Trauma of birth. Cries and whispers passing into the future Cover Image

Trauma narodzin. Szepty i krzyki przechodzące do przyszłości
Trauma of birth. Cries and whispers passing into the future

Author(s): Małgorzata Opoczyńska-Morasiewicz
Subject(s): Sociology
Published by: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego
Keywords: trauma of birth; childhood

Summary/Abstract: The starting point of this article are the situations described by Walt Whiteman in the following words: “There was a child went forth every day,/And the fi rst object he look’d upon, that object he became,/And that object became part of him for the day or a certain part of the day,/Or for many years or stretching cycles of years/ (…)./His own parents, he that had father’d him and she that had conceiv’d him in her womb and birth’d him,/Th ey gave this child more of themselves than that,/ They gave him afterward every day, they became part of him (…)./Th ese became part of that child who went forth every day, and who now goes, and will always go forth every day”. The article provides examples of the presence of parents in an adult child who sometimes commemorate in it as a wound that does not heal, which sometimes becomes stigma, and with time healed, leaves behind scars of insensitivity, to protect from injury. These examples are, on the one hand, a testimony to the trauma of birth, which is not immune to the passage of time; on the other hand, they provide arguments that trauma – once again experienced in the presence of someone who does not reduce its traces to mental disorders and behavior, may become a return to the place from which life begins: “warm and nutritious”.

  • Issue Year: 23/2018
  • Issue No: 4
  • Page Range: 273-285
  • Page Count: 13
  • Language: Polish