Body Memory of Pain and Trauma

At first sight, pain seems to be an unhistorical phenomenon: in its intrusive nagging presence, nothing refers to the past, and to remember one’s pain is only possible in an abstract sense. However, one’s individual sensitivity as well as one’s relation to pain are shaped biographically, even though we usually are not aware of this: pains are inscribed into body memory and thus unfold a lasting impact. The memory of the subject may thus also be conceived as a history of painful confrontations with the world, in the course of which the borders of self and non-self are constituted and accentuated. These interrelations are the topic of the paper.