This essay utilizes Lacanian psychoanalysis to challenge assumptions, derived from research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), concerning the treatment of traumatized subjects. Nathan Vickery, the protagonist of Joyce Carol Oates’s Son of the Morning, exemplifies the traumatized subject. PTSD therapy encourages the subject to recall the original traumatic event; remembering supposedly frees the subject from repeating the trauma. However, Lacan emphasizes how the subject’s memories reveal the relationship the subject desires to have with the Other, the parental authority. To discover the source of his lifelong angst, Nathan recalls the traumatic events that repeat throughout his life, beginning with his mother injuring him accidently as she fed him during his infancy. Despite his remembrances, Nathan cannot acknowledge that he still unconsciously desires to remain starved by his mother, the Other. This essay explicates Lacan’s view that traumatic repetitions originate in the subject’s encounter with and interpretation of the Other’s desire