Memory, Pain, and Trauma

¶ … Reavey, P. (2010). Spatial markings: Memory, agency and child sexual abuse. Memory Studies. According to Reavey (2010), a critical component of recovery from childhood sexual abuse is reasserting the victim's sense of agency and control over her own life. All too often it is common when treating survivors to encourage them to see themselves as passive victims.

The focus of Reavey's text is the spatial component of memory: women experience the trauma of abuse again and again because of the parallels between their current physical situation and that of their past, abusive histories. Reavey suggests that viewing the self as constantly in flux and changing and creating a new narrative linking past and present in a more positive way is a far more helpful concept to instill over the course of therapy.

One of the challenges many women experience in dealing with abuse is that it takes place in a very private place (the bedroom) which is then replicated in terms of its physical structure in later relationships. Pointing out areas of resistance and strength vs. The inherent powerlessness of the child can be useful. Reavey stresses the need to acknowledge complex and ambiguous feelings the woman may feel about the abuser rather than smother these emotions.

Reavey draws from a number of postmodern theorists, particularly Foucault, but her study is less grounded in practical clinical experience than an actual practical therapist would find useful other than a few anecdotes to exemplify the theoretical construct which dominates the essay.

Furthermore, her very theoretical approach might be lost upon a victim consumed with guilt about her past experiences and the stress upon the need to find a sense of personal agency and a positive narrative linking past and present might instead be read more as victim-blaming than a liberating theory for an actual client. Memory: Article review Burton, T. (2011). Painful memories: Chronic pain as a form of remembering. Memory Studies 2011 4: 23.

According to Burton (2011), although pain is undeniably a 'real' thing, memories of pain can cause the actual, somatic trauma to linger long after the physical condition has passed. She cites one woman who was 'tricked' using a mirror to realize that she no longer was experiencing pain in one of her hands due to repetitive stress injury.

"Mirror therapy illustrates the radical account of corporeal memory that is now current in the biomedical sciences, in which the body is a complex amalgam of fleshy reality and cerebral projection -- images and reality have merged, and the brain has the capacity to 're-member' its physiological attitudes" (Burton 2011: 30).

Although Burton acknowledges that there is often a great deal of mistrust of biological sciences as reductive amongst humanities scholars, she suggests that the treatment of chronic pain can be useful as a study of the intersection of personal experience and medicine. Chronic pain is ill-understood.