ABSTRACT
Testimony is a meeting place for the mutual witnessing and repair of trauma induced fragmented memories and psychic disruption. The testimonial intervention is responsive to and addresses what has been left deeply wounded, that which has not found an opportunity to heal, in the trauma survivor. A psychoanalytic understanding of the interviewer and interviewee relationship during the testimonial intervention can not only vastly contribute to our understanding of the traumatic damage, but also informs us as to the healing processes that need to be set in motion to repair it. The uniqueness of the testimonial intervention lies in the fact there is always an event, an experience, even if it covers a lifetime, that is known to be there, even if it had hitherto not been consciously formulated. It is thus information that has yet to be recorded, brought to an addressee, to a party interested in receiving it. Testimony is therefore, a transmittal of information and there is an internal unrelenting pressure to convey as well as an external readiness and eagerness to receive it. When such transmittal has been accomplished, the survivor no longer is or feels alone with the inexpressible extreme experience. She is less helplessly prey to its devastating impact. The internal cauldron of sensations and affects has been put into the frame of a sequential narrative. They are now remembered, transmitted and can also be forgotten. Such narrative is however never complete and highly charged blank spots of the inexpressible (almost unimaginable) experience persist, exerting their magnetic power on the survivor, who feels compelled to endlessly revisit them while at the same time she constantly flees their proximity.
