Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative and History (Paperback)

by Cathy Caruth (Author) "To such an argument I would like to contrast a phenomenon that only arises in the reading of literary or philosophical texts but emerges most..." (more)
Key Phrases: traumatic repetition, burning child, traumatic nightmare, World War, Eiji Okada, Emmanuelle Riva (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"'Unclaimed Experience' is a splendid work, written with admirable clarity, power, and economy. The book has importance for a number of different fields: for psychoanalysis, for trauma theory or theory of 'post-traumatic stress disorder,' for literary study, for literary theory for cultural and historical studies, and for ethical theory. Each chapter is a classic essay on its topic."--J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine "Cathy Caruth has emerged as one of our most innovative scholars on what we call trauma, and on our ways of perceiving and conceptualizing that still mysterious phenomenon."--Robert Jay Lifton, M.D., author of 'Hiroshima in America' and 'The Protean Self' --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

"Unclaimed Experience is a splendid work, written with admirable clarity, power, and economy. The book has importance for a number of different fields: for psychoanalysis, for trauma theory or theory of 'post-traumatic stress disorder,' for literary study, for literary theory for cultural and historical studies, and for ethical theory. Each chapter is a classic essay on its topic." -- J. Hillis Miller, University of California, Irvine

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Product Details

• Paperback: 168 pages
• Publisher: The Johns Hopkins University Press (June 11, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0801852471
• ISBN-13: 978-0801852473
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.3 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #122,459 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Essential reading for Trauma Studies, March 10, 2008

By	Parkaboy "graduate student" (Atlanta, GA USA) - See all my reviews

If you want to understand the state of trauma studies in their relation to the humanities, you absolutely must be familiar with Caruth's work. This book and her collection of edited essays were in large part responsible for the work on trauma within literature, film, and cultural studies since 1990.

It is important to recognize that Caruth is neither a clinician nor a psychiatrist. She is working on analyzing written and filmed texts ranging from Freud's theories in "The Interpretation of Dreams," "Beyond the Pleasure Principle" and "Moses and Monotheism" to Paul de Man's post-structuralist literary theory to Alain Resnais's film "Hiroshima Mon Amour" to understand how these texts theorize trauma. She is interested in the discourse that has developed around trauma, the written record that affects how we--as literary scholars AND as psychologists, psychiatrists, and physicians--currently conceive of trauma.

5 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Comment on Feb. review, April 18, 2007

By	L.A. "realrain" (TX) - See all my reviews

The previous reviewer lists three psychiatrists/neuroscientists, Daniel Schacter, Joseph Ledoux, and Richard McNally, that are very important to trauma studies; however, his or her claim that Caruth "ignored" the work of these scientists is misleading and unfair.

Her book was published in 1996, while the majority of these men's work on trauma appeared in the late 1990s and the 2000s. Schacter, who has been publishing longer that the other two, did have a book published in 1994 on memory. However, "trauma" does not even appear in the index. While the work of pschyiatrists and neuroscientists can illuminate other, more literarially-minded trauma theorists today, most of these sources were not available to Caruth.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but no enough, November 15, 2006

By	María Mujica Holley "ConnieMU" (Santiago, Chile) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is a collection of excelent essays by Cathy Caruth, but it is not clearly tagged as such. The problem is that some concepts, and sometimes entire phrases are repeated from chapter to chapter. This is specially true for the sections about Freud's notions about history and trauma, where the interpretation of Moses and Monotheism is read time and time again.