Toward a Jamesian account of trauma and healing
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.4454/philinq.v5i2.197Keywords:
William James, emotion, body, trauma, healing,Abstract
In this essay, I use William James’s theory of emotion from his Principles of Psychology to develop an account of trauma as fully and non-reductively psychophysiological. After explaining James’s account of emotion as bodily change, I develop a Jamesian understanding of trauma and healing in three steps. Drawing from examples of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) experienced by both soldiers and victims of sexual assault, I argue that (1) all traumatic events, even ones that seem to leave no physical wound, are physiological because they are emotional, and (2) a Jamesian understanding of trauma need not be confined to the individual; it can account for the prememories and postmemories of collective and transgenerational trauma. Finally (3), I argue that because trauma involves bodily movement and change, so too should successful recovery from trauma, a Jamesian insight that supports the use of movement therapies to promote healing.
Shannon Sullivan
ssullivan@uncc.edu
University of North Carolina at Charlotte
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication, with the work five (5) years after publication licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgment of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
After five years from first publication, Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgment of its initial publication in this journal.
