Re-visioning recovery: Experiencing Nachträglichkeit in poetic autoethnography

Nachträglichkeit, most commonly translated as “afterwardsness”, began as a psychoanalytic concept developed by Sigmund Freud whereby an event is retrospectively re-inscribed as traumatic following the experience of a new trigger. In this article, it is adopted as a creative writing and poetry therapy methodology and applied to a short series of autoethnographic poems that explore the lived experience of recovery from sexual trauma. At the heart of Nachträglichkeit is a profound re-visioning. Nachträglichkeit renders the poem or piece anew in the eyes of the author, weeks, monthsor years after the writing, which allows new discoveries about the self-reflexive self to be made. As a methodology, Nachträglichkeit promotes the inhabitation of richer, slower and more considerate perspectives and modes of being towards writing, the self and the wider world. Note/Content Warning: This article explores the lived experience of trauma and mentions instances of sexual assault.