Belated Trauma and Defense Mechanism in Tariq Rahman’s Short Stories: A Psychoanalytic Reading

Abstract

The present study investigates belated trauma in Rehman’s selected short stories from a psychological perspective. While existing literature on Rahman’s stories has showcased sociopolitical disorder, religious extremism, identity crisis, and violence, there is a limited scholarship on systematic psychological scrutiny of his works using rhetorical expressions through which trauma is inscribed belatedly. Utilizing a psychoanalytical lens, the study employs Caruth’s notion of trauma as a belated experience in conjunction with Freud‘s Defense Mechanism as a theoretical model to illustrate the complexities of a character’s traumatic memory, which is thematically represented through irony and metaphors. It focuses on the unconscious defensive strategy and psychological strains of the characters addressed through metaphoric distortion and ironic framing. The findings of the study highlight that repression appears through fragmented narrative omissions to modify internal struggles into symbolic forms. It allows the characters to prolong the direct encounter while protecting their return in the belated appearance of traumatic events. The study contributes to the analytical dimension of psychological reading in South Asian fiction, suggesting further exploration of contemporary trauma theory in literary contexts.