ABSTRACT
Being haunted or possessed by the past, and compulsively reliving the traumatic events of the past in the present, for example in flashbacks or nightmares. The distinction between past, present, and future collapses; one exists in the present as if one were still fully in the past, without any prospect or hope about the future. Cultural trauma researchers usually attribute the term to Dominick LaCapra, who borrows it—along with its counterpart working-through—from Sigmund Freud and applies it to the realm of culture.
