Zeta books

Lajos Horváth, "The Phenomenology of Traumatic Destinal Events: The Retroactive Constitution of Sense and the Afterwardsness of Trauma", in: Studia Phaenomenologica, Volume 26 / 2026: Phenomenology and Psychopathology
Abstract: The aim of the paper is to synthetize Laszlo Tengelyi’s phenomenological idea of destinal event with the psychoanalytic notion of Nachträglichkeit. For this purpose, the paper aims to introduce the concept of the traumatic destinal event. It argues that this idea further develops and complements Husserl’s and Tengelyi’s investigations regarding the retroactive constitution of sense. In contrast to Tengelyi’s literary illustrations of the retroactive constitution of sense, the idea of the traumatic destinal event draws heavily on Freud’s and others’ insights into the afterwardsness of trauma (i.e., Nachträglichkeit). By employing Husserl’s original ideas, the first section of the paper illustrates what the retroactive constitution of sense means in the living present. The second section introduces Tengelyi’s idea of the discarded formation of sense and demonstrates how the retroactive formation of sense occurs during the recollection of distant and seemingly insignificant memory traces. The third section discusses the psychoanalytic idea of Nachträglichkeit and phenomenologically reformulates it as the constitution of a traumatic destinal event. Finally, the paper argues that the traumatic destinal event can be introduced to phenomenology as a subtype of Tengelyi’s destinal events.

Forthcoming: STUDIA PHÆNOMENOLOGICA vol. XXVI / 2026
Phenomenology and Psychopathology
Editors: Maria Gyemant and Françoise Dastur