05.13.103 Ettinger

's text In the fifth chapter of Ettinger's text, the author explores the psychoanalytical discourse surrounding the concept of trauma and its application in the clinical therapeutic context. In this section of the text, Ettinger looks at how trauma can be understood as an interruption in subjective narrative--a rupture of linearity, subjectivity, and continuity. He further discusses the “language of the dream” that can allow the clinical practitioner to engage with a patient's trauma in a meaningful and therapeutically productive way. Ettinger uses the example of Lacan’s notion of castration anxiety to explore the paradoxical but meaningful expression of traumatic experience--a language that can encompass both the singularity of experience and the universality of its psychological effects. Finally, he considers the importance of the psychoanalytic method of listening to and “hearing” a patient’s story in order to feed back relevant information into the therapeutic context.