Bruno et le fou sacré : Mythe, Mimesis et la transmission des mémoires traumatiques

Abstract

Interest in PTSD and traumatic memory extends beyond psychiatry. Over the last two decades, “trauma theory” has emerged as an influential discourse within the humanities and social sciences. The theory is based on an unlikely combination of sources: Freud's accounts of traumatic neurosis in Beyond the Pleasure Principle and Moses and Monotheism; Bessel van der Kolk's research into the neurophysiology of PTSD and somatic memory; and post-modern writing on collective memory. Trauma theory writers are intensely interested in explaining how traumatic memories are transmitted between and within generations. Explanations focus on the roles of contagion as a mode of transmission and the Holocaust as a shared collective trauma. This chapter argues that the clinical and cultural phenomena that are being explained by these writers are better understood in terms of mimesis or imitation. The argument is illustrated with the help of a fraudulent Holocaust ‘memoir’ by Benjamin Wilkomirski, and an analysis of audience responses once the fraud was exposed. This chapter underlines important concerns regarding the clinical epistemology of posttraumatic stress disorder.