The construction of trauma in the life and production of Maya Angelou (1928-2014)

Abstract

Child sexual abuse has terrible consequences for an individual’s healthy development. Among the interventions that psychoanalysis offers to deal with this type of case, symbolization through art appears as an alternative to soften the psychic reality of the trauma. This paper aims to identify this symbolization explored in the trauma resulting from sexual abuse reported in the autobiography of the american writer, Maya Angelou, “I know why the bird sings in the cage”, in line with the analysis of the poem “Beating the child was bad enough”, also by her. Definitions of trauma for Freud, Winnicott, Ferenczi and Lacan will be addressed, emphasizing the importance of art and language, especially written production, for understanding psychic suffering. The Winnicottian reading of trauma, which especially conceives of the failure of an idealized object to perform its preconceived function, is evidently identified with the sexual abuse Maya experienced from her stepfather due to the confusions of feelings she reported. Lacan’s ideas on the importance of language and its signifiers, the primordial structure of his psychoanalysis, can be expressed from the analysis of the author’s life and work, which found in literary production an alternative to symbolize her suffering. The relevance of this area of study within psychoanalysis can therefore be observed, as well as the advantages of case studies extracted from autobiographies, considering the mode of writing (in most cases, stream of consciousness) as congruent with free association, which is the basis for psychoanalytic reading.