Body Disownership in Complex Posttraumatic Stress Disorder by Yochai Ataria

Author:Yochai Ataria
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan US, New York

This process renders the tortured individual absolutely helpless , totally lacking a sense of agency . During torture , the body breaks down and the sense of self is reduced to the boundaries of the body-as-object. This existential helplessness is far from temporary; indeed, it changes the individual’s existential experience over the long term. The tortured individual is present in a world in which he does not believe; he simply does not understand what it means to be human. Let me explain this notion further.

The dual structure , being at once both a subject and an object, stands at the heart of being human. Indeed, as we have seen, Merleau-Ponty (1964) argues that the “human body is present when, between the see-er and the visible, between touching and touched, between one eye and the other, between hand and hand a kind of crossover occurs” (p. 163). When this dual structure breaks down, as it does during severe and ongoing trauma , the human body can no longer exist. Thus, not only does the tortured individual cease to be a human being; he also fails to understand what it means to be human.

Essentially, when we are separated from everything that makes us human, we are left only with instinctive bitterness. As Shalamov,10 a Gulag survivor , stresses in his story “Sententious” (1994):I had little warmth. Little flesh was left on my bones, just enough for bitterness – the last human emotion; it was closer to the bone... What remained with me till the very end? Bitterness. And I expected this bitterness to stay with me till death… Bitterness was the last feeling with which man departed into non-being, into the world of the dead.

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