Trauma and Human Existence, by Robert D. Stolorow

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A small monograph focused on a large topic: the fundamental nature of existence in light of death and everyday meaninglessness, and the relationship between ontic (psychological) development and the ontological structures of human being. This work quickly weaves these topics and perspectives together, using the nature of trauma to focus the hermeneutic circle. However, it repeats, often wholesale, Stolorow’s longer work, World, Affectivity, Trauma (reviewed here) to the point that I was left wondering why this work exists, as it seems more wholly subsumed by that larger effort.