THE RING-SHAPED ISLAND:
A New Metaphor for Speaking of Trauma
1. Introduction
Traumatic events continue to occur on the planet (Kleinman, Das, Lock, 1995). Many have lost their lives, and survivors have been devastated and rendered bereft of speech by memories of violence (Caruth, 1995). Despite this, people have tried to describe traumatic incidents that ‘words cannot describe.’
This self-contradictory nature of ‘describing the indescribable’ unsettles both speaker and listener. We judge the weight and credibility of an account by the speaker’s distance from the incident, and this leads to a further inquiry as to qualification or right to speak. ‘Why may you (or I) speak about that incident?’ ‘How can you talk about it so calmly if you have been devastated?’ ‘What qualifies you to speak for the victim?’ ‘How can you understand without actually experiencing it?’ Questions, including gnawing questions about oneself, continually rock the emotions of both sides.
The more you speak, the more you feel that your words are worthless. You withhold your words or become defensive, expecting criticism. You leave support activity, or change your research topic to a more cheerful one.
The resulting silence, however, permits the trauma to pass into oblivion. In this article, I investigate how the voices of trauma appear (or disappear), and how they are treated in the public sphere. I employ a three-dimensional model: the ‘ring-shaped island’[i] (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Ring-shaped island.
Through this, I consider the possibility of speaking of trauma, the positionality of the speaker, and the relationships among all those involved.
Initially I drew the ring-shaped island (‘TI’) model as my own survival map as a psychiatrist supporting trauma sufferers’ recovery, especially from sexual and domestic violence, and as a university professor studying researching[ii] and teaching the socio-cultural aspects of trauma mainly in Japan (-----, 2002; -----, 2005).
To commit oneself to trauma sufferers as a therapist, a supporter or a researcher is no easy task. It may seem an exaggeration to call this task ‘survival.’ However, precisely because supporters or researchers have the option of leaving, it may in fact be more difficult to continue their commitment, or to survive. I often hesitate to encourage my students to keep working on serious research topics such as human trafficking, because it makes them vulnerable to the loss of their own psychological stability, to ‘burnout’, or even to physical danger. But we also have to question this reluctance and remind ourselves that the disappearance of supporters is often a deciding factor in the disappearance of survivors, and as Judith Herman says, all the perpetrator asks is that the bystander do nothing (Herman, 1992/97, p.7).
[i] ‘Ring-shaped’ refers to a doughnut shape. The island could be called ‘crater island,’ ‘doughnut shaped island,’ ‘toroidal island’ or ‘circle island’ as well.
[ii] The ethnographic research methods I employed include participant observations and interviews (one to one as well as group interviews) in the course of case conferences, supervisions, peer supervisions, supporters’ group meetings, academic conferences and other opportunities. As a kind of “native anthropologist” in the field of “ the helping professions”, it is difficult to separate my research activities from my work in general. My fieldwork in the U.S., Peru and Argentina, especially interviews and discussions with colleagues in similar fields, has been very helpful in testing the model’s applicability outside of Japan.