Trauma and Dissociation in the Works and Life of Sebastian Barry

Book excerpt: Can language and literature cure psychological trauma? If so, what forms do they (have to) take in doing so? When does language hit the wall where the unspeakable mandates silence? And where might literature come in as the rescuing hand by offering forms of expression which are rooted in speech but transcend the merely spoken? This study confronts these issues through the double lenses of Sebastian Barry's œuvre and the complex of dissociative disorders that are at work both in his creative output and the ways in which he fictionalizes dark and traumatic biographical data.