ABSTRACT
In exploring the many faces of trauma and the divergent claims that have been made with regard to it, what comes to mind is the old Sufi parable of the blind men and the elephant, in which five blind men encounter an elephant and examine it by feeling its body parts. Each likens the elephant to an object that is familiar to him, based on the body part he touches, and each is convinced that he knows what an elephant is, yet none of them has any idea what the elephant looks like as a whole.
