ABSTRACT
As I started to write this paper, I reread the blurb that introduced our panel and was struck in a new way by the question with which it ends: “Is psychoanalysis, in theory and practice, a traumatic field?” As I read it this time, the first thing I felt was “Wow! It sounds like the beginning of a ghost story!” I could even imagine the sentence being, “Is the psychoanalytic field really a haunted house?” A moment later I realized I had already written that sentence, somewhat playfully, as the title of an article I called “One need not be a house to be haunted” (Bromberg, 2003) – for which I owe Emily Dickinson a debt of gratitude. Playfulness, however, is not a state of mind for which Dickinson is typically known. In her poetry and, it is said, in her own internal world, trauma is what takes center stage. For Emily Dickinson, trauma was not a concept but an ongoing state of affective hauntedness, and she chillingly communicates it as such in the following excerpt from her Poem 670 (1863/1960, p. 333):
One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted – One need not be a House –
Far safer, through an Abbey gallop, Than unarmed, one’s self encounter – In lonesome Place –
Ourself behind ourself, concealed – Should startle most – Assassin hid in our Apartment Be Horror’s least.
