J.G. Ballard’s Depiction of Global Psychodynamics: “The Terminal Beach” and Pre-Traumatic Stress

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article J.G. Ballard’s Depiction of Global Psychodynamics: “The Terminal Beach” and Pre-Traumatic Stress examines J.G. Ballard’s story “The Terminal Beach,” published for the first time in March 1964 in New Worlds, as a profound study of a mind traumatized by the grim perspective of future calamities. By focusing on the protagonist’s inner space, I analyze Ballard’s depictions of “collective pre-traumatic stress disorder,” which, in the time since the story was written, has become social and cultural reality. Feelings of helplessness and the certainty of disaster make Ballard’s protagonist a victim of pre-traumatic stress, whose symptoms are similar to the extreme climate change anxiety some people suffer today‒he is traumatized by the fact that the Earth is not going to be able to sustain human life much longer. Thus, I am interested not in Ballard’s accuracy in predicting future events but in his ability to foreshadow the global psychodynamics of a period during which many people are subconsciously anxious about the impending changes on earth.