With her openness and her optimism, she seems to suggest hope for a happier generation in Cambodia, a traumatized and frightened nation still trying to shed the skin of its tormented past.

Jason Bourne has a tormented past, which continues to influence him throughout his lifetime.

Val Kilmer makes a passable Caped Crusader, whose tormented past as Bruce Wayne never really emerges from under the flashy clutter of gimmicky props and consumer gimcrackery.

The story depicts Saidu (Sadiq Abu), a Nigerian immigrant living in Los Angeles who is forced to overcome sleepless nights of his tormented past in Africa.

Close by, the quiet and unassuming provincial capital town of Teruel hides a tormented past.

In which case, the whole transference theory is something we can all forget about; it's just a result of Freud's tormented past.

Mr. Zigler's extraordinary Broadway staging of Mr. Mamet's "Old Neighborhood" in 1997 probed, painfully, the subtleties and seething undercurrents of tormented pasts, never failing to sock across theatrical power.

Using a form of systems theory, the author argues that those with tormented familial pasts predictably repeat them.

Lincoln poses the problem as follows: "I found myself asking how a country with such a tormented past had brought into being such brilliant works of art."

But little does she know that her new owner, Jaguar, may hold the key to freeing her from her tormented past.