Traumatic psychosis : Narrative forms of the muted witness

The case of the psychotic survivors differs from the success stories recorded in much of the literature. Keilson's study of child survivors shows that the life experience following the trauma is decisive in clinical outcomes. The videotapes of the chronically hospitalized survivors revealed a common thread: erasure. It is unclear to what extent this erasure emanates from an absence of the experience of trauma, which prevented the creation of a memory, and to what from an experience that has been suppressed, repressed, and ultimately completely forgotten because of the affective storm its remembrance threatens to create. The interviewer had to be in the place of the trauma ahead of the survivor, patiently waiting there for the latter to arrive. Occasionally, the immediacy of the survivor's terror and agitation needed to be dealt with through reassurance. Testimonies of sufferers from traumatic psychosis are very different from those of non-psychotic survivors.