Trauma Blog

Trauma and World Literature: Freud’s Sunday Child and the 1918 Pandemic Influenza
StressPoints
Date posted: 09/24/2020
Topic: Trauma and the Arts

Monday's child is fair in face,
Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child works hard for its living,
And a child that's born on the Sabbath day,
Is fair and wise and good and gay.

—Children’s Nursery Rhyme

Trauma and World Literature: On Not Being Able to Be There in this Time of Pandemic
StressPoints
Date posted: 07/30/2020
Topic: Trauma and the Arts
Social distancing often denies people the ability to comfort, touch or even just sit with a loved one—not even for the last time. It is profoundly difficult to resist such vital human contact. As we contemplate this dilemma, there is a familiar story from Greek mythology about giving in to the ache for connection which is worth bringing to mind.

From Our Members: I’ll Be Seeing You: A Reflection in the Time of COVID-19
StressPoints
Date posted: 05/4/2020
Topic: Trauma and the Arts
As we persevere through the coronavirus battle together, yet apart, I am reminded of a veteran patient of mine who lost his brother near the end of World War II. His poignant account of the special bond that was severed by his brother’s death inspired me to write this vignette and poem, I’ll Be Seeing You. 

Trauma and World Literature: Transforming Despair
StressPoints
Date posted: 05/4/2020
Topic: Trauma and the Arts
As a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst, I’ve been listening to my clients’ reactions, as well as those of my family and friends, to the first couple of months of the COVID-19 crisis. Universally, people have been reacting to the “surreal” nature of this shared trauma.

Oedipus Project: Free Zoom Broadcast May 7th, 2020
Date posted: 04/26/2020
Topic: Trauma and the Arts
Dear Fellow ISTSS Members:

I’m writing now to alert you to the upcoming May 7^th free Zoom broadcast of the Oedipus Project directed by Bryan Doerries, the actor and classist whose Theater of War  (www.theaterofwar.com)  has been performed on military bases and at universities and theaters around the world with support from the U.S. Department of Defense among others. 

Trauma and World Literature: A Woman is No Man by Etaf Rum
StressPoints
Date posted: 04/21/2020
Topic: Trauma and the Arts
Whenever horrors of life are portrayed as being perpetrated within a particular culture, as they are in A Woman is No Man, by Etaf Rum, there must be concern that readers outside that culture will see this to be a fair representation of that group of people as a whole.

Trauma and World Literature: Andromache’s Lament in Homer’s Iliad
StressPoints
Date posted: 04/21/2020
Topic: Trauma and the Arts
Homer’s Iliad, the first surviving piece of European literature, is an epic narrative about the war between the Greeks and the Trojans. The soldier’s obligation to his family and community, the drive for revenge, and the unbearable costs during and after war are among the themes of this epic poem, a work that was both orally composed in verse and also transmitted orally over centuries before it was finally written down and preserved for future generations.
 

PTSD, Mental Health Treatment and the Media
StressPoints
Date posted: 09/11/2019
Topic: Trauma and the Arts
Media plays a key role in informing the general public about posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Through this process of information dissemination, we (i.e., the public) form opinions on this diagnosis based on the portrayal of mental health in media coverage. Throughout the years, awareness of PTSD has increased, but the information set forth is incomplete and/or inaccurate (Purtle, Lynn, & Malik, 2016).

Tommy Orange's Novel, There There
StressPoints
Date posted: 09/11/2019
Topic: Trauma and the Arts
Orange, the son of a Cheyenne father, has written a novel which has received wide praise and major awards for how it tells the neglected story of modern urban Native American experience. In There There, Orange builds tension to an inevitable calamity through the interlocking stories of several characters while briefly, poetically, interspersing the historic tragedy of the genocide against Native Americans.

Trauma and World Literature: The Night I Learned How Not to Pray by Iris Dement
StressPoints
Date posted: 03/29/2019
Topic: Trauma and the Arts
Ever since the release of her first album in 1992, the singer-songwriter Iris Dement has earned wide recognition and respect for her work. Her 2012 album, Sing the Delta, includes the song, The Night I Learned How Not to Pray. In the few minutes of her rendition of the song, Dement’s words, music and voice show the profound, long-lasting effects of traumatic loss, especially in childhood.