Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2010, 55, 556573
An interpretation of Babettes Feast
as a parable of trauma Sharn Waldron, Cambridge, UK Abstract: In this paper I use the lm Babettes Feast as a parable to portray the impasse that often arises out of the experience of complex trauma. The experience of such trauma invokes a crisis of reality. It overows the boundaries of rational containment. There are no mechanisms with which to apprehend such an event, and consequently it cannot be comprehended; because it cannot be comprehended it cannot be processed. The lm Babettes Feast encapsulates the predicament of the individual ensnared in the web of trauma. Although removed from the location and events of her trauma, Babette remains the resident of an austere and colourless environment, her gifts repressed, her brilliance unseen. Healing comes to Babette through her willingness to revisit her true self, a self that has been crushed under the weight of grief and trauma. This revisiting costs her all she has. Yet, it is in this revisiting that she not only frees herself from the austerity of her environment but also engenders purpose and hope within the community who have taken her in. The dissonance of her life is paralleled by the dissonance of the life of the community in which she lives; it is the harmonizing of these dissonances which cannot be spoken that nally gives articulation to the incoherence of Babettes trauma. Key words: austerity, lm, language, mourning, music, trauma In my clinical work I have become increasingly aware of the limitation of words as a vehicle for communicating the experience of trauma. Trauma occurs when there is a psychological or physical breach of a persons or communitys protective mechanisms, a breach of such severity that it cannot be addressed through the processes usually engaged to deal with pain and loss. The onslaught of such trauma invokes a crisis of reality. It is an experience of such intensity that it overwhelms the boundaries of the self. There are no mechanisms with which to apprehend such an event and because of this it cannot be comprehended; because it cannot be comprehended it cannot be processed. It overows the boundaries of rational containment. The searing pain of trauma oods the entire self with its devastation and implies, by its presence, the threat of non- being. Trauma does not register through the cognitive functions in the same way as other experiences and, as a result, it is not fully experienced at the moment of its occurrence but only belatedly, and then in a particular way: not as conscious memory but as imposed pervasive experience, re-enacted over and over again. 0021-8774/2010/5504/556 C 2010, The Society of Analytical Psychology Published by Blackwell Publishing Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. An interpretation of Babettes Feast as a parable of trauma 557 This overwhelming experience of trauma introduces a fundamental doubt about its reality. The victim is often left wondering if this terrible event is real or if their sanity is awed. Even if the experience is apprehended and known as reality, the nature of trauma ensures that psychic numbing will be a signicant factor; an experience of decreased or absent feeling reects a disruption of the individuals capacity to symbolize his or her experience. The apprehension of trauma as simultaneously absent but ever present provokes a crisis of reality which is, at the same time, a crisis of language. In her paper The language of absence, Hayata Gurevich writes of an insufferable pain which is not felt as such but exists in multifarious ways: Here external absence is also and at the same time internal absence because it is an absence of and from the self, a dissociation. The psychic trauma of absence then transmutes into something, while the absence itself becomes marked as nothing, a nothing which in fact operates as though it were something with a profound and deeply intrusive impact on the vulnerable self. (Gurevich 2008, p. 563) It is in this regard that Freuds notion of Nachtr aglichkeit is a useful concept. Freud proposes the idea that there are always two moments in the constitution of a psychic trauma: that of the event which leaves its trace and that of the events later advent, occasioned by the constellation of an external event with an internal dynamic (Laplanche & Pontalis 1973, p. 114). The essence of this recurrence is that it is cyclic, repetitive and on occasions a re-traumatization which further perpetuates the cycle. The only means by which the cycle of repetition and re-enactment can be disrupted is to facilitate a means by which the traumatized individual can be enabled to bear witness to the reality of the trauma, to put it into language that is heard and acknowledged and, in this way, to begin a process of assimilation and integration of the experience. And yet, giving voice to trauma runs the risk that in the very moment of telling, our language will falsify what is at the core of the reality of the trauma. Language is often unable to transcend traumas essential incomprehensibility. It is this which brings into question the adequacy of words as a vehicle for addressing trauma. However, if language is an inevitable component in processing trauma, then the very nature of trauma confronts psychotherapy with the question, What kind of language might be adequate? Juliet Mitchell in her paper, Trauma, recognition and the place of language, argues that psychoanalysis emphasis on speech as a therapeutic tool may obscure the ways in which language itself is a symptom of the trauma (Mitchell 1998, p. 125). It was in this context, wrestling with the impact of trauma on an individuals cognition and on their verbal and emotional functioning, that the lm Babettes Feast began to gradually emerge to the forefront of my mind. I began to think about the lms juxtaposition of two languages, the language of the community into which Babette had been exiled and the language of Babette, the outsider. As a parable of the affect of trauma, the lm Babettes Feast is able to function as a 558 Sharn Waldron multivalent symbol of the devastation and pain of complex trauma. The severity of this pain has no way of communicating itself through any one medium but a lm allows for a diversity of vehicles and interpretations. The lm conveys its message through geographic, atmospheric and cultural setting, physicality, religious symbolism, words, food and music. This particular lm is based on the well known and much loved bleak short story by Karen Blixen. In the background looms her long debilitating illness and emaciated physical state, ascribed to side effects of the syphilis caught from her philanderer cousin and husband but never medically veried; her physical ailment was frequently interpreted as caused by a broken heart and an eating disorder. This gives the opulent meal in Babettes Feast an altogether more poignant, ambiguous and tragic resonance. As I began to consider the impact of this lm there emerged an awareness that in analysis there are often no words to express adequately discordant thoughts, feelings or physical sensations. The analyst is there to help make sense of and translate a cacophony of disparate sounds into something that is rhythmic and harmonious. Cognitive thought and articulation give content to what is apprehended by the conscious but the subtlety of music touches what the conscious cannot. Babettes Feast is about food, religious symbolism, and mourning. However there is another dimension to the lm that is less articulate, more subtle but no less signicant. The lmcontains a strong musical backdrop. The hymns of the community and Philippas gift of music combine to create an atmosphere of austerity while simultaneously alluding to the creative potency of the individuals and the community to which they belong. The music, like the food, is not just about its ingestion and digestion but about the capacity to nurture and sustain life. Babette may be a refugee and victim of trauma but she is also a chef, artist and musician. In Babettes Feast the kitchen and the raw ingredients are the instruments and orchestra, and Babettes cuill ` ere is the maestros baton. In this lm, both food and music are communicative vehicles. As a conductor draws together the discordant cacophony of the orchestra tuning up and transforms those same sounds into a harmonious symphony, so the analyst seeks to draw together the discordant aspects of the patients psyche, enabling the rediscovery of the rhythm, the harmonies that have been absent. In 100 BCE the Chinese philosopher Chou Ma Tchien wrote, Music comes fromthe heart of the human being. When emotions are born, they are expressed by sounds and when sounds are born they give birth to music (Rudhyar 1982, Appendix 1). Music is a medium of the mind that pre-exists cognitive thought and attaches to the essence of the psyche. Mauro Mancia argues that The unrepressed unconscious can be brought to the surface in analysis through the musical dimension of the transference, characterized by the voice (its intonation and rhythm) and the prosody of the language (Mancia 2006, p. 91). This notion was also enunciated by Patricia Skar (2002) in her paper, The goal as process: music and the search for the self. She proposes the use of musical improvisation in the analytical encounter, using simple percussion An interpretation of Babettes Feast as a parable of trauma 559 instruments. She links this practice with Jungs concept of active imagination and argues that musical improvisation can further develop the dialogue between the unconscious and conscious psyche; it can also deepen the relationship between analyst and analysand (Skar 2002, p. 636). According to philosopher Susan Langer (Langer 1976, p. 243) music expresses feelings which the individual is not able to otherwise utter, feelings incapable of being put into words such as bodily rhythms, experiences anchored to early childhood, often unconscious and traumatic. Langer argued that music is a prime example of a non-discursive form of symbolism that is clearly symbolic despite not being composed of the discrete symbolic elements of discursive symbolism such as verbal language where each word acts as an independent symbol with its own denotation. By contrast, in music the notes take on symbolic signicance only as part of a simultaneous whole. Trauma requires this kind of non-discursive symbolismsince, as previously stated, words are an inadequate vehicle for its expression. Discursive forms of symbolism are limited in their capacity to capture the holistic, multiple and indeterminate qualities of emotional experience. Babettes Feast functions as a conduit between essential daily nourishment and art, but also suggests that music and the provision of nourishment have within them the creative potential to bring healing and communion to those impoverished through trauma and loss. In this lm the preparation and consumption of food serve as the medium of transcendence, that which permits an unbearable trauma to be openly presented and shared and, as a consequence, initiates a salvic possibility. In both the creation of a good meal or a brilliant symphony, there is a process of preparation and commitment by all involved. In the nal outcome all are needed, those who make the instruments, those who write the musical score, those who play the instruments and the maestro. Likewise with a good meal, it involves the quality of the basic ingredients, the capacity of those who serve, the ability and creativity of the chef, and the capacity of the guests to comprehend and appreciate the quality of the meal being served. As in the analytical environment, it is the incorporation of the whole which is required for trauma to become integrated. Babettes Feast Babettes Feast begins in a remote seaside village in Jutland, the site of an especially strict Lutheran sect. The beautiful young daughters of the founder of the sect, although presented with real opportunities to leave the village, choose to stay with their father, to serve him and their church. At this point, the lm leaps thirty-ve years to September 1871. The founder of the sect has died and his daughters, now in late middle age, continue his work. In the midst of a driving rainstorm a bedraggled and visibly exhausted woman appears on their doorstep. The woman is a refugee from the civil war raging in Paris. Her 560 Sharn Waldron husband and son were both brutally killed. She herself, a letter informs the sisters, barely escaped with her life. Babette Hersant has lost her family, her country, her language, and, as it transpires, her art. She arrives at the sisters door, begs them to take her in, and commits herself to work for them as an unpaid servant. However such is the paucity of the sisters life that they scarcely knowwhat to do with a servant, even one who will work for no wages. Nevertheless they take her in and Babette soon becomes indispensable to them and to those whom they comfort and care for. The church that their father founded is beset by conict and bitterness. In an effort to heal and bring reconciliation the sisters decide to hold a dinner to commemorate the 100 th anniversary of the birth of the church. They plan a modest supper with a cup of coffee to conclude the evening. However, it is at this time that Babette experiences unexpected good fortune. Through a lottery ticket given by a friend, she wins 10,000 francs. This ticket is the only connection that remains between herself and France. Babette implores the sisters to allow her to take charge of the preparation of the meal. Although secretly concerned about what Babette, a Catholic and a foreigner, might do, the sisters allow her to go ahead. They and the community are fearful that this meal may turn out to be a Witches Sabbath and covenant together not to discuss or comment on the food and drink, whatsoever Babette will provide. Babette prepares the feast for the members of the tiny church and for an important gentleman who has arrived at their home. The guest, a General at the Swedish court, is not related to the sisters but as an inexperienced and arrogant young man was once in love with Martine. He chose his military career over happiness with the woman he loved. It is he who, unknowingly, identies Babette as the famous chef from the Paris Caf e Anglais and provides the mouthpiece for the enjoyment of the feast. Babette does not partake of the meal but remains in the kitchen during the entire dinner. The serving boy, Erik, moves between the dining room and the kitchen as he follows Babettes careful instructions about what and how much to serve whom in which glass. In the lm we are carried back and forth between these two rooms, dwelling on close-ups of the dishes being lovingly prepared, tasted and served, and the wine poured and sipped. Babette is joined in the kitchen by one guest, the Generals coach driver, to whom she serves every dish. There are therefore fteen people present during this meal: Babette, Erik, the coach driver and the twelve invited guests. In an addition that is at once authentic and comic, the coach drivers frequently voiced response Thats good! expresses the deep satisfaction that the vow of silence has prevented the other guests from expressing. Only towards the end of the meal does Babette allow herself to savour the magnicent old Burgundy that she has dispensed so liberally. Only at the very end does she eat the incomparable meal that she has prepared. When the guests leave, Martine and Philippa come to the kitchen to compliment Babette on the meal. Babette quietly conrms that she was the head chef at the Caf e Anglais. An interpretation of Babettes Feast as a parable of trauma 561 She also astonishes these two sisters in another way; she will not return to France ever. There is no place for her there; everyone dear to her has died, the world she knew has disappeared. Besides, she has no money. The sisters are shocked to learn that Babette spent her entire lottery winnings on the dinner; Just what a dinner for twelve would cost at the Caf e Anglais, she states matter- of-factly. The sisters are taken aback at her sacrice. It was not just for you, Babette responds. Throughout the world sounds one long cry from the heart of the artist: Give me the chance to do my very best. Babette has had a last chance to give of her very best, so that, contrary to what Martine fears, she cannot be poor: An artist is never poor. For the rst time, Philippa embraces her servant in an act of love that acknowledges the claims of the artist. In this affectionate embrace she acknowledges the right and need of the artist to create. Babette is no longer a foreigner but rather a legitimate member of the community in which they both live. Discussion The dominant discussion concerning the lm Babettes Feast appears to revolve around the question of whether it is a motion picture about religion and religious symbolism or a lm which juxtaposes food as a means of nourishment and food as a sensory experience. I can see the validity of both perceptions. In both arguments food and the provision of the opulent French dinner are seen to have transformative powers. Babette, the master chef, sacrices all her riches for a great feast, and through her sacricial act brings transformation to her adoptive community. But more importantly, she also brings transformation to herself through the recreation of the Caf e Anglais (Ferguson 2004, pp. 187201). According to Wanda Avila, the feast provides the opportunity for an epiphany, the sudden realization or comprehension of a larger essence or meaning. She writes, Acontact between the ego and the self has been made, signalling the integration of their psyches. The perfection of the feast seems to have triggered the epiphanies. However, the participants had already made themselves psychologically ready to receive such epiphanies by performing various rituals: Babette had made sacrices, the General had consciously reected on the meaning of his life, and the disciples had come to terms with their shadows by confessing and repenting of their sins. (Avila 2005) Avila argues that the lm is about discovering meaning in life. The participants in the feast are all in the second half of life and beset by intense inner conicts. Consciously or unconsciously they are searching for meaning in their lives. Babettes preparations for the feast are symbolic of her inner sacrice which has all the characteristics of what Avila refers to as a true sacrice (Avila 2005). She likens this sacrice to The Last Supper. It is a deliberate sacrice without any expectation of return or gain. The sacrice is not made to buy the 562 Sharn Waldron goodwill of either the two sisters or that of her adoptive community. She is very much aware that her dinner guests will have no idea of what they are consuming or its cost. Babette has chosen to expend the entire ten thousand francs of her lottery winnings to have the best wines and foods brought from France for this one dinner. In doing so she has surrendered any possibility of returning to Paris and consigned herself to living as a foreigner in cold and remote Jutland for the rest of her life. But she has given her all, invested her whole self, including her forgotten, dormant brilliance into this one feast, for others. However, whilst the feast Babette prepared and served offers a reection on religion and artistic endeavour there is another more central and poignant aspect to the story, articulated by Esther Rashkin in her paper Devouring loss. She proposes this lm as a recipe for mourning. She argues that Babettes Feast is a story about the overcoming of an inability to mourn. It dramatizes the effects of a blockage to mourning and articulates a prescription or recipe for the transcendence of that blockage. Rashkin focuses on the lms psychoanalytic function. In her interpretation, the unfolding story creates a space for communion through loss by enabling loss to be spoken of and, as a consequence, a process of mourning can begin. She writes, The preparation and consumption of food serve as the medium, of transcendence, as that which permits an unbearable loss to be swallowed and the process of its digestion to commence. They also function as a vehicle for articulating a fundamental connection between artistic creation and bereavement, between literary inscription and psychic memorialization, and between the production of narrative as an aesthetic enterprise and the creation of art as a life-saving act. (Rashkin 1995, p. 26) Rashkin proposes that the repeated absence of language about Babettes previous life and the loss of her husband, son and life in France should be understood as a sign that the process of introjection has been blocked and that normal mourning has been obstructed (Rashkin 2008, p. 31). In his paper Mourning and the symbolic process, Warren Colman argues that [t]he importance of being able to symbolize absence for the process of mourning is self- evident. Perhaps the central task of mourning is to make sense of the conict between the absence of the lost object and the continuing presence of an emotional relationship to that which is lost. It is here that Jungs notion of a transcendent function that enables conicting opposites to be transcended via an emergent symbolic realization can be seen to be a crucial element of the mourning process. (Colman 2010) In this enigmatic lmBabette has been unable to mourn because she has kept her trauma in exile. She has been isolated with the trauma and unable to integrate or move beyond her traumatized state. As a consequence she remains always a foreigner, existing in a sensually emaciated puritanical community in a foreign land. An interpretation of Babettes Feast as a parable of trauma 563 The impact of trauma Babette had been traumatized in her home country. Her husband and son had been killed like vermin. She arrived in Jutland shocked and distraught. The puritanical community into which she entered regarded her as a papist and a foreigner. The environment which took her in was cold and basic, portrayed in a mode typical of the austere Lutheran movement Pietism which swept through the whole of Scandinavia in the eighteenth century. It was well established by 1871, the opening year of the narrative. Pietism began as a search for piety but became an austere formof Lutheranismdened by its prohibition of any sensual pleasures and joy. It proposed that a true believers earthly life should be spent in sacrice and self-denial in preparation for the celestial feast. The community abjured erotic feelings and had adopted a life which sought to exclude overt sexuality and eroticism. Rashkin writes of Martine and Philippa: Brought up by their father to renounce the pleasures of this world, these beautiful young women are effectively put off limits to men by the Dean, who makes clear that to him in his calling his daughters were his right and left hand. Who could want to bereave him of them? And the fair girls had been brought up to an ideal of heavenly love; they were all lled with it and did not let themselves be touched by the ames of this world. (Rashkin 2008, p. 33) The suppression of the erotic and the physical austerity that both Martine and Philippa experience because of the great need of their father for them to be his right and left hands is quite shocking in itself. Both Martine and Philippa have the possibility of erotic desire presented to them but appear frightened by its presence and as a matter of course suppress their longing. Martine allows the young lieutenant Loewenhielm to leave without saying a word. Philippa sings with Achille Papin, I am frightened by the joy, while Martine and her father sit outside the room waiting to see if she will succumb, but she chooses instead to remain true to the austerity her father personies. It is in this impoverished and austere home and community, beset by fears and jealousies, that Babette seeks refuge and security. She arrives destitute and desolate. Mad with grief and fear she is taken in by the sisters and readily adapts to their austere life but then, gradually, small changes begin to emerge. When Babette arrives and is shown by the sisters how to prepare the sh soup, the kitchen is dim and sober. Later, before the arrival of the winning lottery ticket, the kitchen is bright and airy; there is a re burning in the stove, the burnished pots and pans hang neatly on the wall and there are fresh vegetables and herbs on the bench. These small but important touches that Babette brings to the daily fare make the food more appetizing. Babette insists on the quality of foodstuffs as she bargains in rudimentary but effective Danish with the grocer and the shmonger, both of whom are dumbfounded when she insists on fresh bacon, vegetables and sh. And yet, this insistence belies Babettes impoverishment. 564 Sharn Waldron Babette rediscovers and insinuates an emerging vibrancy into this isolated and remote part of Jutland. The lottery ticket is only the end product to a salvic dynamic which is allowed to ourish in this bleak landscape. Clinical material I would like to present a case study of a woman whom, for the purposes of this paper, I will call Mary. Mary was traumatized in her early life and the effects of this trauma have permeated her life, robbing it of colour and spontaneity. Her ability to experience joy in living has been blocked by the austerity of her inner self. What has occurred in working with Mary illustrates the dynamics that I am proposing are evident in the story of Babette and her journey to wholeness. This is not intended to provide a direct parallel between Mary and Babette. The effects of trauma are very individual and diverse. What does seemto be common to people who have experienced complex trauma is the draining of colour, the loss of the capacity to experience fullness of life, to experience warmth, love, joy and fullment in sustainable and wholistic measure. Mary is 49 years old. She has been married for thirteen years and has three daughters. The daughters are six, eight and ten years of age. They attend a local religious school. Mary is an ardent feminist and a professional journalist but she has found it extremely difcult to sustain employment; her history is interspersed with sackings and resignations. Mary has come from a devout Catholic family. Her father was an alcoholic and was frequently unemployed and ill. He eventually died of alcohol poisoning when Mary was fteen. Marys mother suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and cannot stand the smell of food, nor can she tolerate anyone messing up the house. When Mary was a child she would frequently nd herself, with her belongings, thrown onto the front garden. Mary learned to make her own meals from a very early age but was terried of her mother coming home and being able to smell the cooking. She learned to cook very simple foods and to eat them in haste, without tasting. Mary is ercely independent and academically gifted. Her presenting reason for entering therapy was an inability to cope with her life. Living each day was painful. The myriad day to day decisions about what to wear, what to cook and what to eat were extremely distressing and difcult. In frustration she periodically gave way to uncontrollable rage, smashing household items. On one occasion she destroyed the television set. However, she found that the normality of providing a daily routine and meals for her children gave her some stability. She has also found that attending therapy twice per week is beginning to have a foundational impact on her life. Although highly intellectual, an accomplished journalist and screen writer, Mary often nds difculty making herself understood. Her difculty appears to be centred on the spoken word as opposed to the written word. At times she feels An interpretation of Babettes Feast as a parable of trauma 565 that she is speaking a different language to everyone else, an experience which causes her acute pain and distress. For her, being misunderstood is tantamount to being non-existent. In her writing she experiences a sense of self and has the time and perseverance to both speak and translate this different language, but in a face-to-face interchange she has a tendency to become inarticulate suddenly. When Mary was a child the chaos and violence were overwhelming. Her parents could not manage their own chaos and violent feelings, far less the chaotic and destructive feelings of their troubled daughter. Mary survived through scavenging. Then, as a fteen year old, she found a family who took her in to do domestic work. There was no pay for this but her food and lodging was provided on the basis that she helped with the day to day chores of the family. This created in Mary a deep sense of her earnings being only enough for basic survival: a sense that she had no rights of her own. There was no presence of grace or gift or the possibility for her of ever being loved or valued for herself. In the therapeutic environment, Mary struggles with feelings of despair. People are starving in Africa. What right does she have to be privileged with the luxury of therapy or to have a person with whom she may relate? To spend money on herself for therapy has no justication. It indicates that she is a person of worth and this contradicts her self-perception, that she is a person of no value. In an attempt to undermine this developing sense of self, Mary has brought gifts for me into the therapeutic environment. It is as if she needs to earn the right to be fed and nourished. The gifts are also a way of warding off her immense feelings of anxiety that I might go away and never come back. I interpret these gifts as a defence against her feelings of hate and envy towards me as her therapist. Hate and envy are an expression, projection and deection of Thanatos the death drive. Envy blocks the very possibility of love, existing by melding with hate and, in that fusion, destroying all that is good. If hate and envy are dissociated, they become omnipotent, disconnected from reference to the present. In this context, the initiating trauma, and the emotions it generates are inevitably enacted and re-enacted in the present. If they are heard, addressed and processed, they may be integrated into the existential now, thus becoming a relative reality rather than an absolute. Interpreting these gifts at a symbolic rather than concrete level allows space for Marys aggression, hate and envy to nd voice in the therapeutic relationship. Mary experiences both anger and relief at my interpretation of these gifts. Hate and envy are always with us, but more pronounced in the victim of complex trauma. They lack what others are perceived to have at the most basic level of need and they carry anger at what has been imposed upon them. However, they are not always brought to the surface but can be hidden behind gifts or overt dependence on another who carries a symbol of their paucity, as portrayed in the lm with Babettes continued dependence on the sisters and her acceptance of the servant role. The irony of this dynamic is beautifully expressed in the lm, where Babette, the great chef, accepts direction from the 566 Sharn Waldron sisters as to the creation of the tasteless and gross sh soup. Like the sisters, Babette also remains celibate, separated from her emotional needs, her world as grey as that of the family to whom she devoted herself. Reconnecting to trauma Babette carries with her the trauma, unspoken and unaddressed, of the brutality of the Revolution. The feast that she prepares, using all of her nancial resources, is the means by which Babette reconnects with her trauma. It is a gift to her community and to both Martine and Philippa, but most of all it is a gift to herself. It could be seen as profoundly narcissistic to spend all of ones resources on a gift to ones self, but in the giving of this gift Babette is able to reconnect to her trauma. It is in this reconnection that healing not only touches her but ripples out to the external world of which she is a part. It is only through her preparedness to spend all she has that she is able to re-address what she has buried. She had lost all that she loved; her husband, her son, her prestigious position as a great chef and her life in France. The sumptuous feast she prepares contrasts with the remote and austere community in which she now resides. Set in an inhospitable and remote land, it functions as a lucid medium for articulating a fundamental connection between artistic creation and loss; it is a fundamentally life saving act. The consumption of this food, prepared so painstakingly by Babette, becomes the medium of transcendence, that which prepares the way for an unbearable trauma to be reconnected, swallowed and digested. The reconnection with trauma begins in the kitchen where the food is prepared. Babette is not isolated in the kitchen. She is there with the coachman and Erik who is occupied serving table. Before the meal commences Babette gently runs her ngers through Eriks hair and taps him gently under the nose. She had lost this intimacy with her child and husband. As a foreigner she has been unable to participate in family life in this austere and puritanical community which echoes the austerity and greyness of her soul. Her artistic gifts have been crushed for the purpose of survival and as an enactment of her emotional destruction. It is only now that these gifts can be released to the generative potential they hold, not only for Babette but for the guests in the dining room. The healing occurs out of sight, in the kitchen, but the wider community benets from this salvic dynamic. When this feast concludes Babette will no longer be a foreigner. She has shared her emptiness and her creativity, and has become a part of the community, but through the sharing of all she is, the community itself has fundamentally changed. In her book, Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman writes, The core experiences of psychological trauma are disempowerment and disconnection from others. Recovery, therefore, is based upon the empowerment of the survivor and the creation of new connections. Recovery can take place only within the context of An interpretation of Babettes Feast as a parable of trauma 567 relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. In her renewed connections with other people, the survivor re-creates the psychological faculties that were damaged or deformed by the traumatic experience. These faculties include basic capacities for trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy. Just as these capabilities are originally formed in relationships with other people, they must be reformed in such relationships. (Herman 1997, p. 133) I think this is what Babettes Feast reminded me of. She had left part of herself in France with the trauma, stepped into a new land and become someone else. She became the servant of the two puritanical sisters. She managed her new life but the eschewal of the erotic and the physical made it easier for her to contain the explosive feelings that are at the core of the experience of trauma. The puritanical community, combined with the inhospitable climate, created a shield against experiencing stimuli that could trigger reconnection with the very deep untouchable feelings of her trauma. These had become her solace against unmanageable and uncontained feelings that might annihilate her. The willingness of Babette to spend all that she had creating a sumptuous feast for the community in which she had exiled herself allowed her, after many years of living in an austere puritanical environment, to reconnect with her traumatized past and in it nd the seeds of her creativity and brilliance revived. This rediscovery could only be attained after the lapse of time, time spent in the safe embrace of the community. It could only occur through the commitment of the whole self, not through words that participated only in the peripheries of the self but through a whole-self action that engaged beyond the depths of words. The language of trauma The language of trauma is a silent language. It exists on the periphery of perception between words and sentences, in the dissonance between the physical and the verbal. It can be glimpsed in the changes of rhythm in speech; it creates unconnected and loose words, tears holes in syntax and grammar. The psychoanalyst Franz Alexander writes, Logical thinking is based on intellectual syllogisms. The logic of emotions is based on emotional syllogisms. The logic of intellectual thinking is the result of external experiences. The logic of emotions is the result of internal experiences. (Alexander 1935, p. 399) When the conscious memory has been excluded because the emotional memory is too painful to bear, and the body itself is inscribed with an unknown language, how does an individual begin to speak? Furthermore, how are those who listen to nd a vehicle to hear and understand? My patient Mary would at times come in and sit in total silence throughout the entire session. I think she was conveying to me in this act the depths of her 568 Sharn Waldron isolation, how traumatized she had been in her early childhood. There was also a sense in which her behaviour had an element of persecution towards me as the therapist. I interpreted this as an expression, an inarticulate cry, for me to know what it felt like to be isolated and desolate. At other times, Mary was quite articulate with a musical lilt to her Irish brogue. She suffers acute pain in her ears, a condition that on one hand causes her to be unable to tolerate noise and vibration, in short, the presence of other people around her. On the other hand it is a means of isolating herself within her own home, a vivid and poignant picture of her emotional seclusion which no words can convey. The use of words would be antithetical, a betrayal of her experience of isolation, pain and loneliness. Marys trauma and anguish is expressed through the in- articulation of silence. The language of trauma is not static nor a prescribed given. It evolves out of the traumatized individuals unique psyche interacting with the particular nature of their traumatic experience; it can present itself in a variety of ways and in that sense it is an individual language. With Mary, the language of trauma expressed itself in the silences. For Babette it presented itself in the impoverished foreigners differentness. To cope with her trauma Babette dissociated from the painful memories of the brutal murder of her husband and son. She expressed this geographically, culturally and emotionally. By her own words, the only connection remaining to her past life in France was an annual lottery ticket purchased by a friend. But the lm tells another story. She is still connected to France through music; she sang in the grocers shop and the song, in French, underscored her foreignness. We, the viewers, do not get the subtitles that translate the song. It is a foreign song, sung by a foreign person living, dissociated, outside of her context. Music as communicative vehicle At the beginning of this paper I indicated that Babettes Feast is about the use of food, religious symbolism and music as communicative vehicles. Music is an integral part of the lm. The hymns, combined with the duet fromMozarts Don Giovanni, create a sensual and corporeal experience. In this lm music is part of the medium by which the language of trauma is uttered. It is customary to distinguish between language and music by asserting that concepts are foreign to music. But as a communicative vehicle, music touches onto the edges and delves into the heart of that which cannot be expressed at a cognitive level but is nevertheless real, powerful and effective. In the music, trauma is accessed; that which is too deep to be spoken, too painful to be touched by the blunt tool of speech. It can only be hinted at in symbol, signied by the obscurity of the cadences of music. In both composition and interpretation, music becomes the vehicle of affective reality. It must be sung. It must be heard, even as my patient Marys silence must be heard. To interpret music means to make music (Sutton 2002, pp. 12728). This is also integral to the lmBabettes Feast. The hymns of the community and the duet by Philippa and Achille are An interpretation of Babettes Feast as a parable of trauma 569 symbolic representations of the austerity and rigours involved in keeping the carnal at bay. Philippa is frightened at the erotic feelings she is discovering in her relationship to Achille Papin through music. The song sung by Babette in the grocers shop betrays her outward appearance of containment by alluding to a land, a life and memories to which she has chosen not to return. Babette has maintained a connection with France and her previous life, but it is a tenuous connection, an annual lottery ticket and a song. These allow her the possibility of reconnecting with her loss and trauma without demanding of her that she touch that which is still untouchable. The grocer knows the words of Babettes song and joins her in a duet in the shop. It seems she has often sung this song. A part of Babette did not want to live her impoverished life and yet she had prepared a means of reconnecting to her trauma, a path for healing if the opportunity availed itself. It availed itself through Achille Papin who is also represented by musical connection. It is in the fusion of the art of food and music that Babette touches the pain of both herself and the community. Music as a metaphor of analysis For Mary, the harmony is in the sitting, in the duet of silence with another who is willing to be there, to hear the isolation and silence of that which cannot be spoken. She has no words with which to express her desolation and terror. When she does speak, it is only to elucidate the silence. In the analytical environment, Mary and I are both present and in the presence of another in this inhospitable place, an archaic primitive rhythm is called into being from the primordial chaos. It is an antiphonal duet created by and within the analytical environment. Music is created in the silence by rhythm, stress and intonation. Music communicates where words are at times ineffective and inadequate. Trauma needs a language that is inarticulate because it is experienced as pre- cognitive, and speech is about cognition. Analytical interpretations do not have to be verbal; they are often symbolic. The language of trauma cannot be understood in isolation. To understand music as a metaphor for analysis is to recognize that both are art forms and as such have the capacity to stimulate patterns and areas of the brain that have been damaged due to trauma. It is this symbolic image of music that encompasses analytical experience. The analytical framework is not only a facilitating and containing environment; it is also, in itself, a poignant interpretation in that it facilitates an environment that enables analytical work to occur. This is how the language of trauma can be listened to, interpreted and taken out of its physically restrictive and isolated solipsistic world. Child psychotherapist Dr Rose Woo writes: The use of a musical vertex of analytical attention sheds light on the developmental processes that are set in motion before birth. Although the means of communication in our analytical work is verbal language, nevertheless the understanding of primitive mental states involves both the use of symbol and sound . . . by our patients and ourselves. (Woo 1999, p. 200) 570 Sharn Waldron The analytical frame The analytical environment needs to be understood as more than the talking cure, because speaking often diverts us from the emotional devastation of trauma. Analysis is not merely about words. It must symbolically incorporate a whole range of psychic and physical attunement between analyst and patient. What is essential to this process is that both analyst and patient are dynamic agents in the analytical encounter. The warmth of the analytical relationship was the means of melting the vast, frozen emotional wasteland that was Mary and her illness. As the accumulated weight melted, the emotional ice sheet receded, leaving behind the landscape of Marys unique psychological depth, long hidden from sight. The analytic framework is one of dynamic containment in which the analyst regresses with the patient to the patients inner space, hears what the patient communicates on many levels, and works through the unconscious and conscious associations to put them into a form which rst the analysts ego and then the patients ego, can integrate. Communicating life In Symbols of Transformation, Jung refers to the alchemical vessel as a true pharmacon athanasias (Jung 191112/1952, para. 246), that is, a medicine (pharmacon0 of not death; athanasias is literally the antonym of death: a preceding (thanaton). In this passage Jung uses the imagery of the ery furnace from the book of Daniel wherein three men are sent into the furnace to die, but in this furnace it is not death they encounter but rather they are joined there by another, the presence of God. Their ordeal leads not to death but to liberation and restitution. This poignant imagery epitomizes the intense heat that is encapsulated in the analytical environment and vividly portrayed in the lm as Babette prepares and cooks the meal. The quail Babette brings from France, that she kills and painstakingly entombs in pastry sarcophagi, are not just birds; they are a eshly embodiment of her murdered husband and son and her previous existence in France (Rashkin 2008, p. 38). But perhaps they are also a eshly embodiment of her attachment to the pain of that experience. The lms depiction of Babettes assiduous and deferential preparation of dinner underscores the symbolic and mournful nature of the meal. This is no ordinary dinner. The lm implies that Babettes creativity in the kitchen is not only the preparation of a special meal, a French dinner, but is also a preparation of the dead for burial. The capacity to speak of experiences that have provoked intense psychic distress does not erase the disruptive force that the experience may have had or deny its power to have caused profound psychic pain. Nor does it mean that the process of working through the trauma is or ever will be completed. The ability to give voice to the hidden secret signies the ability to overcome an obstacle to healing. In this lm, it is only when loss and trauma can be spoken about and shared that Babette is able to nd healing, but the healing An interpretation of Babettes Feast as a parable of trauma 571 does not happen to her alone. The dynamic that she encounters when she is once again able to resurrect her brilliance, her true self, is shared by the wider community who have enabled her to do so through the security of a loving, and safe, if imperfect environment. But they have also shared her repression. As the analyst experiences the loss and non-being of the patient, only then can the analyst experience, with the patient, the re-awakening of the self. TRANSLATIONS OF ABSTRACT Dans cet article, je mappuie sur le lm Le Festin de Babette, pour illustrer limpasse ` a laquelle aboutit souvent lexp erience de trauma complexe. Une telle exp erience traumatique g en` ere une crise de la r ealit e. Elle d eborde le contenant rationnel. Il nexiste pas de m ecanismes permettant dappr ehender l ev enement, ce qui en rend la compr ehension impossible; et sans compr ehension, point d elaboration. Le Festin de Babette r esume la difcult e avec laquelle est aux prises lindividu captif des rets du trauma. Bien que lib er ee des circonstances du trauma, Babette demeure lhabitante dun univers aust` ere et incolore, ses dons demeurent r eprim es et son eclat voil e. La gu erison provient chez Babette de sa volont e de revisiter son vrai self , un self qui a et e ecras e par la charge du chagrin et du trauma. Cette exploration lui co ute tout ce quelle poss` ede. Pourtant, cest ` a travers ce retour sur elle-m eme que, non seulement elle se lib` ere de laust erit e qui lenvironne, mais quelle suscite dans la communaut e qui laccueille des projets et de lespoir. Les dissonances de sa vie trouvent un echo dans celles de la communaut e o` u elle vit. Cest lharmonisation de ces indicibles dissonances qui nalement articulent et donnent sens ` a lincoh erence du trauma de Babette. In diesemBeitrag betrachte ich den FilmBabettes Fest als eine Parabel umdie Sackgasse zu skizzieren, die sich oftmals aus dem Erleiden eines komplexen Traumas ergibt. Die Erfahrung eines solchen Traumas ruft eine Realit atskrise hervor. Die Grenzen des rational Auffangbaren werden uberutet. Es gibt keine Mechanismen, mit denen ein solches Ereignis erfat werden k onnte und deswegen kann es nicht begriffen, kann es nicht verarbeitet werden. Der Film Babettes Fest verkapselt die Zwangslage des Individuums, das in das Gespinst des Traumas verstrickt ist. Obgleich sie vom Ort und den Ereignissen ihres Traumas entfernt ist, bleibt Babette die Einwohnerin einer strengen und farblosen Umgebung, ihre Gaben sind unterdr uckt, ihre Brillanz bleibt ungesehen. Die Heilung wird Babette durch ihre Bereitschaft erm oglicht, ihr wahres Selbst wiederzusuchen, ein Selbst, das unter der Last von Trauer und Traumatisierung zerdr uckt worden war. Die Wiederbegegnung kostet sie alles was sie hat. Dennoch liegt in dieser Wiederbegegnung nicht nur ihre Selbstbefreiung von Einschr ankungen durch ihre Umgebung, sondern auch die Erzeugung von Bestimmung und Hoffnung in der Gemeinschaft, die sie aufgenommen hat. Die Dissonanz ihres Lebens ndet ihre Parallele in der Dissonanz des Lebens der Gemeinschaft in der sie lebt; es ist die Harmonisierung dieser unaussprechbaren Dissonanzen, die am Ende eine Artikulation der Inkoh arenz von Babettes Trauma darstellt. 572 Sharn Waldron In questo scritto utilizzo il lm Il pranzo di Babette come una parabola per descrivere il blocco che spesso emerge dallesperienza di un trauma complesso. Lesperienza di tale trauma provoca una crisi di realt ` a. Oltrepassa i conni del contenimento razionale. Non ci sono meccanismi attraverso i quali comprendere un tale evento e perci ` o non pu` o essere compreso; poich e non pu` o essere compreso non pu` o essere trattato. Il lm Il pranzo di Babette isola il problema dellindividuo intrappolato nella rete del trauma. Sebbene non abitasse pi ` u i luoghi e gli eventi del suo trauma Babette resta la residente di un ambiente austero e senza colori, i suoi doni rimossi, la sua brillantezza non vista. La guarigione giunge a Babette attraverso la sua volont ` a di ritrovare il suo vero s e, un s e che ` e stato schiacciato dal peso del dolore e del trauma. Questo ritrovamento le costa tutto ci ` o che ha. Eppure ` e in tale ritrovamento che lei non solo libera se stessa dallausterit ` a dellambiente ma alimenta anche progetti e speranze allinterno della cominit ` a che laveva accolta. La dissonanza della sua vita ` e parallela alla dissonanza della vita della comunit ` a in cui vive; ` e larmonizzare tali dissonanze, che non possono essere dette, che alla ne riesce a dare forma allincoerenza del trauma di Babette. Iafoi cfufio n ncnoai:yi|nai:In Iuooffi iui nnfuy an naaicfunnn fynniu, uucfo no:nniuimoio nn noonnnunnn caonnoi fun:i. Onif fuioi fun:i ni:inuof in:nc ouainocfn. On :ufonanof iunnni unnonuainoio ionfoinnonunnn. Hof :oxunn::on, no:noanimnx nocfnui fuioo cooifno, n n:-:u afoio oio nono::onno oc:icanfi; nono::onnoo an oc:icaonnn, ono no :onof oifi noouoofuno. +nai: In Iuooffi, iui n iuncyao, noiu:inuof fo fynocfn, iofoio ncnifinuof uoaonoi, oiu:unmnicn n aonymio fun:i. Hoc:ofn nu fo, ufo onu yno uaoio of :ocfu n cooifni cnooi fun:i, Iuooffu nnnof n cyono: n oocnnofno: oiynonnn. Io fuaunfi nifocnoni, oo oaociu n noanioaonnn nnifo no nnnf. Icnoaonno nnxonf i Iuooffo c oo noaunno: nnoni nuifn cnoo noannnoo 1, 1, u:onfoo fnnocfii ion n fun:i. fo no:numonno i cooo cfonf oi ncoio, ufo y noo ocfi. Onuio n afo: no:numonnn onu no foaiio ocnooonuonn of uciofnunocfn cnooio oiynonnn, no n :uonuof n nnnnnmo: oo cooomocfno noai n nuony. )ncconunc oo coocfnonnoi nn:nn nuuaaoaon ncconuncy nn:nn foio oomocfnu, n iofoo: onu nnnof; n anmi iu:onn:unnn afnx ncconuncon, o iofoix nono::onno iononfi, n ionno ionnon, nnuof :nyuunno fun:o Iuooffi n nocnn:nocfn afoi fun:i. En este trabajo yo utilizo el Banquete del Babette cinematogr aco como una par abola para representar el impasse que a menudo surge fuera de la experiencia de trauma complejo. La experiencia de tal trauma invoca una crisis de la realidad. Se derraman las fronteras de la contenci on racional. No hay mecanismos con que aprehender tal acontecimiento, y a causa de esto no puede ser comprendido; porque lo que no puede ser comprendido no puede ser procesado. El lm Banquete del Babette encapsula el predicamento de una persona entrampada en la tela de ara na del trauma. Aunque fuera de la posici on y acontecimientos de su trauma, Babette se residencia de un ambiente austero y sin color, sus regalos reprimidos, su brillantez sin ser vista. La curaci on viene a Babette por su consentimiento para volver a visitar su Ser verdadero, un ser que ha sido aplastado bajo el peso de la pena y el trauma. Este reencuentro le costar a dar todo lo que An interpretation of Babettes Feast as a parable of trauma 573 tiene. A un as, este reencuentro no s olo la libera de la austeridad del ambiente sino que tambi en genera prop osito y esperanza dentro de la comunidad que la ha acogido. Las disonancias de su vida son paralelas con las disonancias de la vida de la comunidad en la cual vive; es en el armonizar de estas disonancias, las cuales no pueden ser habladas, donde por ultimo se articula la incoherencia del trauma de Babette. References Alexander, F. (1935). The logic of emotions and its dynamic background. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 16. Avila, W. (2005). The Discovery of Meaning. CG Jung Page, www.cgjungpage.org Colman, W. (2010). Mourning and the symbolic process Journal of Analytical Psychology, 55, 2, 27597. Ferguson, P. Parkhurst (2004). Accounting for Taste: A Triumph of French Cuisine. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press. Gurevich, H. (2008). The language of absence. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 89, 56178. Herman, J. (1997). Trauma and Recovery. New York: Basic Books. Jung, C. G. (191112/1952). Transformation of libido. CW 5. Langer, S. (1976). Philosophy in a New Key. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. Laplanche, P &Pontalis J.- B. (1973). The Language of Psychoanalysis. NewYork: WW Norton. Mancia, M, (2006). Implicit memory and early unrepressed unconscious: their role in the therapeutic process. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 87, 83103. Mitchell, J, (1998). Trauma, recognition, and the place of language. Diacritics, 28, Pt 4. Rashkin, E. (2008). Unspeakable Secrets and the Psychoanalysis of Culture, Devouring Loss: A Recipe for Mourning. New York: Suny Press. Rudhyar D. (1982). The Magic of Tone and the Art of Music, Boston: Shambhala. Skar, P. (2002). The goal as process: music and the search for the Self. Journal of Analytical Psychology, 47, 4, 62938. Sutton, J. (2002). Music, Music Therapy and Trauma. London: Jessica Kingsley. Woo, R.,(1999). Sounds of silence: the need for presence in absence. Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 25, 1. [Ms rst received April 2009; nal version November 2009]
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