Binion’s Masterpiece

Review essay of Rudolph Binion, Traumatic Reliving in History, Literature, and Film (London: Karnac Books, 2010), ISBN-13: 978-1-85575-743-1, i-xii, 148 pages, Paperback, $37.95.

An overall treatment of the topic of traumatic reliving has been way overdue. This new work is the most comprehensive by far. If only for this reason it constitutes an important contribution to our current state of knowledge. The work deals with reliving traumas in individuals and in groups as well as instances of interaction between the two. It distinguishes between sudden single traumas and episodic or continuous ones. It frequently puts an accent on cases of reliving in disguise, reliving unawares or reliving the traumatic affect while the original content is repressed. Navigating through such a rich array of subtle events in both history and art requires an enormous amount of erudition as well as a steady hand, and Binion’s long experience in the field of psychohistory shows through.

Something else which impressed me very much is the clarity of the writing. This topic involves so many distinctions and nuances that in view of its whole complexity there was the inherent danger of readers getting lost in the midst of the maze. To my delight during the reading I found the path leading from one event to the other, from one distinction to the next one, always clear. He is almost ruthless in stating things in a precise fashion and in maintaining an understandable connection from one topic to the next. I therefore think of him as one of those superb writers who never forget that they are always there to serve their readers.

Space limitations permit me to elaborate on only two general issues. Binion maintains that Freud’s insistence on a childhood and even an infantile origin as the developmental basis of neurosis has prevented him from all further insight into traumatic reliving. This highly important assertion on Binion’s part may surprise some ardent Freudians. But I know that even though I myself was very

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appreciative of a psychodynamic approach to human behavior, in my clinical experience I nevertheless gained the impression that Freud’s persistent search for archaic (usually sexual) origins was not a model to be followed blindly. It could often lead clinicians astray in the search not only for causes but also for treatments. In this connection Binion makes an assertion which in retrospect seems self-evident to me but which did not occur to me before. He states that Freud himself mostly supplied the infantile component of dreams and that it was no insistence by dreamers, but rather the architectonics of Freud’s dream theory in synch with his theory of neurosis that mandated an infantile wish fulfilled by every dream. What a penetrating analysis of the theory of psychoanalysis.

Another statement of Binion’s which opens a can of worms is that group memory is an inescapable implication of the reliving of traumas by groups. Yes, of course. But it raises for him the sticky problem of group retention and transmission of trauma, which remains a mystery. Having distinguished between “the known fact of transmission and the unknown means of transmission,” Binion momentarily tries to escape this dilemma by secretly suspecting some epigenetic mechanism at work but abandons this idea. He certainly is the type who sticks to his guns and dares to challenge orthodoxy on the basis of his own discoveries.

In my own explorations of the reliving of traumas in Jewish history, I have obviously attributed great power to the shared sacred lore and thought that it was being reinforced by group identification even more than by family upbringing. I believed that the myths carry certain action potential, which can lie dormant, especially during periods that lack direct or visible social transmission, but that the predisposition toward actions or reactions is revived and mobilized when new events become associated with it and reinforce it. This outlook treats the group brain, so to speak, as a mysterious entity which is imbedded in the web of culture, and treats culture as a combination of myths and social reinforcement.

My intuitive approach is not likely to satisfy Binion since for him, as he says in his book, “the inner experience of groups as such is inaccessible to us in our present conceptual poverty.” And he is most charitable when in a private communication he reassures me that “together we’ll solve that problem.” The basic problem is

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how to make the intangible tangible. Some people might call it how to turn group psychohistory into a science. In the meantime I urge readers not to wait for the answer to this question but to grab Binion’s new book and read fascinating accounts of the reliving of traumas that depict the very stuff of life.

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