Repetition or Containment? Responses to Wounds in the First World War: Robert Graves, Ernest Hemmingway

This paper considered how the divisions enforced by WW1 are exemplified by the physical and psychological war wound suffered by Bion, Hemingway and Graves. This wounding inculcates a repetition of wounding in either their writings or lives and these otherwise irrational repetitions are centred around guilt and masculinity. The paper draws upon biography, autobiography and literary works using a psychoanalytic lens, and particularly Freud's developing conceptualisations of trauma, to make sense of self-wounding behaviour and how this tendency can be overcome.