93 Trauma, Ethics and Psychoanalysis in Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater 1 Gurumurthy Neelakantan ABSTRACT. Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater (1995), a late work that registers a marked ethical turn in the author’s canon, details the memory of trauma in both content and form. It is this profound investment in memory that makes the protagonist Sabbath worthy of attention and even respect, notwithstand- ing his reprehensible conduct. Given that Sabbath’s Theater is heavily invested in the logic of traumatic memory, the novel preeminently invites a psychoana- lytic interpretation, though its protagonist himself more than once expresses his wariness of therapy in general. Therefore, the crucial step toward such a critical intervention involves exploring the relationship between trauma, eth- ics, and psychoanalysis. The present paper seeks to examine Roth as an ethical thinker who in the confines of the novel enlarges our understanding of the workings of the human psyche by sidestepping the clinical scientism of psy- choanalytic discourse and strategically redefining therapy as an empowering philosophy of life. Philip Roth’s Sabbath’s Theater (1995), a late work that registers a marked ethical turn in the author’s canon, brings a new dimension to contemporary American fiction in its engagement with human consciousness, temporality, and traumatic memory. It is a novel that details the memory of trauma in both content and form. If Roth’s novel is reminiscent of James Joyce’s Ulysses (1922) in depicting the stream of consciousness of its protagonist and also of Marcel Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past (1913-27) in the way time is captured through memory, it also creates a central character who, in letting “the repellant in,” alienated many of its readers and reviewers alike (Roth qtd. in Pierpont 198). 2 Intriguingly, the novelist himself is said to have remarked: “‘If he [Sabbath] were sitting right here, [‘gesturing at his nice white couch’] I’d throw him out’” (qtd. in Pierpont 199). Even if the titular hero Mickey Sabbath is selfish and unabashedly derisive of middle-class propriety, yet