The definition of trauma: shaping shell-shock

​About this event

​The Definition of Trauma: Shaping Shell Shock

​An Exhibition (with interpretations)

​An exhibition of materials from the archives of the Department of Psychology, the Cambridge Greek Play, the Society of Psychical Research, and others, all concerning responses to traumatic and post-traumatic states. The exhibition will be accompanied by short talks from a variety of clinical, critical and creative practitioners.
 
For more information about this event, please visit:
https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/events/49465/

​About the network

​“If a student of English literature doesn’t know that Titus Andronicus contains scenes of violence,” a director once grumbled about so-called ‘trigger warnings’, “they shouldn’t be on the course.” But does a play like Titus Andronicus simply ‘contain’ depictions of violence, or might it better be said to enact various kinds of violence — upon its spectators and its participants? When we think about drama not just as a mode of representation but as a means of exhibition — sometimes coercion — sometimes involvement — we can better recognise it as an artistic form which has the potential to link individuals through (painful) empathy and, sometimes, alienate them (painfully) from one another’s experiences.

​Dramatic methodologies can immerse us in distressing and disorientating experiences but can also hold us apart from them, looking on. Discussing how these methodologies play out in educational spaces as well as in spaces designed for theatrical entertainment, it’s become clear to the Affective Encounters team that practitioners in a range of different fields — theatremakers, teachers, psychiatrists, counsellors, musicians, and many others — all participate in dramatic encounters in the course of their work, all playing out and only sometimes reflecting on the situations of control, loss of control, collaboration, and conflict which they therefore inhabit with others.

​Throughout this year, you are invited to join the Affective Encounters team as we investigate the dramatic forms of psychological disturbance, and as we share with one another what each stage-space can learn from its fellows — how the dramaturgies of classrooms, clinical settings and performance spaces can each inform one another, pointing towards more sensitive and more supportive practices in the apprehension and understanding of disturbance.

​For details about this network, please visit:

​https://www.crassh.cam.ac.uk/research/networks/affective-encounters/