Traumatic disclosures and failures of listening

Frosh, Stephen (2024) Traumatic disclosures and failures of listening. In: Buchholz, M. and Dimitrijevic, A. (eds.) Encountering Silencing: Forms of Oppression in Individuals, Families and Communities. Phoenix. ISBN 9781800132412.

Abstract

Trauma narratives are often theorised as inarticulable, characterised by repetition, fragmentation, lacunae, gaps in memory. This is all true, yet just as powerful a block to speech is the refusal of the surrounding environment to provide a context for listening. In this sense, trauma is not only silencing, but silenced. In this chapter, I will explore this idea some more by reaching back to some experiences in working with child sexual abuse survivors in the 1980s, when they were beginning to be recognised as such in the UK, and when it became clear how much of the silence around sexual violence was in fact a failure to respond to disclosures of abuse. One issue is whether much has changed in the past thirty-five years and if not, then what it is that constitutes this refusal to listen.

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