Freud and the Scene of Trauma by John Fletcher (New York:  Fordham, 2013, pp.  xvi + 365). Witnessing Witnessing: On the Reception of Holocaust Survivor Testimony by Thomas Trezise (New York:  Fordham, 2013 (pp.  xv + 313)); reviewed by Stephen Frosh.

Trauma has become a central concern in contemporary society, as well as in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy. Indeed, the question of whether we are embroiled in a ‘trauma culture’ that over-values trauma is a live one. Can we claim credibility, a voice, if we are not able to call on a past trauma, in a situation in which it is precisely having been traumatized that warrants the claims and statements we might make? Or to put it the other way around, has trauma - understood as a shattering invasive experience that punctures the physical and psychological ‘skin’ of the person - become the primary marker of validity when considering what weight should be given to the truth claims made by someone, especially when these take the form of ‘testimony’? This might sound like a cruel question, which is perhaps part of the point, so let me try phrasing it differently again. Is our current fascination with trauma a way of responding sensitively and appropriately - even ‘therapeutically’ - to those who really have a testimony that they need to make, who really have something to say about how they have been treated, who really have suffered and lost, and need to be listened to? Or does it risk, in its ubiquity and pervasive saturation of culture (we have all been traumatized), silencing the genuinely traumatized once again?