Shattered Subjects: Trauma and Testimony in Women's Life-Writing

In this important book, Suzette Henke finds evidence that women often use writing in order to heal the wounds of psychological trauma. She terms this method "scriptotherapy," the process of writing out and writing through traumatic experience in the mode of therapeutic re-enactment. Shattered Subjects explores the autobiographical writings of six twentieth-century women authors--Colette, Hilda Doolittle, Anais Nin, Janet Frame, Audre Lorde, and Sylvia Fraser. They provide startling evidence of post-traumatic stress disorder precipitated by rape, incest, childhood sexual abuse, grief, unwanted pregnancy, pregnancy-loss, or a severe illness that threatens the integrity of the body.

Author: S. Henke
Publisher: Palgrave MacMillan
Published: 06/01/2000
Pages: 216
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.68lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.55d
ISBN: 9780312230982

Review Citation(s):
Reference and Research Bk News 08/01/2000 pg. 197

About the Author
SUZETTE A. HENKE is Thruston B. Morton Professor of Literary Studies at the University of Louisville. She is the author of James Joyce and the Politics of Desire and Joyce's Moraculous Sindbook: A Study of 'Ulysses' and the co-editor of Women in Joyce.