Status Updates From Trauma And Recovery: The Af...

‘when a large group of children were followed from birth until adulthood, roughly one child in ten showed an unusual capacity to withstand an adverse early environment.These children were characterized by an alert, active temperament, unusual sociability and skill in communicating with others,& a strong sense of being able to affect their own destiny, which psychologists call "internal locus of control."’ (p.33)

“No two people have identical reactions, even to the same event. The traumatic syndrome, despite its many constant features, is not the same for everyone. In a study of combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder, for example, each man's predominant symptom pattern was related to his individual childhood history, emotional conflicts, and adaptive style.” (p. 32)

The traumatic event thus destroys the belief that one can be oneself in relation to others.Unsatisfactory
resolution of the normal developmental conflicts over autonomy leaves the person prone to shame and doubt.These same emotional reactions reappear in the aftermath of traumatic events.Shame is a response to helplessness, the violation of bodily integrity, and the indignity suffered in the eyes of another person.

A secure sense of connection with caring people is the
fondation of personality development. When this connection is shattered, the traumatized person loses her basic sense of self. Developmental conflicts of childhood and adolescence, long since resolved, are suddenly reopened. Trauma forces the survivor to relive all her earlier struggles over autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy. (p. 29)

The damage to relational life is not a secondary effect of trauma, as originally thought. Traumatic events have primary effects not only on psychological structures of the self but also on the systems of attachment and meaning that link individual and community. Mardi Horowitz defines traumatic life events as those that cannot be assimilated with the victim's "inner schemata" of self in relation to the world. (p.29)

In Chapter 2 of Trauma and Recovery, Judith Herman connects Freud’s classic concept of the compulsion to repeat with psychiatrist Mardi Horowitz’s cognitive framework, the completion principle. Both concepts address the exact same psychological puzzle: Why do traumatized individuals continuously re-experience, re-enact, or relive terrifying experiences that cause them profound distress?

Three of the men died by suicide during the course of the study. Thus, the very “threat of annihilation" that defined the traumatic moment may pursue the survivor long after the danger has passed. No wonder that Freud found, in the traumatic neurosis, signs of a
"daemonic force at work." The terror, rage, and hatred of the traumatic moment live on in the dialectic of trauma.

Because post-traumatic symptoms are so persistent and so wide-ranging, they may be mistaken for enduring characteristics of the victim's
personality. This is a costly error, for the person with unrecognized post-traumatic stress disorder is
condemned to a diminished life, tormented by memory and bounded by helplessness and fear.

They lack drama; their significance lies in what is missing. For this reason, constrictive symptoms are not readily recognized, and their origins in a traumatic event are often lost. With the passage of time, as these negative symptoms become the most prominent feature of the post-traumatic disorder, the diagnosis becomes increasingly easy to overlook.

The psychiatrist Mardi Horowitz postulates a "completion principle" which "summarizes the human mind's intrinsic ability to process new information in order to bring up to date the inner schemata of the self and the world." …The trauma is resolved only when the survivor develops a new mental "schema" for understanding what has
happened.

In his use of language, Janet implicitly recognized that helplessness constitutes the essential insult of trauma, and that restitution requires the restoration of a sense of etticacy and power.

Because the repetition compulsion seemed to defy any conscious intent and to resist change so adamantly, Freud despaired of finding any adaptive, life-affirming explanation for it; rather, he was driven to invoke the concept of a "death instinct."

He first conceptualized it as an attempt to master the
traumatic event. But this explanation did not satisfy him. It somehow failed to capture what he called the
"daemonic" quality of reenactment.