In Freud’s “Remembering, Repeating, and Working Through,” he brings up the fascinating notion of repeating behavior as a way of remembering the past. The text explores the idea that memories often lost from childhood are not able to be remembered due to the fact that they were never conscious to begin with. If a memory was never encoded as significant enough to be noticed at the time, how could it be significant enough to be remembered in adulthood? I appreciated the perspective of introducing behavior repetition as a form of remembering the past. It made me think of people in my life who have been involved in abusive relationships, without consciously remembering that they were exposed to abuse or domestic violence in their childhood homes. Transferring the same dynamic they grew up with onto their romantic relationships left them repeating a pattern without being consciously aware of their own history.

In Cathy Caruth’s writing, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is examined through a historical context with the origins in post WWII soldiers returning from combat and exhibiting symptoms of nightmares, flashbacks, intrusive thoughts, etc. PTSD has now been expanded to understand the long term effects of so many traumas including rape, sexual and domestic violence, accidents, etc. I greatly appreciated the assertion that not everything will traumatize everyone equally. In our current society, I think we have a tendency to compare our trauma to others or measure our reactions against others who have experienced the same things as if people’s suffering can be placed on a scale weighed against others coming from completely different histories, cultures, and consequences. I thought of a time when I was in a very serious car accident and ended up escaping with minimal injuries. Many people thought I should be completely unscathed by the experience since I was able to move on physically quickly, however the experience of coming dangerously close to a fatal situation left me experiencing many PTSD symptoms. Caruth explores the return of traumatic events against one’s will, which is exemplary of the definition of trauma itself, as an “unexpected horror” or something that can not be compared to anything else we have experienced. In my own work, I often think of the act of processing trauma as a sort of reclamation of one’s life. If we can name what has happened, identify the origins of it and the patterns it may be causing in our behavior, identification with one’s history can promote our ultimate healing.