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Elisabeth Hanscombe
Elisabeth Hanscombe (she/her) is a writer and psychologist with an interest in the underpinnings of all things autobiographical. Her work explores the ways our experience of the past impinges on the present, particularly when it comes to trauma.
Elisabeth holds academic status at Flinders University in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, while her expertise in psychology and literature positions her as a distinctive voice in contemporary Australian writing.
In 2011, Hanscombe completed a PhD on ‘Life writing and the desire for revenge’. As such, she’s well equipped to explore the connections between her early life and later journey into therapeutic practice, with all its pitfalls.
Hanscombe’s stories and essays have appeared in Meanjin, Island, Tirra Lirra, Southerly, Griffith Review, Life Writing, The Brevity Blog and Quadrant, among others. She is the author of The Art of Disappearing (Glass House Books, 2017), a childhood memoir.
Sixth born of nine children to Dutch parents who arrived in Melbourne, Australia, during the post-World War Two exodus from Europe in the 1950s, her blog is called sixthinline. Hanscombe lives in Melbourne with her husband and two dogs. She loves literature and her favourite form of travel takes place in her mind.
Museum of Failure
by Elisabeth Hanscombe
When it comes to trauma, our experience of the past impinges on the present. We’re haunted. Unable to enjoy life, our memories begin to resemble a museum of failure.
Elisabeth was ten years old when she first wished her father dead. If he was dead, there’d be no more troubles. The things he did to her sister in the night left her fearful of when her turn would come. She looked to her mother for help, but she was immobilised and in terror, and did not protect her children. She hid from her husband’s abuse in Catholicism and books.
As an adult, Elisabeth climbed the ranks of psychology into the silent chambers of the psychoanalytic world. Psychoanalysis helped her make sense of her mind and other emotional scars, but after three years of practice, the analysts dismissed Elisabeth.
This is the story of how the analytical patriarchy, in its zeal to be more Freud-like than Freud, inspired Elisabeth’s drive to understand it and undo the damage.
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