W. E. B. Du Bois's "double consciousness," Fanon observes that "Whenever he comes

into contact with someone else, the question of value, of merit, arises" and that "not only

must the black man be black; he must be black in relation to the white man."49 In a world

that Fanon defines as determined by the Manichean struggle between the conqueror and

the native, the colonized lives with a fractured psyche and a sense of existential

nonbeing.50 Thus, Fanon's example, as Marriott points out, illustrates the "sick bond of

phobia whose trauma remains with the black subject." 51

 As concepts such as Root's "insidious trauma" and Erikson's "psychic erosion," as

well as Fanon's and Marriott's examples illustrate, the forces that control and conspire

against the socially oppressed work surreptitiously but detrimentally. Once internalized,

the adverse effects of subjugation become a traumatic pathology plaguing the inner world

of the socially devalued. Like imprisoned captives, the victims lose their sense of

autonomy under the coercive and systematic control that instills helplessness and fear,

and destroys their fundamental sense of self. These "broken" victims with what Judith

Herman calls a "contaminated identity,"52 have difficulty in imagining themselves as

capable of initiatives and choices. Furthermore, the internalized negative self-images and

the disciplinary power exercised through public discourses even make them participate in

perpetuating the very system that oppresses them. The need for intervention in the

complex distress of the oppressed comes from the awareness of the corrosive outside

forces gone inside without the self s critical mediation.53

 What trauma is and how it is perceived, however, are inseparable from who defines

it. Although psychoanalysis mainly stemmed from Freud's initial studies of female

hysteric patients suffering from traumatic life experiences, trauma as a research topic