Trauma research originates from the end of the 19th century when a disorder named “hysteria” became the core of psychiatrists’ research. Jean-Martin Charcot, the pioneer of the study and a well-known neurologist, greatly affected the development of neurology and psychology. Later, Sigmund Freud, one of his successors, explained the causes of hysteria. He believed that dissociation could happen to everyone and the victims were bothered by memories. Trauma research was influenced by feminist movement in 1970. Two years later, a sociologist Lynda Homstrom and a nurse Ann Burgess got down to studying psychological effects of rape.
The theory of trauma in the United States, arising in the early 1990s, interpreted the ethical and cultural implications of trauma. Dori Laub stressed that survivors of trauma are given past memory and a never-ending event. Herman devoted herself into the recovery of trauma and put forward three stages of the recovery. Then Cathy Caruth combined the theory of Judith Herman and that of Dori Laub. Based on Freud’s “deferred action”or “afterwardsness”, she emphasized disruption of time or history brought by trauma. She defined trauma as “an overwhelming experience of sudden or catastrophic events in which the response to the events occur in the often delayed, uncontrolled repetitive appearance of hallucination and other intrusive phenomena” and to be “traumatized” refers to “precisely to be possessed by an image or event”(Trauma: Explorations in Memory 5). Such theorists as Freud, Caruth and Herman all recognized that it is necessary to resort to effective talking, relationship rebuilding and internal integration to recover. 艾丽斯西伯德《可爱的骨头》杰克创伤修复转变过程(3):http://www.751com.cn/yingyu/lunwen_40969.html