Introduction: The Wound and the Voice 1
1 Unclaimed Experience: Trauma and the Possibility of History (Freud, Moses and Monotheism) 10
2 Literature and the Enactment of Memory (Duras, Resnais, Hiroshima mon amour) 25
3 Traumatic Departures: Survival and History in Freud (Beyond the Pleasure Principle, Moses and Monotheism) 57
4 The Falling Body and the Impact of Reference (de Man, Kant, Kleist) 73
5 Traumatic Awakenings (Freud, Lacan, and the Ethics of Memory) 91

Marnie suffers from Phodophobia (fear of the color red) and Brontophobia (fear of thunder and lightning); both elements which played crucial roles in accentuating the fear that surrounded her accidental killing of a man.  None of these images spark terror when she thinks about them, only when she actually confronts them. For example, when placed in the presence of a red wall, red flowers, or blood, the most terrifying of triggers, or when witnessing thunder or a rainstorm, Marnie regresses to a childhood state of feeling flooded with panic and her tone of voice sounds like that of a little girl. Her internalized anguish cannot be contained in the face of these inexplicable triggers. Though she cannot pinpoint the reason for her crippling fear, it overwhelms her.  As Dr. Krugman notes, early trauma can also shatter a victim’s trust in others and Marnie, the perpetrator and victim of violence herself, does as expected, relying on emergency defenses to protect herself against unbearable memories and the fear of abandonment if her truth were revealed. She flees from any positive work environment or from home, rejecting stability, She is constantly on the run from herself, specifically, from the truth about her own criminal actions and is also on the run from others.  She tries her best to distance herself from any interpersonal closeness. Other aspects of Marnie’s behavior are also of interest.  Though she does not need the money, her obsessive stealing seems to satisfy a temporary need to fill some void in her life. Perhaps taking more than she is given or earns, reflects a longing to rid herself of the emptiness experienced from an unloving mother or home life. Marnie is a flawed protagonist; a highly complicated woman whose behavior has strong psychological roots.

Little examines Mementos exploration of the complexities of surviving trauma, aligning the cinematic experience of viewing the film with the experience of living through a trauma. While the two are not identical, Little argues that the profound disruption of expectation and the film.s odd formal structure unsettle the viewer.s sense of temporal coherence and continuity. The author discusses the concept of .missing,. which frames the film.s thematic charge . a familiar temporal framework is missing, as is the true identity of the protagonist, whose character Little explores as a .missing person.. Memento elicits from viewers a response to missing that mirrors that of the repetition-bound protagonist, resembling the reaction to a traumatic experience. The author draws a parallel with post-traumatic stress disorder, which produces a compulsion to repeat the trauma through hallucinations, flashbacks and dreams in an effort to make sense of the experience. This repetition is bound with the problem of representation in terms of constructing a narrative .to re-present an original experience,. which makes it similar to an actual memento. Little draws on critic Susan Stewart.s work on the nature of the souvenir, an object that carries meaning only if it is recognized as a representation of and a substitute for the original thing. The author relates this to the fort-da game Freud observes in his grandson, which enables the child to make up for the absence of his mother by imagining and narrativizing it in a meaningful fashion. Like a memento, however, the game also entails disappointment as it cannot perfectly reproduce the lost origin of the mother.s unbroken presence. Memento, Little argues, functions like a memento in providing the viewer with souvenirs that stimulate, but do not satisfy, a nostalgic longing for an underlying truth.