Papers by Elisabeth Hanscombe
Life writing, May 14, 2024
Review of The #MeToo Effect: What Happens When We Believe Women, by Leigh Gilmore, New York, Colu... more Review of The #MeToo Effect: What Happens When We Believe Women, by Leigh Gilmore, New York, Columbia University Press, 2023, 234 pp., ISBN 9780231194204.
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The author relates her experiences growing up in a Catholic family including her encounter with p... more The author relates her experiences growing up in a Catholic family including her encounter with psychoanalysis and sexual beginnings. (non- author abstract)
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Psychotherapy in Australia, Mar 1, 2014
Review(s) of: A history of psychoanalysis in Australia: From Freud to Lacan, by Peter Ellingsen, ... more Review(s) of: A history of psychoanalysis in Australia: From Freud to Lacan, by Peter Ellingsen, PsychOz Publications, 2013, PB. RRP $32.95.
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Psychotherapy in Australia, Nov 1, 2012
The psychoanalyst S ndor Ferenzci identified shame and shaming as factors in trauma that can unde... more The psychoanalyst S ndor Ferenzci identified shame and shaming as factors in trauma that can undermine an individual's capacity to grow psychically. Shame hides and through concealment exerts great power over the self, which explains our tendency to tackle such emotional states alone - we can feel too ashamed to share our struggle with others. Elisabeth Hanscombe draws on her own experiences of shame, and autobiographical and theoretical contributions of other writers, to explore the nature of shame across a range of perspectives; the roots of shame, group shame, bodily shame, shame and guilt, the functionality of shame, shame and narcissism, the shame of childhood abuse, competition-based shame, shame and the desire for revenge, and the treatment of shame. Of particular interest to Hanscombe is the power of writing about shame to reduce its impact. The shaming experience renders the shamed one speechless and can cause people to shut down on attempts at further self-knowledge or understanding of others. The process of writing can elevate the shamed behaviour from what was unspeakable to something more palatable and able to be considered out loud and in public, thereby altering its nature. It is an opportunity to not only expose failures, but to assess their overall significance, and reflect on the proper grounds for self-esteem. The experience of too much shaming can lead us into more savage territory, including rage and with it a desire for revenge. Writing can be one way to overcome such unhelpful defences, restore meaning, experience the empathy of others, challenge one's shame and neutralise it under the light of day.
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Antipodes, 2018
When the accidental and seemingly intentional come together in the life of a writer and leave her... more When the accidental and seemingly intentional come together in the life of a writer and leave her with a broken leg, guilt sets in. Followed by a process of soul searching into what William Faulkner describes as ‘the human heart in conflict with itself’. Such experiences can throw us back into memories of other times. Guilt at our apparent wrongdoing can superimpose an excess of responsibility, especially when raised in a Catholic tradition that demands acknowledgement and atonement. Ageing, the cycle of life and human vulnerability fit under the microscope in this writer’s struggle to come to terms with her broken leg.
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Routledge eBooks, Dec 17, 2020
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Island, 2008
In 1995 I wrote a series of letters to my nine siblings and invited them to join me in the writin... more In 1995 I wrote a series of letters to my nine siblings and invited them to join me in the writing of a book. We could each write a chapter, I suggested, on some aspect of our experience of growing up in the same troubled household. In my fantasy, I imagined that I might choose a particular day, one in which certain things happened - the day my father threw the radiator at my mother in a drunken rage; the day my oldest brother stormed out of the house goaded on by my father's taunts, not to be seen again for three years; the day my father tore down the Christmas tree. I might choose such a day and each one of us could write about it.
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My chapter from Eavesdropping
The psychotherapist in film and television
Edited By Lucy Huskins... more My chapter from Eavesdropping
The psychotherapist in film and television
Edited By Lucy Huskinson, Terrie Waddell
It deals with the difficult issue of portraying therapeutic work in ways that refract the practice and do not overdramatise. Almost an impossibility.
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Life Writing, 2006
This essay deals wth the impact of writing about life experience in relation to any desire for re... more This essay deals wth the impact of writing about life experience in relation to any desire for revenge, focussing on a time I wrote about my analytic experience, much to my analyst's initial distress.
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Demeter Press , Jun 5, 2018
My essay in Middle Grounds: Essays on Midlife Mothering
edited by Kathy Mantas and Lorinda Peter... more My essay in Middle Grounds: Essays on Midlife Mothering
edited by Kathy Mantas and Lorinda Peterson.
In this essay, I use the example of an incident that occurred after the birth of my third daughter to highlight the extent to which the life of the middle aged mother is one of constant compromise. How do we deal with the tug of war between the needs of our children and our own needs for satisfaction and fulfilment? Today’s midlife mothers might feel we have more choice than our mothers before us, but we are now caught between impending old age and the demands of new beginnings in our children.
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M/C Journal, Jan 24, 2011
In this essay I explore doubt as a central ingredient in my research into the topic, ‘Life Writ... more In this essay I explore doubt as a central ingredient in my research into the topic, ‘Life Writing and the Desire for Revenge’ and my multidisciplinary foray across several disciplines, particularly literature and psychology. I consider the work of historian, Ross Gibson, and sociologist, Avery Gordon, as they explore the empty spaces and things unseen, areas riddled with doubt. I then delve into the autobiographical to consider aspects of the death photograph as a site of haunting, again overloaded with doubt. I bring these various threads together to make a plea for the centrality, connectiveness and unifying force of doubtfulness within the research process.
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Life Writing , 2024
Review of The #MeToo Effect: What Happens When We Believe Women, by Leigh Gilmore, New York, Colu... more Review of The #MeToo Effect: What Happens When We Believe Women, by Leigh Gilmore, New York, Columbia University Press, 2023, 234 pp., ISBN 9780231194204.
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Transnational Volume 6, Issue 1, 2013
I studied for days for my European history exam, rote learning the dates, the events, the charact... more I studied for days for my European history exam, rote learning the dates, the events, the characters. But as soon I sat for this exam and scanned the sea of questions my memory failed me. This paper explores that loss of memory and the ways in which anxiety can interfere with the usual learning process.
It was not a consequence of anxiety alone that caused me temporarily to lose my
memory. Instead, it was the traumatic experience of my family history, my
European parents and the way in which I had sought to slide over the broader facts of
history, simply by rote learning them without understanding anything of that history, and more especially without understanding these effects on my own history.
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The other side of hope, 2022
In 1980 I travelled to Holland to see for myself the land my mother had left thirty years earlier... more In 1980 I travelled to Holland to see for myself the land my mother had left thirty years earlier.
Throughout my childhood her longing for her home was palpable. It left me loaded with a sadness so great I could not carry it.
On this trip I wanted to bring back to my mother a piece of her homeland that might help assuage her longing.
It took the form of a glas in lote, a lead light which I carried home in my luggage wrapped in tissue paper for safety.
I chose a painting of the Cathedral of St Bavo in Haarlem, my mother’s church as a child.
My mother received my gift but with none of the delight I had imagined. By that time, she was beginning to relish her life in this new country.
She did not know it then but my father was soon to die and she was to remarry and man who could make her happy in ways my father never did.
She had moved beyond her grief, but I could not.
After she died this leadlight came back to me. It hangs in the window light and reminds me of the longing for which I could never find a salve.
It’s this longing that drove me to write In My Mother’s Shoes. They never quite fit even as I try.
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Hanscombe, E., (2012) “Autobiography Bears Witness”, Lifewriting Annual: Biographical and Autobiographical Studies 3(1), 255-277, 2012
In this paper I bear witness not only to my own childhood trauma, but also to that of an infant, ... more In this paper I bear witness not only to my own childhood trauma, but also to that of an infant, Lucy, whom I observed as part of my psychoanalytical training, and a toddler, John, whose traumatic experience of separation from his mother was filmed in the 1950s by the researchers, James and Joyce Robertson. The Robertsons eventually succeeded in alerting authorities to the trauma of child separations in residential day care nurseries as routinely occurred during this time. I then link my experience of infant observation with my participation as a psychoanalytic candidate within the Melbourne Branch of the Australian Psychoanalytical Society and explore aspects of my family history that have run parallel to my traumatic dismissal/separation from the psychoanalytic training. In this way I use the autobiographical to explore theoretical aspects of the experience of individual trauma, and its links to history and memory.
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Auto/Fiction 2:1, 2017
My blog is my frame: the unwritten rules of the blogosphere and how they frame and fracture content.
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Psychotherapy in Australia, 2006
In this story I aim to write about the experience of the observer, forced to witness and feeling ... more In this story I aim to write about the experience of the observer, forced to witness and feeling helpless to do anything about the pain. One of my pet themes. To that end I included it within the structure of three diverse stories, including the one about a boy who is humiliated by the experience of ECT. A treatment that aims to shock people out of their depression but like many such treatments has unwanted side effects.
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Papers by Elisabeth Hanscombe
The psychotherapist in film and television
Edited By Lucy Huskinson, Terrie Waddell
It deals with the difficult issue of portraying therapeutic work in ways that refract the practice and do not overdramatise. Almost an impossibility.
edited by Kathy Mantas and Lorinda Peterson.
In this essay, I use the example of an incident that occurred after the birth of my third daughter to highlight the extent to which the life of the middle aged mother is one of constant compromise. How do we deal with the tug of war between the needs of our children and our own needs for satisfaction and fulfilment? Today’s midlife mothers might feel we have more choice than our mothers before us, but we are now caught between impending old age and the demands of new beginnings in our children.
It was not a consequence of anxiety alone that caused me temporarily to lose my
memory. Instead, it was the traumatic experience of my family history, my
European parents and the way in which I had sought to slide over the broader facts of
history, simply by rote learning them without understanding anything of that history, and more especially without understanding these effects on my own history.
Throughout my childhood her longing for her home was palpable. It left me loaded with a sadness so great I could not carry it.
On this trip I wanted to bring back to my mother a piece of her homeland that might help assuage her longing.
It took the form of a glas in lote, a lead light which I carried home in my luggage wrapped in tissue paper for safety.
I chose a painting of the Cathedral of St Bavo in Haarlem, my mother’s church as a child.
My mother received my gift but with none of the delight I had imagined. By that time, she was beginning to relish her life in this new country.
She did not know it then but my father was soon to die and she was to remarry and man who could make her happy in ways my father never did.
She had moved beyond her grief, but I could not.
After she died this leadlight came back to me. It hangs in the window light and reminds me of the longing for which I could never find a salve.
It’s this longing that drove me to write In My Mother’s Shoes. They never quite fit even as I try.
The psychotherapist in film and television
Edited By Lucy Huskinson, Terrie Waddell
It deals with the difficult issue of portraying therapeutic work in ways that refract the practice and do not overdramatise. Almost an impossibility.
edited by Kathy Mantas and Lorinda Peterson.
In this essay, I use the example of an incident that occurred after the birth of my third daughter to highlight the extent to which the life of the middle aged mother is one of constant compromise. How do we deal with the tug of war between the needs of our children and our own needs for satisfaction and fulfilment? Today’s midlife mothers might feel we have more choice than our mothers before us, but we are now caught between impending old age and the demands of new beginnings in our children.
It was not a consequence of anxiety alone that caused me temporarily to lose my
memory. Instead, it was the traumatic experience of my family history, my
European parents and the way in which I had sought to slide over the broader facts of
history, simply by rote learning them without understanding anything of that history, and more especially without understanding these effects on my own history.
Throughout my childhood her longing for her home was palpable. It left me loaded with a sadness so great I could not carry it.
On this trip I wanted to bring back to my mother a piece of her homeland that might help assuage her longing.
It took the form of a glas in lote, a lead light which I carried home in my luggage wrapped in tissue paper for safety.
I chose a painting of the Cathedral of St Bavo in Haarlem, my mother’s church as a child.
My mother received my gift but with none of the delight I had imagined. By that time, she was beginning to relish her life in this new country.
She did not know it then but my father was soon to die and she was to remarry and man who could make her happy in ways my father never did.
She had moved beyond her grief, but I could not.
After she died this leadlight came back to me. It hangs in the window light and reminds me of the longing for which I could never find a salve.
It’s this longing that drove me to write In My Mother’s Shoes. They never quite fit even as I try.
Southerly “The Long Apprenticeship. Vol.22 N0. 2, 2017 p.7.
An analysis of the witness as the intermediary third offers ways of mitigating such abuses. The reasons we turn a blind eye becomes clearer when we interrogate problems associated with categories such as perpetrator, victim and bystander. Failed witnesses perpetuate the abuse, while empowered witnesses lend dignity to human suffering, rather than merely reinforcing it through our failures of acknowledgement and recognition.