Trust and Trauma: An Interdisciplinary Study in Human Nature

This interdisciplinary text brings together perspectives from leading psychoanalysts and modern Jewish philosophers to offer a unique investigation into the dynamic between the fundamental trust in the self, other persons, and the world, and the devastating force of emotional trauma.

Chapters examine the challenges of witnessing and acknowledging suffering; trust in God; and the traumatic effects of the Holocaust. The result is a deeper understanding of the fundamental relationality of humans, the imperative of responsibility for the Other, the fragility of meaning, and the metaphorical powers of religious language. Authors representing two standpoints, the psychological/ psychoanalytic and the religious/ philosophical, provide key insights. Erik Erikson, Jessica Benjamin, Judith Herman, and Bessel van der Kolk support the psychological discourse, while Franz Rosenzweig, Martin Buber, and Abraham Joshua Heschel present the Jewish philosophical discourse.

This book is written for professionals and advanced students in psychoanalysis, philosophy, and Jewish and religious studies. Its accessible and engaging style will also appeal to general readers with an interest in philosophical, psychological, and religious perspectives on some of the most elemental human concerns.

Michael Oppenheim is a distinguished professor emeritus at Concordia University, Montreal. His most recent book is Contemporary Psychoanalysis and Modern Jewish Philosophy: Two Languages of Love (Routledge, 2017).