Effi Briest: The Uncanny, sexuality, and trauma

Abstract

ABSTRACT Here the author draws on Theodor Fontane’s 1895 novel Effi Briest to consider the links between Freud’s paper “The Uncanny” and his elaboration of the trauma of sexuality and the après-coup. Conceptualizing trauma in contemporary clinical theory inevitably draws on the theory of the après-coup: the blow that is inflicted on the psyche when the impact of the early event is retranscribed at a later date. The author considers the trauma that Effi experiences, not the catastrophic trauma of death or assault but the deceptive trauma, is disguised as an unparalleled opportunity for Effi. Her story highlights the trauma of sexuality and the incestuous Oedipal dimension. In the cruel economy of incestuous exchange across the generations Effi, in what she experiences as dreary incarceration, is left isolated with her libidinal yearnings. Arguing that Effi as a seventeen-year-old girl is drawn into the incestuous world of her parents and the mother’s suitor Innstetten, the author describes how the trauma involving the denial of her sexuality leads to her being ostracized and facing psychic death. Captured in the deferred maternal desire, Effi unknowingly becomes part of a system of incestuous exchange. This is a trauma that is only known in the après-coup.