Central and East European
Society for Phenomenology

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146019

The time of trauma

Husserl's phenomenology and post-traumatic stress disorder

Mary Jeanne Larrabee

pp. 351-366

Abstract

The phenomenology of inner temporalizing developed by Edmund Husserl provides a helpful framework for understanding a type of experiencing that can be part of the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). My paper extrapolates hints from Husserl's work in order to describe those memories — flashbacks — that come so strongly to consciousness as to overtake the experiencer. Husserl's work offers several clues: his view of inner temporalization by which conscious experiences flow in both a serial and a nonserial manner; a characterization of process memory as distinct from representational memory; and the notion of telos, which takes human subjectivity as intrinsically changeable, for example, by means of a retroactive cancellation that would allow the PTSD experiencer to re-process the original meaning of the traumatic experience into a meaning that fits the current situation and thus allows a recovery.

Publication details

Published in:

(1995) Human Studies 18 (4).

Pages: 351-366

DOI: 10.1007/BF01318616

Full citation:

Larrabee Mary Jeanne (1995) „The time of trauma: Husserl's phenomenology and post-traumatic stress disorder“. Human Studies 18 (4), 351–366.