PLEASE NOTE: This article explores biological and psychological effects of trauma on the body, information that Rachel Blonds uses to inform her play Jonah. In doing so, it provides some light plot spoilers. Audience members might want to read this article after seeing the play.
Trauma doesn’t just leave a mark on memory—it reconfigures its architecture. When a person experiences a traumatic event, the brain is flooded with adrenaline and cortisol. The amygdala, the area of the brain responsible for processing emotional responses, fills the body with fear. Meanwhile, the hippocampus, which consolidates information from short term to long term memory, begins to falter under the weight of stress and loses the ability to embed those memories in time and place. Familiar landmarks of memory— when, where, how —fade into a confused abyss. What remains are only flashing shards of the event, vivid and unmoored, like echoes with no source. Rachel Bonds’ Jonah explores, through structure and content, the ways trauma causes the past, present, and future to intermingle. As the audience relives various points in Ana’s life, they are placed into the thicket of her psychology. The way Bonds manipulates time in Jonah is grounded in deep biological and psychological roots; she says that “the form fits the content, because we're dealing with someone who has experienced trauma.... we're dealing with a mind and body that have been affected by trauma.... [so], things are slippery.”
The brain undergoes physiological strain when it experiences trauma. This strain alters how the brain forms, stores, and retrieves past events, creating the slippery quality that Bonds evokes in Jonah. Rather than a clear chronology, survivors store only fragmentary pieces of past traumatic events; these pieces are often isolated, distorted, sensorial details that elicit distress. When recalling a memory, survivors with PTSD can experience an intrusive memory, which is a sudden, involuntary, and upsetting experience of the past that feels as though it’s happening in the present. Survivors may also experience trauma through flashback which is like an intrusive memory only longer lasting and more immersive. Flashbacks can be so immersive, in fact, that sometimes survivors lose sense of their current surroundings, overwhelmed by their senses and feeling as though their trauma is happening again in real-time.
Traumatic memories often refuse to stay in the past: they crash into the present with startling immediacy. It's not just remembering—it’s reliving. A memory festers, popping to the surface unexpectedly—at the writer’s retreat, in the dark, or in the middle of a breath. A scent, a sound, a rhythm, a familiar behavior or environment—something triggers the memory, and suddenly, the survivor experiences it again in the present tense. This sense of “nowness,” as researchers call it, blurs the line between the moment the memory occurred and the moment it’s being re-experienced. Rachel Bonds explores this “nowness” with Jonah, interweaving Ana’s past experiences with her present ones, illustrating the ways trauma interrupts daily life.
In her novel Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman describes that “the conflict between the will to deny horrible events and the will to proclaim them aloud is the central dialectic of psychological trauma.” This conflict defines Bonds’ central character Ana in Jonah. At times, Ana dissociates from the truth of her life, creating fantasies that protect her from experiencing the full weight of her pain. At other times, she processes these events through writing and speaking them out loud. Ana describes her writing as a “method of survival.” indeed, it is one that many survivors with PTSD use to cope. Psychologists call this coping mechanism dissociative fantasy. Clinical psychologist Dr. Denise Reyne says of dissociative fantasy, “Fantasy can serve as a powerful coping mechanism… the mind may create a mental escape… Fantasy becomes a refuge where they can feel control, safety, and experience idealized outcomes.”
When treating their patients, therapists often start by talking through the survivor’s dissociative fantasy, and then slowly, through exposure and discussion of one’s trauma, reduce a survivor’s need to escape to their fictional world. By talking about their trauma with trained therapists, survivors' can quiet the reactivity of their intrusive memories and reduce their power. Rather than eliciting a strong emotional response, through repeatedly discussing the reality of the events memories become less volatile, and survivors learn to face their trauma with a quieter and clearer mind. When reflecting on the seed of Jonah, Rachel Bonds says, “I thought about the stories I would tell myself to keep going, keep walking, to not just explode into a pile of burning ashes on a sidewalk." Discussing fantasy as a mode of survival, and facing intimate fears with care and courage, she muses on her curiosity about “how the thing that hurts you can also save you”.
Fantasy helps a survivor persevere, serving as a salve on the wound, giving them the strength and resilience to fight another day. While it is only a temporary salve that cannot replace the lasting aid of talk therapy, it serves as a critical tool of comfort until a survivor is able to look at their trauma in its full reality.
- Ella Talerico