject is the effect of the action; it is only in the subsequent spurts of desire that the act initiates that the subject can retroactively recognize himself in it. Another often debated aspect of Žižek's elaboration of action concerns the way in which it relates to the symbolic order. Neill (2011) claims that Žižek considers the action's intervention as something 'absolute', in the sense that he leaves no room for the subsequent, necessary reinscription of the action in the symbolic (the positive side).
There is no such thing as ‘trauma information’
The name of the event is called its trace, and only through this act of naming does the event, which is essentially transitory, remain in time as a sign for the subject. The name becomes the basis for the event, and it is only thanks to this existing sign that the last event can ever have any consequence in the multiples of the situation. Through this process, a 'truth' is gradually exposed, which brings together all the terms of the situation that are positively related to the event.
Forging a trace: from the event to the act
Badiou's theory states that this new present is produced through a series of subjective actions that concern the other—a form of activity that he attempts to capture in the "matheme of the faithful subject." In this modality of the subject, the trace of the event motivates and dictates the decisions and actions we take. Forging a trace is a subjective act par excellence: it produces something new ex nihilo.
The anticipated certainty of the subjective act
Strachey (ed. & trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. Strachey (ed. & trans.), The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volumes 4–5 (London: Hogarth Press). The subversion of the subject and the dialectic of desire in the Freudian unconscious', in J.
