Study Of The Childhood Trauma In Child Of Rage And Spellbound From The Perspective Of Trauma Theory

Since the 19 th century, trauma studies have all-around developed up to now. Compared with other kinds of trauma, in the author’s opinion, childhood trauma deserves our special attention. Childhood is the key period during a person’s whole life. Therefore, childhood trauma will have tremendous effects not only on a child’s present, but also on his/her future development.This thesis mainly chooses two films—Child of Rage and Spellbound—that revel childhood trauma to analyze. Child of Rage mainly describes the tremendous influence of child sexual abuse in infant period on both a child’s mind and body. Spellbound mainly describes the accidental death of John Ballantine’s brother caused the adult John’s guilt complex. The death of Dr. Edwardes triggered John Ballantine’s childhood trauma and caused his amnesia. The aim of this thesis is to find out the causes of childhood trauma, elaborate the symptoms of the characters and the therapy process, figure out the relations between the characters’ abnormal behaviors and childhood trauma as well as the profound influence of childhood trauma, and analyze the characters’ abnormal behaviors with trauma theory in detail.Sigmund Freud has always been seen as the leader in trauma studies, and his many works have laid a solid foundation for the development of trauma theory. Therefore the analysis of the two films is mainly based upon Sigmund Freud’s related theories in order to effectively explore the issues of childhood trauma in the films. Since trauma is closely related to psychoanalysis theory and the theories about childhood trauma are comparatively limited, therefore during the analysis process the author also applied some psychoanalysis theories as assistance to better analyze the characters’ abnormal psyche and behaviors. And during the study process, induction, comparison and case study are used to make a detailed explanation of the two characters’ different symptoms and behaviors.This thesis comprises of five chapters. Chapter I is the introduction, which is the description of the two films, literature review of trauma theory and its development and the thesis statements. Chapter II describes the formation, representation and therapy process of Catherine’s childhood trauma. Chapter III describes the formation, representation and therapy process of John Ballantine’s childhood trauma, and the relations between his guilt complex and his childhood trauma. Chapter IV analyzes the two characters’ abnormal psyche and behaviors with trauma theory. Chapter V is the conclusion.