Wound – Proximity – Non-memory. Psychoanalytically Grounded Trauma Discourse from Freud to Ettinger

Wound – Proximity – Non‑memory. Psychoanalytically Grounded Trauma Discourse from Freud to Ettinger Trauma is a notion whose perception in the psychoanalytic discourse has undergone dynamic changes, starting from the transfer of this concept to the psychic ground, through theconceptualisation of its impossibility of being shared, ending with Bracha L. Ettinger’s intervention. The aim of this paper is twofold: to track these changes and to (re)define the potential of thetrauma discourse(s). After the analysis of main assumptions concerning the psychic wound in the thought of the fathers of psychoanalysis, the author proceeds to the branch of trauma studies influenced by the Holocaust, so as to finally introduce Bracha L. Ettinger – a clinical psychoanalyst, theoretician, artist, feminist and member of the Second Generation after the Holocaust – and her matrixial theory. As the author endeavours to demonstrate, this thought provides us with the tools to rethink the shape and possibilities of the trauma discourse. Key words: trauma, Bracha L. Ettinger, memory, psychoanalysis, matrixial theory, transcryptu