Today's post is from Aisha Qadoos (PhD student at the University of Birmingham) on her recently published paper Ambiguous Loss: a loved one's trauma (RHV) published in a special issue on memory and trauma.
Research on interpersonal trauma predominantly looks at the effects of first personal trauma i.e., the experiences of those who directly undergo the experience. In this paper on ambiguous loss, I take the perspective of the friends and family of the one who has undergone the experience, a paradigmatic case being that of the partner of a veteran.
First, using L.A. Paul’s concept of transformative experience, I make the claim that traumatic experiences are transformative experiences. That is to say, they are experiences that result in some change in one’s sense of self (personally transformative) and/or epistemic standing (epistemically transformative). Personally transformative experiences are experiences that change what it is like to be you, resulting in changes in, perhaps, your preferences, desires, beliefs etc. Epistemically transformative experiences provide access to knowledge that could not be acquired without undergoing the experiences (note: the experience gives one access; the knowledge is not necessarily acquired).
Traumatic experiences are transformative experiences in both the personal and the epistemic sense. In the epistemic sense, put crudely, traumatic experiences give one the what-it-is-likeness to undergo the experience, knowledge which cannot be attained without the experience. One Egyptian activist who was tortured describes it as such: ‘You cannot put it into words. You live in a different world than other people’. Given the nature of experiences like torture, war, and violence, the what-it-is-likeness of such experiences is epistemically inaccessible.
And in the personal sense, such experiences as torture, war, and violence leave one changed. Another Egyptian activist remarks on the change he underwent: ‘If my past self of 2010 or 2011 met my present self right now, I believe I would not have known me to be the same person’, and Charlotte Delby, who was in the Auschwitz concentration camp claims: ‘I’m not alive. I died in Auschwitz’.
The key claim in this paper is that such changes are experiences by loved ones as a form of ambiguous loss. Ambiguous loss is ‘a situation of unclear loss resulting from not knowing whether a loved one is dead or alive, absent or present’. In conceptualising ambiguous loss, Boss defines two kinds of ambiguous loss: one is of the psychology present but physically absent as in the case of a missing child; relevant for this paper is the physically present but psychology absent kind as in the case of a relative with advanced dementia.
The changes in the one who has experienced trauma may be experienced by loved ones as an ambiguous loss of the physically present but psychologically absent kind. Paradigmatic cases being the experiences of partners of veterans and sexual assault victims. As one is changed following a traumatic experience, loved ones experience this change as a loss of the person they knew as they were.
One child, for instance, grieves for the person her veteran father was: ‘Some nights you spend your night crying yourself to sleep, because you miss your dad and you miss who he used to be’, and the partner of a veteran shares: ‘I am so mad at the military because they took my husband away from me. I have no idea who this man is’.
The paper concludes by exploring the claim that ambiguous loss is also transformative. In the personal sense, this is due to standing in identity-constituting relationships with those who undergo the trauma; that others, in virtue of the relationship we have with them, form an important part of ourselves. Thus, the changes to them and the relationship may result in changes in oneself. In a study of a male partners of sexual assault victims, the men reported being ‘changed forever’. This has been described as ‘the loss of you, me, us’.
Research on interpersonal trauma predominantly looks at the effects of first personal trauma i.e., the experiences of those who directly undergo the experience. In this paper on ambiguous loss, I take the perspective of the friends and family of the one who has undergone the experience, a paradigmatic case being that of the partner of a veteran.
Aisha Qadoos
First, using L.A. Paul’s concept of transformative experience, I make the claim that traumatic experiences are transformative experiences. That is to say, they are experiences that result in some change in one’s sense of self (personally transformative) and/or epistemic standing (epistemically transformative). Personally transformative experiences are experiences that change what it is like to be you, resulting in changes in, perhaps, your preferences, desires, beliefs etc. Epistemically transformative experiences provide access to knowledge that could not be acquired without undergoing the experiences (note: the experience gives one access; the knowledge is not necessarily acquired).
Traumatic experiences are transformative experiences in both the personal and the epistemic sense. In the epistemic sense, put crudely, traumatic experiences give one the what-it-is-likeness to undergo the experience, knowledge which cannot be attained without the experience. One Egyptian activist who was tortured describes it as such: ‘You cannot put it into words. You live in a different world than other people’. Given the nature of experiences like torture, war, and violence, the what-it-is-likeness of such experiences is epistemically inaccessible.
And in the personal sense, such experiences as torture, war, and violence leave one changed. Another Egyptian activist remarks on the change he underwent: ‘If my past self of 2010 or 2011 met my present self right now, I believe I would not have known me to be the same person’, and Charlotte Delby, who was in the Auschwitz concentration camp claims: ‘I’m not alive. I died in Auschwitz’.
The key claim in this paper is that such changes are experiences by loved ones as a form of ambiguous loss. Ambiguous loss is ‘a situation of unclear loss resulting from not knowing whether a loved one is dead or alive, absent or present’. In conceptualising ambiguous loss, Boss defines two kinds of ambiguous loss: one is of the psychology present but physically absent as in the case of a missing child; relevant for this paper is the physically present but psychology absent kind as in the case of a relative with advanced dementia.
The changes in the one who has experienced trauma may be experienced by loved ones as an ambiguous loss of the physically present but psychologically absent kind. Paradigmatic cases being the experiences of partners of veterans and sexual assault victims. As one is changed following a traumatic experience, loved ones experience this change as a loss of the person they knew as they were.
One child, for instance, grieves for the person her veteran father was: ‘Some nights you spend your night crying yourself to sleep, because you miss your dad and you miss who he used to be’, and the partner of a veteran shares: ‘I am so mad at the military because they took my husband away from me. I have no idea who this man is’.
The paper concludes by exploring the claim that ambiguous loss is also transformative. In the personal sense, this is due to standing in identity-constituting relationships with those who undergo the trauma; that others, in virtue of the relationship we have with them, form an important part of ourselves. Thus, the changes to them and the relationship may result in changes in oneself. In a study of a male partners of sexual assault victims, the men reported being ‘changed forever’. This has been described as ‘the loss of you, me, us’.
Ambiguous loss may also be epistemically transformative in the sense that one gains the what-it’s-likeness of having a loved one experience a traumatic encounter and how that changed them, the relationship one has with them, and oneself. A child of a veteran with PTSD reports: ‘Civilian kids... don't know what it's like to have a sick parent with something like this. ...And they don't understand what it's like to lose a piece of someone you love’.
Boss claims ambiguous loss is traumatic due to how painful and incomprehensible it is. I fall short of subscribing to this claim, but I find it plausible. More research needs be done, however, to ground the claim.
Boss claims ambiguous loss is traumatic due to how painful and incomprehensible it is. I fall short of subscribing to this claim, but I find it plausible. More research needs be done, however, to ground the claim.