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Recommended: An essay on identity
Susan Brison does an effective job in describing the problem with identity with those who suffered traumatic events by noting the various theories associated to continuity and survival. Brison adequately notes the problem most philosophers face by failing to distinguish the mind and body relation to the external world and how they are commonly categorized into masculine and feminine attributes. I firmly believe that one of philosophy’s shortcomings is the failure to contextualize to human emotions, instances like rape, genocide, and murder, are felt by its abruptness and should be handled and understood viscerally upon its victims. Humans tend to base their identity upon relation to others and are deemed to remain the same in its linear events.
Ida Fink’s work, “The Table”, is an example of how old or disturbing memories may not contain the factual details required for legal documentation. The purpose of her writing is to show us that people remember traumatic events not through images, sounds, and details, but through feelings and emotions. To break that down into two parts, Fink uses vague characters to speak aloud about their experiences to prove their inconsistencies, while using their actions and manners to show their emotions as they dig through their memories in search of answers in order to show that though their spoken stories may differ, they each feel the same pain and fear.
... Joyce Dorado. "Who Are We, But For The Stories We Tell: Family Stories And Healing." Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, And Policy 2.3 (2010): 243-249. PsycARTICLES. Web. 2 May 2014.
Often, we find ourselves facing dramatic events in our lives that force us to re-evaluate and redefine ourselves. Such extraordinary circumstances try to crush the heart of the human nature in us. It is at that time, like a carbon under pressure, the humanity in us either shatters apart exposing our primal nature, or transforms into a strong, crystal-clear brilliant of compassion and self sacrifice. The books Night written by Elie Wiesel and Hiroshima written by John Hersey illustrate how the usual lifestyle might un-expectantly change, and how these changes could affect the human within us. Both books display how lives of civilians were interrupted by the World War II, what devastations these people had to undergo, and how the horrific circumstances of war were sometimes able to bring out the best in ordinary people.
Denise is a counselor with a graduate degree who works with many battered women. She is sensitive to vulnerable individuals who have experienced racism, sexism, mental health issues, and are economically disadvantaged. Denise also has had personal experiences of trauma including poverty and racism, similar to her clients. The novel suggests through the settings and the narrative that her trauma and that of others is a personal affair. Each person processes trauma in different ways. It is difficult to assign a general meaning of trauma without considering ones backgrounds, resources, and experience.
Lessons from the Forever People: Overcoming Cultural Trauma with Dreams and Memory in Phyllis J. Perry’s Stigmata
Among carpenters, it is a well-known fact that building a house upon a solid foundation is imperative. When beginning the construction of a home, the foundation is always the first step leading to success, for without it, the house will become unstable. During extreme weather, such as floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, and other conditions, a slight fault in the foundation of a home will most likely guarantee significant damage, if not complete destruction. Similar to a house, a person’s identity must rest upon a firm foundation; otherwise, it may not be capable of withstanding the ominous conditions of the world. When trials and burdens threaten to crumble people’s identities, their foundations must stand their ground and overcome the various tribulations. Although there are billions of inhabitants of the world, no two people share the same identity; rather, each person has unique memories, stories, events, and artifacts influencing who they have become. Some people’s identities may reflect a difficult childhood of discrimination, poverty, and hatred similar to the one described by Malcolm X in his article, “Nightmare.” Other people may associate with Katie Pederson and her article, “Identity,” in which they are defined through a simple artifact such as an identification card. In addition, numerous unfortunate people may struggle from the devastating effects of memory loss similar to those Floyd Skloot experienced, and they are helpless as their memories and identity slowly slip away from them. Still other people may find themselves desperately searching for acceptance and identity similar to the homeless man in Gina Berriault’s article, “Who Is It Can Tell Me Who I Am.” Unlike the homeless man and Malcolm X, I was fortuna...
This paper focuses on the Geraldine case (Dominguez, Tefera, Aronson, & NCTSN, 2012). Geraldine’s trauma occurred in the home when her father shot her mother. This paper will focus on my personal reactions to this case, how my reactions effect interactions with the people I am working with and finally self-care strategies. Personal reactions are the things that make us feel or act a certain way that others may or may not see, but we know that something has affected us these can be to good things and bad alike. I might react to winning the lottery by passing out, just the same I might get depressed if a close friend dies. These are reactions to the situations we are presented in life.
As Dr. Carnes explains exploitative relationships can create chains that link a victim to someone who is hazardous to them. Trauma bonding can occur as a result of divorce, litigation of any type, incest and child abuse, family and marital systems, domestic violence, hostage situations, professional exploitation and religious abuse. These situations involve an incredible amount of intensity or importance and they can become a trauma bond when there is an exploitation of trust and power. An important factor in understanding trauma bonds is that “stress becomes traumatic when danger, risk, fear or anxiety is present. This critical analysis will examine some specific aspects of the content within the text.
Envision getting no sleep because fireballs were exploding right outside the door, never imagining that the cellar in in the basement would be the next safe haven for the oncoming days. Gwen Bristow has written many books about different major historical events including the Civil War and the Gold Rush, but the interesting thing was that Gwen Bristow never lived in those times yet continued to write accurate data with a fictional plot that she created. Her most famous novel, Celia Garth, was written about the Revolutionary War from the state of South Carolina; specifically in Charleston. With the correct arrangement of key details and names, important information about the war was learned as well as the women and their roles. In Celia Garth,
The idea of “Outliving Oneself” depends on the concepts of trauma and most importantly the self, in a situation where said trauma obliterates the self for an indefinite amount of time. Brison presents the self in three interwoven parts: the embodied self, the self as narrative, and the autonomous self. Any of these parts of self depend largely on the individual’s society, culture, and interactions with other people. The embodied self represents the self in conjunction with the physical body, which our society separates from the self, to intimate a soul or personality, and also assigns genders to certain traits. Trauma dissolves this separation of body and mind because violence brings the traumatized to face their own mortality. They have to see their body as an object because their assailant treats it as an object. Trauma is so damaging because the self cannot exert any power whatsoever; the interaction between the assailant and the victim, essentially a social situation, robs the victim of a voice, because the assailant ignores it, a personality, because it is of no consequence to the assailant, and a self, because the assailant uses the body as an object, and the body plays a more central role in the interaction than the self does. Brison quotes Cathy Winkler in saying a rape is a “social murder,” because the rapist’s part in the interaction defines the victim through their actions that take away the victim’s sense of self. Any control that the victim felt over their body gets taken from them by the rapist. The consequences of this trauma include a loss of control over physiological functions, such as emotion and incapacitation from anxiety; the body and mind are out of balance, which leads the victim to be stigmatized by societ...
A universal characteristic of the survivor's tale is the subjectivity and incompleteness of the survivor's knowledge. The author works to provide a more objective view of events by including several storytellers. ...
In the film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind stresses the importance of memory and how memories shape a person’s identity. Stories such as “In Search of Lost Time” by Proust and a report by the President’s Council on Bioethics called “Beyond Therapy” support the claims made in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.
When faced with a life altering situation although Molly’s characteristics and personality aid her in courageously defying them, the effects of facing this traumatic event will lead to long term psychological repercussions. When severe harm is inflicted on a person’s psyche, it is viewed as an emotional trauma (Levers, 2012). The emotional harm inflicted on Molly’s psyche originates from different dimensions; like her upbringing, her trauma is multidimensional too. As a child of the Indigenous community, whose ancestors and elders were killed violently in inter-group conflicts, and whose children were forcefully removed from families, Molly is would experience intergenerational trauma (Atkinson, 2002). Intergenerational trauma is trauma passed down from one generation to another; as a close knitted community group, the grief experienced by family members of losing their loved ones, would have been transferred across generations (Atkinson,
What is personal identity? This question has been asked and debated by philosophers for centuries. The problem of personal identity is determining what conditions and qualities are necessary and sufficient for a person to exist as the same being at one time as another. Some think personal identity is physical, taking a materialistic perspective believing that bodily continuity or physicality is what makes a person a person with the view that even mental things are caused by some kind of physical occurrence. Others take a more idealist approach with the belief that mental continuity is the sole factor in establishing personal identity holding that physical things are just reflections of the mind. One more perspective on personal identity and the one I will attempt to explain and defend in this paper is that personal identity requires both physical and psychological continuity; my argument is as follows:
“The real reason seems to me now this. Does personal identity just consist in bodily and psychological continuity, or is it a further fact, independent of the facts about these continuities? Our reactions to the ‘problem cases’ show, I believe, that we believe the latter. And we seem inclined to believe that this further fact is peculiarly deep and is all-or-nothing---we believe that in any describable case, it must hold completely or not at all. My main claim is the denial of this further fact” (Robinson).