ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the relationship between wounds and scars in the context of a carnal hermeneutics. It interrogates and analyses how certain narratives of wounding—from Greek mythology to contemporary literature—reveal a complex dialectic of wonder and catharsis. Examples of therapy through word and touch are exposited in the literary figures of Odysseus, Oedipus, Chiron, as well as the more recent lives of Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, and Helen Bamber. The basic hypothesis of this chapter is that while traumatic wounds cannot be cured, they can at times be healed—and that such healing may take place through a twin therapy of (1) narrative catharsis and (2) carnal working-through. In short, healing by word-touch, a double transformation of incurable wounds into healable scars.
