闪回的创伤：记忆及其痛苦——经由格哈德·里希特《九月》的协商

Aug 20, 2026

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This paper examines the repetitive structure of the flashback and frames it through Cathy Caruth’s idea of trauma as an event that moves inward without mediation. Drawing on Freud’s concept of Nachtraglichkeit, deferred action trauma, the discussion links the difficulty of remembering with the impossibility of forgetting. It argues that mediation functions as a bodily, physical lens for integrating scattered fragments into a coherent whole. Flashbacks become haunting reminders and locate trauma as unfinished experience seeking a witness.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages13

Reading Time33 min

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闪回的创伤结构与记忆困境

创伤的延迟行动与内外关系

闪回作为侵入：时间的中断与感官残响

叙事抵抗与创伤的反复回返

《九月》的协商：通过影像整合创伤过去

11月事件的媒体影像与身体性的整合

The trauma of the flashback: memory and its suffering (negotiated through Gerhard Richter’s painting ‘September.’) Anna Walker Research Arts and Media Plymouth University Abstract This paper explores the repetitive nature of the flashback and discusses Cathy Caruth’s notion of the flashback as a traumatic event from outside that has moved inside without any mediation. Freud writes about Nachtraglichkeit - or deferred action trauma constituted by the relationship between two-events or experiences of two competing impulses. Included is a discussion of Gerhard Richter’s painting‘September’, a gesture towards the integration of the flashback. The intensity of the traumatic experience makes it difficult to remember but impossible to forget, and any form of recollection seem inadequate. Mediation in this instance becomes a tool of integration, a bodily or physical lens that brings fragments together into a coherent whole for filing away into the past. Trauma is an unfinished, un-integrated experience in search of a witness where the flashback functions as the haunting reminder. To cite as Walker. A., 2014, ‘The trauma of the flashback: memory and its suffering (negotiated through Gerhard Richter’s painting ‘September.’)’, PsyArt 18, pp. 310–322. o here, it seems, is what came about what happened to them, then came down to us. And this was an event, perhaps an interminable event. (Derrida, 71) Flashbacks are noisy, dangerous, painful intrusions from the past that arise from the tension between the desire to forget and the necessity of remembering. Time, ‘homogenous time’- as prescribed by Bergson (2004, p. 129), the linearity of which naturally erodes memory, is interrupted by the traumatic event, disturbing the integration of the past into a narrative, its assimilation into memory systems. Out of this conflict, of the body’s re-ordering of time, the past returns repeatedly and intrusively through flashbacks in the form of auditory, visual and sensory hallucinations or dreams, sometimes precise, intensely clear and lifelike accompanied by a full spectrum of sensory and emotional associations, at other times fragmented and cloudy. Trauma defies understanding and breaches our comprehension of normalcy, time stills, a space opens up, a rupture, where the body moves into an uncertain future dramatically marked by the unknown. The resistance of trauma to being placed within a narrative leaves an openended and unresolved relationship with a past that is constantly in motion through its insistent interjection into the present, repeatedly returning the traumatised individual to the original site of the trauma. Flashbacks are not new creations but repetitive replays of the past, displaced memories that fracture the present, reproducing traumatic events in an attempt to master and integrate the past into ‘a psychic economy, a symbolic order’(Foster, 1996, p. 131) . This creates many complex contradictions: the somatic desire to release the past trauma through remembering, defending against the trauma by not remembering, and reproducing traumatic affect through the inevitable return of the past through flashbacks. The trauma is singular event with a double wounding, it is never just one event that is experienced, for trauma splits time:‘(being neither a ‘then’ nor a ‘now’) and meaning (being neither significant nor nonsensical); it is neither pure fact nor pure fantasy, it comes both from within the subject (the endogenous fantasy) and from without (the original scene of seduction, and the second, possibly quite banal event that recalls it)’(Brown, p. 239) . Cathy Caruth wrote that ‘the impact of the traumatic event lies precisely in its belatedness, in its refusal to be simply located’(1996, p. 7) . Such a body would live on as an unbearable interconnection of matter and potentiality, of organic aesthetic sensitivity and inorganic mechanical reproduction, a body steeped in conflict carrying within itself an impossible

FAQs

论文如何界定“闪回”的创伤性质？

论文将闪回视为来自过去的、带来噪声与危险的痛苦侵入，其产生源于“想忘却”与“必须记住”之间的张力。创伤事件打断了时间的线性整合，使过去难以稳定进入叙事记忆。

Freud 的 Nachtraglichkeit 在论文中扮演什么角色？

Nachtraglichkeit被用来说明创伤的延迟性：创伤不是单一时刻的直接结果，而是由两事件或两种相互竞争的冲动之间的关系构成。由此，闪回让过去以反复而侵入的方式回返到当下。

论文为何认为“调解/中介（mediation）”对整合闪回至关重要？

论文指出，回忆在此情境中显得不充分，却不可能消除遗忘的要求；中介被理解为一种身体或物理性的视角，能把碎片带向相对连贯的整体，并将其“归档”到过去。

Aug 20, 2026

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