الفهرس 
Representation of Childhood Trauma: Causes, Symptoms, and RecoveryOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
A child’s experiences play a highly influential role in the formation of his/her character. Children face a variety of challenges in their lives; some caused by larger environmental factors, while others might be caused by dysfunctional family structures. Children who suffer from child abuse and neglect because of their parents or different melancholic events: death, or accidents, may suffer from physical, psychological, and behavioral consequences. This often leads to psychological consequences such as depression, and failure to form new relations. Childhood trauma results from childhood suffering causing psychiatric disorders throughout adulthood, as victims of childhood trauma most probably avoid people, places, and events that trigger their suffering due to their fear, irritability, or mood changes. The Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison (1931-2019) usually shows through her novels the psychological problems of children and their impact through adulthood. This thesis aims to investigate the impact of childhood trauma through a study of its causes, symptoms, and steps of recovery as they are explicitly represented in Toni Morrison’s novels: A Mercy (2008), and God Help the Child (2015).
Morrison’s two novels are selected because they both feature protagonists who struggle with childhood trauma and attempt to embark on a quest of healing and recovery through attaining self-realization. Each protagonist in the two narratives is given a different reason that underlies his/her childhood trauma. The parents of both protagonists, especially their mothers, are portrayed as the main reason of their offspring’s suffering. A Mercy explores the damaging impact of slavery on motherhood, while God Help the Child shows the drastic ramifications of racism on motherhood as well. In both novels, Morrison illustrates the dramatic impact of the trauma– inducing, toxic mothering that survives until adulthood. Slavery and racism are two major problems in the African-American society. Morrison deals with their noxious impact on both black and white people in her two books.
The thesis relies mainly on Judith Herman’s book Trauma and Recovery (1997). Throughout her book, Herman illustrates the impact of childhood suffering and trauma on adulthood. Herman elucidates the stages of recovery that help the traumatized individual to cope with his/her suffering. She states that voicing childhood trauma is the main reason that leads to healing and inner peace. Victims of childhood trauma have been (re)presented in many literary works, which shed light on their suffering and their attempts at healing.
The body of the work is divided into three chapters. Chapter One gives background information on trauma theory followed by the steps of achieving self-realization and recovery in alignment with Judith Herman’s relevant scholarly insights into these processes. Chapter Two analyses Morrison’s AMercy focusing on the symptoms of childhood trauma that the protagonists suffer from reflecting the problems of pre-Revolutionary American society in the 17th century. Chapter Three deals with the main character’s journey from childhood trauma to recovery in God Help the Child.
This study reveals the psychological impact of childhood trauma on a person’s adult life as depicted in contemporary fiction. Consequently, the study grapples with different etiologies, prognoses, and presentations of childhood trauma. The study also outlines the steps trauma survivors need to do to attain self-realization and achieve full recovery through presenting the concept of the ‘quest for self-realization’, while assessing to which extent Morrison has succeeded in setting her characters on this path. In both narratives, Morrison gives hope to survivors of childhood trauma through paving the way to her characters to heal, attain self-realization, and recover.
In conclusion, Morrison elucidates how a child’s exposure to traumatic experiences has a dramatic impact into adulthood, which reveals itself in emotional, social and behavioral problems. Morrison’s portrayal of her characters in A Mercy, and God Help the Child allows her to represent the impact of childhood trauma and the means for overcoming it. Hence, Morrison’s novels take the readers into journeys from self-hatred caused by trauma to self-acceptance on account of healing.