This is a deeply felt and philosophically sophisticated account of Brison's process of recovery following the trauma of rape and attempted murder. Brison does an excellent job of drawing on the strength of her own first person narrative while also situating her insights inside of more general analysis of trauma, sexual assault, narrative, the self, and the process of recovery. I especially appreciated Brison's analysis of the function of narrative in the process of recovery, and the ways in which the conditions, mechanisms, and content of narrative can give some coherence to the diverse understandings of self and accordingly the different ways in which individuals are deeply wounded following a traumatic event. The polemic lurking within this text is the way in which as a society (and perhaps especially men), we are not good at listening to, acknowledging, and being revolted by the horror and frequent occurrence of sexual assault against women especially. Brison's book is well worth reading, and I highly recommend it.
Ok, as a much younger they this was like *a really important book* in my development, especially the discussion of how sometimes self rebuilding is a project of destroying your own guilt over wanting to kill your abuser. Way before triggers, this is a book that pretty intelligently broke down questions of *why* triggering experiences exist. Also, implicitly Brison asks really adroitly the question of "whom am i speaking for when i speak as a victim" and very clinically delves into questions of speaking and representation. In things i am more ambivalent about: Brison talks a lot about narrative which is something i am just so ill equip to talk about i will just quietly brush it under the rug (i think its interesting i guess? i just really have nothing to say about it). In sum, i *still* think this is an important book, and probably the only one like it, but some limitations in Brison's work are *really* disquieting to me. Firstly, I think there isn't really a polite way to say that Brison is a gender essentialist and she talks pretty uncritically about the idea that there are men and women in ways that certainly throw red flags about (but it was like the 90s and that is a thing). I think the bit that really sits in my marrow and i feel more *uncomfortable* with in some ways in Brison's tacit acceptance of the criminal justice system and her inability to just question why in response to things, including really horrible things (i am trying to evade using trigging language when talking about a super triggering book that talks about triggers which i guess is ironic in some way?) we lock people in boxes? Or like, what doing justice for a victim really would mean is something Brison seems almost unwilling to talk about (her narrative ends with a conviction and then moves immediately into a discussion of trauma) and while she talks about learning that she could defend herself or that it is quite possible to want to kill your assailant and to not be a bad person, she never really asks if there is any point to her trial (other than being rather bemused with some elements of a trial). IDK, i think if you don't mind being triggered to oblivion (for a barely 120 page book this takes me a long time to finish comparatively because there is a lot of triggering elements to it) it is a really rewarding read although i'm maybe not as gung ho about this as i was in 2002?
Probably the most engaging treatment of trauma I've ever read. Not for the squeamish, but the perspective that can be gained from the author's unfolding experiences is priceless.
"recovery no longer seems to consist of picking up the pieces of a shattered self (or fractured narrative). It's facing the fact that there never was a coherent self (or story) there to begin with." -116
This is an incredible book, and very difficult to classify. Susan Brison is a philosopher who was out for a walk in Southern France when she was attacked from behind strangled, raped, hit in the head with a rock, strangled again and left for dead in a ditch. This book, written ten years after the attack, is at one's a survivor's narrative, an argument for the use of personal narrative in philosophical writing, and a philosophical treatise on the nature of the self. It is profoundly moving at times when you least expect it to be.
This book traces the author's process of healing after extreme trauma, specifically focusing on what that experience tells us about the nature of the self and the power and function of narrative. It is very much worth reading for people from all areas of philosophy and outside the discipline, as well. The first half of the book is a bit hampered by Brison's focus on debunking analytic philosophical conceptions of the self鈥攕he is clearly right in her critiques, it's just that the accounts of the self to which she is responding are so impoverished that it feels like her insights could be put to better use. (Hopefully people in mainstream analytic philosophy read this book and take seriously her criticisms...I know it is widely read in continental philosophy and feminist philosophy of all stripes.)
I read the book with a red pen, looking at the operative notions of self as controlling agent, as inviolable, as undetermined by others, and so forth. My eye was toward how Brison focuses on rebuilding autonomous subjectivity to the exclusion of other aspects of life. In the first chapters, there was ample fodder for me; she seemed to posit the importance of reestablishing control without acknowledging at all the illusory nature of that ideal of total control. However, as I progressed through the book, I realized that her writing itself was an enactment of her journey. If the early chapters overemphasize control and absolute autonomy, it is because they are closer to the traumatic event itself. In retrospect, I think Brison enacts four distinct stages, which I take to be a progression on the path to becoming a subject capable of truly ethical encounter: 1. The need to reestablish control over the world and one's place in it, pursued by establishing new bodily behaviors and struggling against PTSD/traumatic memory. 2. The need to reconnect with humanity, pursued through sharing the narrative. An unspoken tension arises between that reconnection and the need for control pursued from stage 1. 3. The tension becomes explicit, the connection with humanity is retained while control is permitted to soften and be acknowledged as a myth. 4. The certainty of the self is called into question by the other with the suicide of her brother. The dangers of total control become evident.
"I felt like a pawn-- a helpless, passive victim--- caught up in a ghastly game in which some men ran around trying to kill women and others went around trying to save them." (p.90) Compelling. Brilliant.
While this book is great and can play an important role in understanding how the self responds to trauma, I ran into a few major problems with it. First, it falls into the same gender essentialist trap that many other 90s trauma theory books do, in which Brison assumes all rape victims are women and all prepetrators are heterosexual men. Like other 90s books, she switches to a gender neutral analysis or wartime trauma frequently, but never entertains the thought that someone who is not a woman can be raped and experience that same trauma. While it is fair to say many (or most) rape victims are women, simplifying the complex topic of rape to a dichotomy of men vs women does not help theory nor individual survivors.
Secondly, her understanding of rape does not take into account rapes which are not violent stranger attacks. This is another problem we can blame the 90s for, but it means that her suggestions of self defense classes are somewhat a moot point when the majority of rape victims know their attackers, and were not assaulted in the manner she was.
Overall, this book is very good. It is very personal and telling, and is a good example of how our own experiences impact how we write theory and philosophy. It can also be a very helpful tool in understanding how your own trauma works. However, it is not for the faint of heart, and as any older book should be, its messages should be taken with a grain of salt.
Brilliant. The philosophical aspect of psychological treatment is overlooked far too often. This book has served the basis for countless papers and projects I've engaged in throughout my required coursework.
I'm not sure how to rate this one. It was certainly cathartic on one level to read about trauma (and especially sexual violence) discussed so frankly and in an academic fashion, but there are also some things about this book that troubled me, politically. (Another reviewer has pointed out, for example, the gender essentialism and the tacit trust in the police, prisons, and the criminal justice system in general.) I guess in general I just disagree with Brison about various things, but I also don't want to discount how useful her discussion of narratives and the self in the face of trauma can be. Not much in here was new to me, but hey, I've probably read more theory on trauma than the average bear - and I think this book could be very helpful to some people, especially if they take certain aspects of it with a grain of salt.
(Oh, and on an academic level, I don't know enough about philosophy to really critique Brison there, but as far as psychology goes I found some of her theory wanting. Especially the way she assumed trauma works the same for all people and - well, I try not to use pathologizing psych terms to discuss trauma and survivors, but I think a lot of what she writes might not hold up super well if she had delved into C-PTSD a little more than just a passing mention of how multiple personalities sometimes arise from child abuse. Again, not that I think she's entirely wrong! Just that things could have been a little more robust. Then again, this was written in the 90s.)
Wow. What can I say? A woman is raped, beaten near death, and left to die. Aftermath is the sharing of her experience after that ordeal. I can't even imagine. I don't want to imagine. However, thanks to Susan J Brison, I feel I will be a better listener in case anyone in my life - or myself - ends up in a similar situation.
Would be a good book for anyone to read - male or female. And I hope no one ever needs to use the lessons learned from the author sharing.
Grateful for so much discussion on the importance of narrative, but, in particular, the philosophical focus on what a narrative even is and whether it is or should be "consistent" and what this has to do with trauma. Grateful for any text dealing with trauma that addresses the messiness of living a life that has been touched so intensely by trauma, the messiness of "healing," the trickiness of "hope" and despair. Towards the end she writes more about periods of overwhelming and joyful days/ months/ even years, in and out of wellness, and after a good streak, hearing that her brother had killed himself. She writes about rethinking his old high school yearbook quote "I am the master of my fate; / I am the captain of my soul." --
"My brother's death also made me rethink the importance of regaining control in recovering from trauma. Maybe the point is to learn how to relinquish control, to learn by going where we need to go, the replace the clenched, repetitive acting out with the generativity of working through. The former, although uncontrollable, is, paradoxically, obsessed with control, with the soothing, numbing safety of the familiar. The latter is inventive, open to surprise, alive to improvisation.
Recovery no longer seems to consist of picking up the pieces of a shattered self (or fractured narrative). It's facing the fact that there was never a coherent self (or story) there to begin with. No wonder I can't seem to manage to put myself together again. I'd have to put myself, as the old gag goes, "together again for the first time."
Maybe recovery is reestablishing the illusory sense of the permanence of hope, learning how to be, once again, "crazy-human with hope." As irrational as it is, I want to believe that, just as there is such a thing as irreparable damage, there might be such a thing as irreversible repair. Hope, like despair, can feel permanent. But more likely, the entropy of emotional life--governed by some inexorable law of psychodynamics--makes this impossible. Of course, the belief that things can, once and for all, be made right, makes no more sense than the belief (which takes hold of me, on average, once every few months), that everything is totally, irreparably, ruined. But does it make any less sense? For me, anyway, the illusion that hope with perch permanently in my heart is psychologically untenable--I just can't hold that happy thought for more than a day or two. But objectively--whatever that means--it's just as plausible, just as rational, as my more obdurate belief in psychic entropic doom.
Perhaps the goal of recovery is, simply, to go on. But--go one with what? With the series of my days, the pattern of my life? What pattern? The pattern to which it would have conformed without the assault? Who knows what that would have been? The pattern before the assault? Who know what that was? Some days there seems to be no pattern--just the odd refrain, a reprise, a recurring motif. My life and its old jingles. No meaning but the melody, the major or minor mode, the tune that carries me through until the lyrics come back . . . The truth is, I'm not luck or unlucky. I'm just alive. Breathing in and out. "
Good book. -The discussion of how traumatic events impact someone's identity was really interesting. Brison defines identity from three perspectives 鈥� embodied, narrative, and autonomous selves 鈥� and then outlines how trauma (particularly the violent rape/attempted murder she experienced) destroys certain important criteria from these perspectives. On the narrative self, identity is crafted through the narratives people make for themselves 鈥� a semi-continuous strand of self-selected "stories" that define a person. On the autonomous self, identity is chosen, to some extent, by the stories people choose to define themselves with and the decisions they make. (This is reminiscent of Norbert Wiley's neo-pragmatist concept of identity as the discussion between a person's past, present, and future.) Trauma destroys ones sense of self by drastically changing how they see themselves (thereby disrupting their narrative account of themselves), how they interact with themselves over time (disrupting a sense of continuity of their narrative story), how they choose to outline their narrative (by forcefully incorporating a harmful memory into their sense of self), and how they make choices (by disrupting said choices through involuntary flashbacks and re-livings triggered by things outside the person's control). Brison calls special attention to how trauma victims frequently talk about how they died on the day of their traumatic event 鈥� clearly demonstrating the disruption of a person's sense of self. -The other really important discussion Brison had was in how people recover from trauma 鈥� which makes sense since this is a somewhat optimistic account of her own recovery from trauma. Her emphasis on the relational nature of identity (that peoples' identities change through social interaction, and aren't set in stone), and how it describes why people often recover through telling their stories to others in support groups and such (thereby crafting a new narrative, autonomously, for themselves despite the disruption of trauma), made a lot of sense. -She also broadly outlines the political and sociological impacts of rape. The belief that rape, writ large, is a tactic by which men suppress women (i.e. only SOME men rape (women), but that fact means ALL women need to take special precautions to avoid rape that men don't 鈥� this is simplified, but broadly the argument) is something I hadn't thought of before, and makes a lot of sense.
I first encountered this book as part of a class on Trauma and Culture Theory, and although the rest of my college journey focused on a different tradition of philosophy, this book remains one of the most impactful reads I've had in college.
Susan Brison takes us through her journey as a survivor of sexual assault, and how that event had thrown into upheaval the past and future. As a survivor, the trust in the world which had thus far maintained one's ability to coexist in society is fractured 鈥� and the future is compromised by this irreparable event.
The rare perspective she offers us as a trained philosopher attempting to make sense of the world after, is one of my biggest takeaways I've had from a class. This was a particularly important read for me, as a male student whose engagement with the issue of rape and sexual assault was that of disgust and objection. Try as I might, I couldn't do much else except support friends from a distance, or offer condemnation 鈥� again from afar 鈥� in such crimes.
It is impossible to empathize with the vulnerability that comes with having another identity 鈥� be it gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic 鈥� in a broken and inequitable society like ours today. But this book has helped me grapple with that as an outsider looking in 鈥� and at times, certainly helped me understand my own response to traumas of my own.
This is not pop philosophy 鈥� it is sophisticated yet accessible, but also wraps itself up with a powerfully personal account of a survivor who has gone through the painful process of remaking a self, and wants to guide others to heal as well.
This is a must-read for anyone who wants to better understand the impact of sexual assault on individuals, but finds that current literature only allows them to oppose and conceptualize through rationality. Brison's book helps (to the extent possible) introduce readers to the visceral effect it has on individuals.
I don鈥檛 know whether you can say that you鈥檝e __liked__ this book. It burns you 鈥� not only because of the narrative and the occasional slip from the academic-y voice of the non-impersonal narrator to the boiled down humane feeling: of anger, sadness, despair. I鈥檝e tried not to overanalise it from the point of how the book is 鈥渄one鈥�: I think it defies the point, and I was willing to reject the academic ideal of false objectivity and impersonality. I don鈥檛 think it鈥檚 a book I鈥檇 wholeheartedly recommend to anyone, but I suspect that many of my future conversations will be filled with snippets of ideas from this book.
One of the most moving and profound works of philosophy that I have read. This is a brave book. I read the chapter "Outliving Oneself" for a feminist philosophy course and promised myself that I would read the entire book someday. It made me cry, it helped me make sense of my own trauma, and it made me a better listener. Reading about narrative as a way to heal from trauma was healing to me. Now I feel better equipped as an oppressed person and a future minister.
Avevo scritto una recensione lunghissima ma ho deciso, a differenza dell'autrice, di essere breve: libro noioso, pretenzioso e ripetitivo fino alla nausea. Le uniche parti interessanti sono quelle delle esperienze dell'Olocausto (riportate da altri scrittori), peccato che il libro sia sullo stupro. Arrivata al penultimo capitolo, dopo mesi e mesi di forzatura e travaglio, ho deciso di abbandonare la lettura.
In a way I don't quite have the words to try to describe. I read this in grad school while studying literature from both past and present which shapes our contemporary understanding of human rights. When I read it again (and I will), I'll have something more articulate and meaningful to say.
This book describes what trauma / rape does to someone. It incorporates personal experiences which makes it easy to read and also involves a lot of philosophical discussion / reflection which is very interesting. It is written in a way that is compassionate and at the same time, so precise and insightful.
The riter described her personal tragic feeling precisely and that the acomments from various aspects of academic interpretation of those situations are very high quality. The trauma is not easy to treat.
I found myself sobbing the whole time. This book was recommended by my lecturer during a course about "feminists philosophies". Traumatic events are not as difficult as their aftermath: i felt every word, i understood and I think that more people should read and understand, too.